User talk:Count Iblis

Count Iblis sticks to the guidelines in the essay: Editing scientific articles as if it were official policy.

Entropy

Dear Count: Please consider a dispensation to a lowly idiot. Since entropy is related to the dissipation of energy from nonconservative forces which is not available to do work, isn't the quantity somehow related to the curl of F or the line integral by Stoke's Theorem? Is this quantity only significant if it is zero and the force is conservative? If the curl of F is not equal to zero, then what is it equal to? If I should know this I sincerely apologize that I do not.Kissnmakeup (talk) 16:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC) Also, I chose my handle after reading the discussion about the entropy article. As I delve more and more into this wiki thing, I keep finding snipits that I don't really have the time to address, however, this will bother me until I ask someone. I know that there is a separate article about information entropy, but are there two other different articles on entropy, one which is considered "general" and one which is considered "thermodynamic?" The reason I ask is because I don't really understand why an IT hacker (Linas) is having the final say about what an article about thermodynamic entropy says. It seems clear to me that he has this egotistical determination to stick his nose where it does not belong and force the example of information entropy on the rest of us poor human earth idiots who don't know everything yet, and who want to stay focused on thermo for now.Kissnmakeup (talk) 16:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Palestine Remembered's edits are frequently out of proportion to the sources which he cites. he often writes with clear political predilections and agendas. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 19:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

But these topics are politically very sensitive and there are equally valid but completely different opinions in the reliable sources. Compare PR's behavior to your own behavior some time ago on the Global Warming page. In that case the reliable sources (i.e. the peer reviewed sources and not the unreliable blogs) are very clear, yet we have to put up with editors who refuse to recognize the basic facts. See here for a recent RFC on such a problematic editor. Count Iblis (talk) 20:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

gee, thanks. not only do i get a whole new editor casting aspersions on me, it's on a whole new topic to boot. thanks so much. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:04, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

What happened to your Armada? :) Count Iblis (talk) 22:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Count Iblis, your insertion of irrelevancies and non sequitirs here, in order to throw aspersions at me, seems a bit uncivil and not completely appropriate here. We are trying to discuss specific topics here. (By the way, if your armada reference was meant to be humorous, I can take some wry humor here as well as anyone here, but it did not appear that way, and seemed like an unfriendly act. I don't mind some off-topic conversation, but it seemed like some sudden negative material unrelated to the topic at hand. if you are trying to strike a light note, I feel you should try to do so differently.) --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 13:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, let me exlain this a bit better then. You wrote "Palestine Remembered's edits are frequently out of proportion to the sources which he cites. he often writes with clear political predilections and agendas". My reply to you, based on your conduct on the GW page can be found here Count Iblis (talk) 21:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Your remarks ARE AD HOMINEM AND TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE. I would appreciate it if you would please try to stck to the point. Your remarks have no relation to the topic under discussion. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 02:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, let me stick to the point then. If you think it is ok. to invite editors from the "Conservatism in the US" page to come over to the Global Warming page, which is primarily about the science of Global Warming, not politics, and then defend that by saying "I guess our main difference is that I don't view this only as a science article, but as a societal/political topic as well.", then what is PR doing wrong when he brings the Palestinian POV in articles about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Count Iblis (talk) 14:14, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Gosh, it sure is great to see how well-expressed you are...(sarcasm). your entire approach to this is completely counter-productive. you are beuing extremely contentious. ok, I have no desire to reply to anything which you have stated. are you trying to send the message that you disagree with my action? ok, you win, since I have no desire to reply to your questions which are phrased in a completely non-productive and contentious way.

you have completely ignored the issue here, and brought up my concerns about my past actions in a way which is completely counter to any norms of productive discussions. I find your approach completely unhelpfu, and decline to reply. Ok, you win. Yay! --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 15:59, 7

August 2008 (UTC)

But, Steve, dear, THIS IS a reply. Kissnmakeup (talk) 16:09, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi. that's true. however, it is a reply which in no way refute the laser-like incisiveness of Count Iblis's well-aimed points. it is mere petulance on my part. Therefore, and I say this again, he wins. Yay! --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Your opinion is required

On the TGGWS talk page, see [1], Badger Drink is asserting ArbCom rulings do not set precedents. Since this obviously has implications for your argument regarding the ArbCom ruling on pseudo-science requiring peer-reviewed sources in science articles (when no official wikipedia policy includes such a requirement), I thought you might want to weigh in there. --GoRight (talk) 14:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

What is your interpretation of WP:0RR?

I find the description confusing. What exactly, in your opinion of course, is someone allowed to do under WP:0RR?

It seems it allows me to add new material but never revert anything. And your discussion on WP:ANI seems to view anything that I change as a revert. So in your view I could add only new material and never make changes to any existing content? And so once others touched my additions I would be forbidden from ever touching them again? Nor could I ever touch anything anyone else wrote? This seems a rather odd scenario to me. --GoRight (talk) 20:20, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Student's t

I think your comments at talk:Student's t-distribution are wrong; please see what I wrote there. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

... oh.... maybe you just meant the first row of the table at that time? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The sklar quotes are wrong

Space and time are modified, but they are very well defined, that is what the Lorentz transformation does. The sklar quote says they are not, this completely, utterly wrong. Blablablob (talk) 22:49, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

you are not paying attention,

• your reason for edit: "Nowhere is it mentioned that space and time are not well defined"
• from the quote: absolute time separation between event locations is not well defined

that's pretty clear.

There are two problems with the sklar quote:

• 'well defined': we do know how to make all calculations in space and time for inertial observers; this part of the quote only clouds the issue.
• There is simply no such thing as "the distance" between events that are nonsimultaneous: this is completely, and utterly wrong - the Lorentz Transform is the means by which you can calculate and compare distances between different events, and for different inertial observers.

Please revert your edit, as I have already done so twice. Blablablob (talk) 23:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

thank you for reverting - the article is actually pretty good, and it covers all of the key concepts of SR. If there is something that you feel is missing or not very well explained, I offer to help as time and energy allow. Blablablob (talk) 00:12, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Opinion?

Here is a possible approach: new page. Let me know what you think. Brews ohare (talk) 01:29, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Lagrange multiplier and the normal force

Thanks for the encouragement. I'd also like to modify the curvilinear part to approach it from a Lagrangian viewpoint. Do you have some suggestions for references or links to other Wiki articles on the Lagrange methods? Brews ohare (talk) 13:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Source for science article

Re: this - "This is actually the norm for almost all articles on scientific topics on wikipedia, although it is not official policy" -- not true. Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such. -- Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience Raul654 (talk) 14:11, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Derivations and verifiability

You wrote: What matters is that statements in Wikipedia are verifiable. So, a mathematical derivation can serve as the verification of a statement. Is there a citable Wiki policy to this effect? It interests me because my short derivation at Fictitious force got flagged for not flying any citations, and I interpreted that as disbelief in my derivation using the general formula. Maybe I could just cite the source for the general formula (again)? Brews ohare (talk) 16:23, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

what Wikipedia is supposed to be

Thanks for the input on derivations and verifiability.

This topic requires a very clear head, clearer than mine at the moment. One problem to be faced is that some derivations will be wrong. I have found Wikibooks to be more prone to this problem than Wikipedia, not a good omen. And some derivations will derive wrong results. This last could be fixed by requiring that the results be supported by citation.

A related item is that some think Wikipedia is not a textbook, and so should not try teach how to do things (like solving mechanics problems, or using vectors), but should just state results. For myself, if I'm to be limited to simply stating results already in print by paraphrasing words already in print, I have absolutely no interest in contributing.

You mention "wikipedia is a multidimensional sequence". That is a very crucial point. In talking casually with people who use Wiki, the universal strong positive point people make is that it leads the reader to related topics widening their perspective. I'd add to that, that Wiki has articles of varying depth and sophistication, even on the same subject (an example is relativity), so one can develop expertise through linking this way.

Unfortunately the other universal response of people to Wiki is that it cannot be trusted. That is my personal experience with technical matters. The "verifiability" thing just is not working. Brews ohare (talk) 18:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Category State functions

I created a new category Category:State functions, where I add some pages and categories. See it and eventually revert to my version. --Aushulz (talk) 20:01, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

God's existence

Regardless of how you feel about matters theological, a mass-mailing about the (lack of) existence of God is not an appropriate use of Wikipedia. Please don't continue to do that after your block expires, but do continue your admirable work in other areas on the project. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 17:53, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Atheism

Hello Count Iblis,

there is a fine line between religion and faith. Interpretation of faith is diffrent for every person. Even atheism is a type of faith. Nonetheless, my dear adviser, religion does not necessarily constitute a faith. I agree that the cause of all of the chaos in the world right now and in the past is due to diffrence of opinions which were intertreted through some kind of religion. But let us instead of converting each other try to listen and understand. Happy Victory Day!!! Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 17:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Iblis, considering your on a mission to enlighten people i think you would at least acknowledge that believing in God does not mean you believe in religion or the actions it has caused; meaning half of your ramble is irrelevant. Try again next time champ :)--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 18:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Appeal to the Wiki Court of Appeals

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

I think the point has been made and acknowledged that this was a poor idea. Theological conversations have no place here. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

---

{{unblock|I wrote to the few dozen of people who have the userbox indicating that they believe in God. So, my message was directed toward those people who are open about their belief here on wikipedia, it was not a mass mailing to everyone. If this is still judged to be inappropriate, then I will accept that judgement and not continue (I had only a few more editors to go anyway). But I don't agree with the immediate banning, because I wasn't acting in a very destructive way on Wikipedia (like e.g. vandalism on massive scale requiring immediate action). I would have stopped as soon as I got negative feedback, regardless of my own personal opinion of this being appropriate. [[User:Count Iblis|Count Iblis]] ([[User talk:Count Iblis#top|talk]]) 18:14, 5 May 2009 (UTC)}}

kso, basically? It wasn't cool. That said, I just dropped a short block to clean it up and to make sure it stopped. I'm happy to unblock if you're happy to not do that. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 18:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I will stop writing to people with the "God userbox". Count Iblis (talk) 18:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Okie doke. Unblocked. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 18:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I think if you were going to do a mass mailing to everyone with a point of view that differs to your own you could at least of attempted to less "am right your wrong" and preachy. If you wanted a discussion why not pose a philosophical question in place of attempting to "convert" them to a differing point of view?--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 18:50, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, that wouldn't really be appropriate either, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a chat room. This sort of conversation has no place at all here. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:52, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Count Iblis. I just noticed that you had tried to convert me and others to your religion called “Atheism”. You are right; Atheist is a religion, which people want to believe in at all cost. No matter how much proof a person is shown, some will still not believe in G-d. You use as an argument against the existence of G-d, that people have murdered and still do today in the name of religion. You have chosen the poorest argument that there is for “proving” that G-d doesn’t exist. If you would have come up with a brainstorm argument then that would tell me that you are a serious student of this subject. Now that you have tried to conquer the world with such a poor argument, I would recommend that you sit down and study. Maybe oh maybe, if you are true to yourself, and you choose to see the truth instead of believing in a religion for which there is no proof, then maybe you too might believe in G-d. You see, if G-d doesn’t exist then “sin” doesn’t exist either, right? Therefore the human mind needs to have a clean conscience at any price and could make someone believe in Atheism. There was a German philosopher, an atheist and also an anti-Semite who said something like “Judeo-Christianity has destroyed the world”. What he meant was that religion has destroyed his justification of leading a dirty life.

I always wonder how it is that there are still people who don’t believe in G-d. Could our beautiful universe been created in chaos? Is there anyone who believes so? Could chaos have created such a perfect thing as the body of a man and woman? Look at every part and particle of your body and study what it is made of, all its properties and attributes. Why are the eyes in the highest part of the body and head? Why are the fingers in different sizes? Why is your nose protected when you walk into the wall? Another trillion why’s, and there is only one answer to them all, and that is that “In the beginning G-d created heaven and earth… A master designer has designed a masterful piece of art. Chaos can only produce more chaos, but G-d can produce anything, even what is called "nature" and even an "Atheist". Itzse (talk) 20:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Internal energy

Hi Count Iblis

• A transformation can be endothermic Q>0 or exothermic Q<0, not only for chemical reactions but also for physical processes: for instance phase transition, state change.

If you write heat absorbed or added into the system, you restrict the transfer only to an endothermic process. It is the reason why I propose heat exchanged or transferred, that is more general.

• As for the sign rule:

See: Heat

Heat is the process of energy transfer from one body or system to another due to a difference in temperature. The total amount of energy transferred through heat transfer is conventionally abbreviated as Q. The conventional sign convention is that when a body releases heat into its surroundings, Q < 0 (-); when a body absorbs heat from its surroundings, Q > 0 (+).

Sincerely Yours; Maghemite (talk) 14:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

radical alterations to the intro to quantum mechanics article

Hi,

A new editor has unilaterally made many drastic changes to the article Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics to which you have made contributions. I do not think that the changes are desirable. I do not want to start an edit war. Could you please have a look at it? Thanks. P0M (talk) 23:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I may be the "new editor" at issue. Introduction to quantum mechanics is a very important article, because its job is to communicate to educated general readers something about a large and highly counterintuitive body of theory lying at the very core of modern science. I quicky concluded that this entry was falling down on the job, because its prose left a good deal to be desired. Some ideas stated more than once, because someone editing a section overlooked that a point had already been made in another section. Paragraphs and sentences too long. Confusing ordering of ideas. Insufficient links. Further Reading omits classic books. Spelling and grammatical errors. Writing that clearly attempted to be clear to nonspecialists, but mainly tumbled into the long winded and condescending. Sentences whose meaning I really could not sort out, in which case I made a guess at what the author meant, then rewrote the sentence to reflect my surmise. All this is the sort of writing one finds in the typical undergrad term paper. I rarely add inline references, because doing so requires searching through a university library and checking out a book or two. That's real work!

So I went to work supplying my usual "style edit with no intended change in content" fix. Anybody who is ABD in physics or better should feel entirely free to edit my edits. An important part of the production process for hard copy textbooks and encyclopedias is style and copyediting of draft prose submitted by the acknowledged authors. This is why the articles in a hard copy reference pretty much all read the same way despite there being hundreds of contributors. The prose idiosyncrasies are edited away. I know about this rewrite function because I am married to someone who has done it for a living!

The stylistic flaws I am pointing out were by no means peculiar to this entry, but are quite common in Wikipedia entries on many academic topics. My working hypothesis is that a lot of Wikipedia editors are Ph.D. students, even bright undergrads, and/or are not native speakers of English. I should not here that Wikipedia has improved since I began using it in 2005. Wikipedia's intro science entries should, IMHO, emulate the style and difficulty of Goldstein & Goldstein's The Refrigerator and the Universe.

I see that entropy has also proved controversial (edit warring, I fear) and that you and your buddies have taken a close interest in this. Rest assured that I am only a casual spectator to this controversy. The problem is that entropy is one of the slipperiest concepts in classical macroscopic physics. This difficulty means that entropy and the Second Law of thermodynamics attract their full share of pseudoscientific kooks. There is also a healthy debate among physicists, chemists, and philosophers of science about just what entropy means. At the heart of this discussion are the ideas of the physical chemist Frank Lambert (emeritus at Occidental College), whose approach to entropy (as energy dispersion rather than a scalar measure of possible microstates) rightly has its own entry. Lambert is on a mission to change how entropy is explained to undergrads, and he's had fair success thus far (in particular, he recently converted textbook author Peter Atkins). But nearly all Wiki editors learned entropy in the pre-Lambert way, and are likely to get hot and bothered by edits by a Lambertian. Lambert has vigorously complained to me in private about vandalism and edit warring by people who, in his considered opinion, understand neither his nor conventional thermodynamics. For more on Lambert's ideas and his attitude re Wikipedia, see here.123.255.31.3 (talk) 19:51, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

A study on how to cover scientific uncertainties/controversies

Hi. I have emailed you to ask whether you would agree to participate in a short survey on how to cover scientific uncertainties/controversies in articles pertaining to global warming and climate change. If interested, please email me Encyclopaedia21 (talk) 15:44, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Notification of arbcom discussion

Your actions have been discussed here as relevant to an ongoing arbitration case. You may wish to comment. I have linked a prior version of the page because the person who added this material reverted it and then incorporated the material by reference to the reversion, so as to make it impossible for you simply to search for your name. (Hope that's not too confusing.) Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Your suggestion

that only peer-reviewed academic sources be used as RSs in Middle East articles does not solve the problem. There are plenty of peer-reviewed books and articles that refer, for example, to Hamas as a terrorist organization, or that refer to the expulsion of Arabs from Lydda as "the Lydda Death March".

The point is that the words "terrorist" and "massacre" and "death march" are editorial, regardless of where and when they are used. They are meant to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys, even when they are used by the most reliable academics.

The question of reliability relates only to facts, not to editorializing. Did Israelis use white phosphorus in the Gaza War? This is a question of fact. Was this a violation of human rights? That is a question of opinion. But these distinctions between fact and opinion get inexorably mixed in the narrative war, and moving the argument to the realm of reliability of sources is just baiting the issue. --Ravpapa (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I actually encountered this very same problem when I still was editing these pages. I wanted to argue that simply citing from a book that "Hamas is best known for suicide attacks" is problematic. But I got nowhere with my argument. I suggested that we could simply write that "Hamas is responsible for suicide attacks", as that is a clear fact that can be cited from numerous sources. But the other editors did not like my suggestion (presumably because they did not want to limit their freedom to abuse sources).

Now, I do think this problem can be solved. We should require that wikipedia editors, when they write articles here, behave like real academics when they cite the literature. Example: if I write an article for a peer reviewed physics journal on dark matter, then any result that I do not derive myself has to be cited from the literature. The article I cite has to prove the point I'm making, or it has to cite that from yet another article. Then suppose that I would like to write that "The most popular DM candidates are supersymmetric particles". Then I could do that as long as it is clear that this is my personal opinion (I could ad the word "arguably" to make that clear).

But it would be very misleading to write that sentence and give a citation to an article where this opinion is repeated. Because the sentence "The most popular DM candidates are supersymmetric particles [X]" looks like it is a fact and that it is shown to be the case in Ref. [X], while all that Ref. [X] does is repeat this opinion.

So, perhaps the Wikipdia policy pages need to be rewritten to close this loophole that the edit warriors are exploiting. Count Iblis (talk) 17:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Defining entropy

Thanks for your recent edits on Entropy. I too was bothered by the rewrite to the lede, but I was foolishly looking for a more subtle way of fixing it, rather than just reverting and starting from there. Best regards. Plastikspork (talk) 22:20, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Dear Count, I see that you have made another edit to entropy but it is not clear to me how the article lead has been changed. The material is not properly sourced and there is no clear definition of entropy in the introduction. Thank you for your comments about trying to write for the layman in the encyclopedia. I am beginning to understand the importance of that approach.

Since the last revert destroyed a lot of my work, I am going to revert back again and then edit to remove all references to quantum mechanics from the introduction. I will present a simple definition of entropy and add another source to help clarify the introductory equations. Ultimately I plan to retrieve the Fermi reference and add it into the appropriate part of the article as well.

Please do not revert anymore. My references make these equations verifiable and must be preserved. I look forward to seeing the future changes and improvements to the entropy article as we work together constructively. Quantumechanic (talk) 16:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Dear Count, I cannot abide your repeated changes to the definition of entropy. If my writing does not make sense to you let's work together to get it right. But simply changing the page back to the way you see fit is not constructive. If your definition was physically correct I would not care. But the entropy accounts for the internal energy and that energy is not available to do work. Quantumechanic (talk) 17:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Two reverts are required

Hi again. Now that you have made your recent edit, I can no longer simply revert to recover my work. I would greatly appreciate it if you would do your own revert so that I can make an effort to incorporate the changes we have discussed. Many thanks. Quantumechanic (talk) 17:14, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Global warming

Hi, I notice that you and the user Darkohead have been edit warring on the Global warming article. I invite you to discuss the edits on the talk page, talk:global warming. --TS 18:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Boltzmann's discoveries and lost sources

Don't you think the fact that all of the states tend toward the lowest energy possible is useful to understand entropy? When I enter a source reference, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. Each time you delete such a reference you are denying this community the right to do the same. You do not have the all-encompassing authority to take away such rights. In fact your actions are in violation of wikipedia policy. Quantumechanic (talk) 19:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Civility

Hi Count Iblis. I was perusing Talk:Entropy and I was surprised to see a new topic titled: Quantummechanic, do you understand this topic at all? I was disappointed to realise that Quantummechanic is a new Wikipedia user, having made his or her first edit on 6 August.

I see that the above title was created by you on 9 August. In my opinion, your actions in using this approach to Quantummechanic is unacceptable on Wikipedia. The foundation of Wikipedia is the five pillars. The fourth of these pillars is Wikipedia’s code of conduct. Please see WP:Civility. In particular, at WP:Civility#Engaging in incivility there is the example of condescending language as being something that is unacceptable on Wikipedia. In my opinion, the rhetorical question Do you understand this topic at all? is condescending language and therefore inappropriate on Wikipedia.

If you feel you can assist a new editor, or improve Wikipedia, by communicating directly with that editor to point out errors in his edits or shortcomings in his understanding of Wikipedia, the only appropriate thing to do is to write to him in the relative privacy of his User talk page. By writing to Quantummechanic in this way, on a much-visited Talk page, you have probably embarrassed him in a way that is unacceptable on Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not have a policy of publicly naming and shaming editors who make mistakes or offend experienced editors.

I see that you have written to Quantummechanic on his User talk page on numerous occasions, mostly in a civil fashion. That is good. Unfortunately, on 10 August you wrote Why don't you first study the topic yourself and pass the exams on thermodynamcs and statistical physics at university level before you pretend to understand this topic? That is condescending language and unacceptable on Wikipedia because it contravenes WP:Civility.

I see that you have published peer-reviewed articles in academic journals. You will be familiar with the principle that in peer-review, the reviewer may be as critical as he likes towards the technical content of article, but must avoid all temptations to make ad hominem attacks on the author. I see evidence that you are prepared to make ad hominem attacks on Quantummechanic. Because he is a newcomer he is unaware that he does not have to endure attacks of this kind, and he doesn't have the experience to strike back. I am pleased to act on behalf of Quantummechanic and all other newcomers and young people.

Wikipedia does not have a rank structure. There are no Generals or Colonels or Sergeants. All users are equal and deserve to be treated as such. From time to time we all become exasperated at the work done by vandals, newcomers and others but there is nothing written in Wikipedia to authorise experienced users and technically competent users bullying others. When we see a newcomer or inexperienced user it is an opportunity to assist and mentor that user. It is not an opportunity to be a bully.

Please return to Talk:Entropy and adjust the title of your topic to something compatible with Wikipedia’s Code of Conduct as enshrined in the five pillars. Please also refrain from making personal attacks on Quantummechanic and other Wikipedia editors. Feel free to delete this message after you have digested it. Thank you in anticipation of your understanding. Dolphin51 (talk) 05:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we're supposed to have unlimited patience towards uninformed individuals who consistently press for the inclusion of incorrect material despite all attempts to reason with them. Randy in Boise is a rare and precious resource, whereas those with subject matter expertise are a dime a dozen. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 05:47, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Boris, that's indeed the problem I had here. Just to set the record straight, let me explain the exact chronology. User Quantumechanic (only one "m" in his name, I got that wrong in the thread title) made edits to the entropy page which I reverted on the grounds that they were misleading and then I decided that since the entropy page was in need of revisions anyway, why not do it right now? Now, user quantumechanic was insistent on editing the article in a different way along the lines of his first edit.

Then, I thought, why not let him have a go? It would mean entropy would be introduced from a phenomenological POV, which is not my favoriute POV, but if he is willing to spend the time to do a lot of writing, why not let him do that? I would sit on the fence and make some comments and perhaps make minor corrects myself.

I wrote to a Wiki Admin, see first paragraph of this posting here about this plan. This Wik Admin had seen my first revert of his edits and reacted to that and we discussed that a bit previously. So, I was notifying him in advance to avoid trouble. You can imagine that quantumecanic editing again starting from the version that was later reverted wold be interpreted as edit warring by that Admin.

But not long after he started editing again, did it become clear to me that his knowledge of the subject was simply way below the minimum level needed for him to be able to contribute in an effective way. The fact that he insists that "there are errors which he's correcting", while in fact there are no errors and he is editing in nonsense thinking that he's "correcting errors" and pointing that out for every instant takes a large amount of time, led me to conclude that he should not contribute at all.

I wrote on the wikiproject physics page about this, see here and on the Adminstrator's noticeboard, see here

I explained why it was now not practical for him to edit from his preferred version and that I would be editing starting from my prefered verion. Since this could look like I'm edit warring, so I thought I needed to explain myself first before doing this.

Now, let me explain that section on the entropy talk page. I did not spot the flawed integral expressions for the entropy by user quantumechanic when he first edited those in. This happened later and at that point I concluded that that my suspiciouns that I already had about him were correct: He really doesn't know much about this topic.

But because he was constantly pretending to be an expert, in the sense that he constantly argues that he has an advanced book and he has spotted erors in the entropy article and I'm removing his sourced edits etc. etc., the only way to make clear to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt that his judgement cannot be trusted, I had to write that section in that way. He choose to have a big mouth, look at his edit summaries where he says that he's correcting errors. he didn't want to consider that he's wrong, that the article is correct, and that he's editing in nonsense after detailed discussions.

So, I decided that it was now time for him to put up or shut up, so I copied and pasted his own flawed edits on the talk page and I now directly questioned his expertise. I see absolutely nothing wrong to act in this way in a case like this. Count Iblis (talk) 14:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Count Iblis. Thank you for your prompt and courteous response.

I see that you have defended yourself against my allegations by claiming extreme frustration and provocation. You have provided comprehensive details related to the technical content of the article Entropy, and the chronology of events which led to your feelings of frustration and provocation. I understand how this feels, and I have sympathy for all of us who feel our work is being reduced in value by other Users.

However, my allegations are unrelated to technical matters, and certainly not the technical content of Entropy. My allegations relate to your behaviour towards Quantumechanic. You have not addressed those allegations.

Wikipedia contains much advice to Users about how to behave in difficult and testing circumstances. Some sources are:

• WP:Do not insult the vandals
• WP:How to be civil
• WP:Please do not bite the newcomers
• WP:WikiBullying
• WP:Civility

This is not an exhaustive list.

I am confident there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in any of these sources to indicate that there is a circumstance when one User is authorised to use condescending language towards, or naming & shaming, another User. (If you disagree with me, please let me know the source that authorises condescending language or naming & shaming.) These forms of behaviour are incompatible with the fourth of Wikipedia’s five pillars. There is nothing to indicate that you, or any other User, is exempt from the Code of Conduct.

You concluded your reply by writing I see absolutely nothing wrong to act in this way in a case like this. There is something wrong in acting in this way. Naming & shaming a User is simply incompatible with Wikipedia’s Code of Conduct. By participating in Wikipedia, we all consent to abide by the Code of Conduct. If any of us objects to this Code of Conduct the next step is clear - write for some other encyclopedia, journal or web-site.

I am now asking only that you do one thing. Please return to Talk:Entropy and adjust the title of your topic to something compatible with Wikipedia’s Code of Conduct as enshrined in the five pillars. When we write something on Wikipedia it no longer belongs to us – it belongs to Wikipedia. When you saved the thread title in question you gave it to Wikipedia – it no longer belongs to you. As I have explained, the title is condescending and is incompatible with WP:Civility. Wikipedia should not contain statements that are in breach of its own code, and naming & shaming is such a breach.

If you make the change I have asked I will have nothing further to write on the matter. If you don’t do so I may raise the matter at WP:Wikiquette alerts so that other Users can rule on whether the title in question should be allowed to remain. Best regards. Dolphin51 (talk) 03:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh good grief. An editor with no knowledge of the article's topic insists on his own interpretation despite the objections of multiple other editors, edit wars to preserve his erroneous material, and now it's Iblis who's at fault? Get a grip, man. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of whether editors should (plausibly) critique one another for not having enough expertise in a subject to rewrite parts of difficult articles safely, I believe that User:Quantumechanic was editing in a warlike manner and making no effort to achieve consensus for his edits. It seemed unlikely to me that he would be able to find *anyone* to comment on the talk page in support of his changes. I became aware of his changes since I have Entropy on my watch list, and when I saw what was going on I left him a 3RR warning. Q. had described Count Iblis's changes as user vandalism. When a brand-new user starts a major revamp of a difficult article, and in doing so gets into an edit war with long-time users, and then he proceeds to accuse them of vandalism for reverting any of his changes, I think he starts to lose some WP:AGF points. EdJohnston (talk) 16:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I have just proposed a new guidline for editing science articles, see here. Most of the time editors intuitively stick to these guidlines, and all too often things go wrong when they don't.

User:Quantumechanic's big mistake was (if we assuming good faith) that he took the wiki policies regarding sourced information extremely serious while not having much of a scientific background, so what I wrote in my proposed guidlines was alien to him.

So, every time he read something in his source that seemed to contradict an (unsourced) statement in the article, he immediately concluded that the aticle was incorrect, and he edited in what he thought was correct. Then, when his edit was corrected by me (removed or sometimes simply rewritten), that was interpreted as "vandalism" by him, because he was thinking that I was acting contrary to the wiki rules.

Now, I have encountered similar cases a few times earlier here on wikipedia. And I have also seen examples of systematic flaws in articles that can only be explained if you assume that the writers were not self critical enough when they wrote the article. So, the guidlines are, I think, necessary as things to tend to go wrong if people don't stick to them. Count Iblis (talk) 17:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

'bout your (proposed) guideline

I've stopped counting how many times articles on "deep" topics are edited by editors (I guess undergraduate students or below) that have only a shallow or downright wrong understanding of a topic; the most recent example I'm aware of is lambda calculus. You cannot enforce clue with a guideline. These guys edit the topic precisely because they think they "got it", so your guideline won't really help. Pcap ping 18:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Talk: Entropy

Please do not delete talk page sections without good reason. As to the section title, even if the substance of the section matched the old title (which it substantially doesn't IMO) it certainly is not required, and reasonable alternatives can surely be found. If you object to my suggestion (and frankly it seems a trivial thing to worry about), then change it (without re-introducing unnecessary comments in the title on other editors). PS If you feel the title change requires you to amend a comment of yours, by all means do. Rd232 PPS None of this reflects on any substance at issue, which I know nothing about. It's just a courtesy thing, to avoid such section titles; and avoiding unnecessary wikidrama is always helpful. ^talk 16:32, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm disappointed in your conclusion that presumably one can "not question the competence of an editor in the section itself". I see no reason why you would reach that conclusion from the preceding discussion - the issue was the section title. And whilst asking about the expertise of editors is always a delicate matter, it is sometimes necessary, but does not require a section title of this sort. Some less confrontational and more WP:NPA-compatible section title is perfectly reasonable for that. As for deleting the section - no. If you think it's now useless, you can archive it, but given its recency, I would suggest just leaving it, if the discussion has indeed run its course. Rd232 ^talk 16:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Count Iblis, see Wikipedia:TPG#New topics and headings on talk pages for some of the subtleties about choice of headers. Headers are unlike regular comments in that they are not owned by the person who created them. They must be neutral and are subject to consensus. EdJohnston (talk) 17:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but then Dolphin51 raised this issue specifically because of a "naming and shaming" dimension to the section. While he only considered the title, the contents of the section is actually far more problematic if the issue is "naming and shaming" , but you have to understand a little about thermodynamics to see this.

I can exlain the most offensive thing in two sentences as follows. User quantumechanic introduced the function Q(T), meaning that he doesn't know that there is no state function for heat. That's such an elementary thing that anyone who pretends to understand the subject and writes Q(T) makes him/herself ridiculous.

Now, you can be forgiven not to know this if you admit that you actually do not understand much about the topic, and I was trying to get quantumechanic to simply admit this. He didn't do that, instead he tried to argue why his derivation makes sense.

At the time I had another reason to mention user:quantumechanic explicitly in the title with a question about his understanding of the topic (note that I was unaware that this is never allowed). When this user started to edit I reverted his edits and that led to an incident of edit warring for which user Quantumechanic was warned by Admin Plastikspork, who has the entropy page on his watch list.

Then, because user quantumechanic seemed to be very enthousiastic about editing the entropy page, and he wanted to start editing from his latest version, I thought that letting him edit while I and others would watch and make (minor) corrections or communicate these on the talk page could work.

Now, I had to inform Plastikspork what the new plan was, otherwise quantumechanic might have been judged to have resumed edit warring. A day or so later, I saw the edit containing Q(T) which I had missed earlier. Then that made the whole way of proceeding the agreed way of editing the entropy article dubious. The section title mentioning the user would then make it clear to anyone with the page in his/her watchlist that there is a problem with letting user quantumechanic edit the page. Count Iblis (talk) 18:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Topic Ban

Count Ibliss, It's just to say thanks for your support. The irony is that I wasn't intending to make anymore edits to the article anyway, and I hadn't even made many to begin with. The number of edits that I did make was beefed up because of grammatical corrections and re-phrasings. It was obvious that Brews had been out-gunned on the consensus issue and that no further input on my part was going to happen. My only objective all along was to work against the vilification of Brews that was going on on the talk page and other pages. Brews did have a very legitimate point. The change in the system in 1983 was important enough to mean that the general non-physics readership needed to be made aware that the concept of speed in modern SI units was not that of their traditional understanding.

What I'm more interested in now is the fact that a couple of editors, one of whom has been engaged in a lengthy campaign of undermining my edits, can come to ANI and make a malicious complaint, and that an admin instantly imposes a topic ban on the evidence contained in the samples which he listed. And if you read his edits, you will see that there is an inuendo that I have been engaging in crank or pseudo science, which is quite simply not the case. One would hope that this administrator is subject to some kind of accountability for his actions. David Tombe (talk) 16:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way... did you see this, followed by this, this and this? Sock? DVdm (talk) 14:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Count Ibliss, I can assure you that it is not me. That anon, or one with a very similar IP number, appeared at the other ANI thread last month. And just while I'm on here, I stated my final position yesterday at the wiki-physics project page and I got an edit confict with you. As such I didn't know whether or not to answer you, having just said that I have made my final statement. I will now elaborate. Frequency is indeed involved in the vibrating reed switch experiment. It is of course the frequency of the vibrating reed switch itself from which we can convert Q into I. But that experiment is not about direct measurements of the speed of light. It is about measuring the ε of the equation D = εE, through the equation C = εA/d.

You mentioned something about the frequency of light itself. I'm not really up on matters to do with how light is measured directly, but my guess is that if the method has got something to do with Michelson interferometers, then the light frequency (or more likely wavelength) will be involved in the calculation.

My entire point in this dispute can be summed up by the statement that the equation c^2 = 1/(εμ) reads from right to left and not from left to right. In other words, measured values of ε lead to the speed of light through that equation. That is the principle behind how Maxwell incorporated this numerical result into his own equations. His own equations are of course Faraday's law and Ampère's circuital law. An older variation of the experiment above was done by Weber and Kohlrausch in 1856, using a Leyden jar, and Maxwell got his numbers from their results.

As regards the speed of light page, I am not planning to return. I've made my point loud and clear, that Brews had a point. My interest then diverted to permittivity. There is nothing more to be said on the matter. David Tombe (talk) 15:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Speed of light

Hi Count Iblis: There is some high-handed quackery going on at speed of light. Have you been watching? Majority rule has been implemented and the lead statement now says 299792458 m/s is a fundamental constant of nature, despite sources (for example Wheeler; Jespersen; Sydenham) that state the contrary.

The facts of this matter, as you may know, are that the number 299792458 m/s was introduced as "the speed of light" in 1983 by defining the metre to make this so. However, far from being a fundamental constant, this number was decided by committee, and has a fixed and arbitrary value that (as clearly stated by NIST and CODATA) is beyond measurement, being simply a conversion factor between time and length in the SI units.

It would seem some attention should be paid to this razzle-dazzle, as the potential is there for editors to completely take over a page. Brews ohare (talk) 12:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC).

Exact value must be in the lead

You have said:

“I think the fact that the speed of light is used as a standard to define the meter, and therefore has an exact value, is such an important fact that it has to be mentioned in the first few lines in the lead.”

I hope that it will not be too annoying if I attempt to rephrase your statement in what I believe to be a somewhat more accurate manner:

“I think the fact that the metre is defined so as to make the conversion factor between time-of-transit and length exactly 299,792,458 m/s is such an important fact that it has to be mentioned in the first few lines in the lead.”

I'd like then to rewrite your statement to suit me:

“I think the fact that the metre was defined in 1983 so as to make the conversion factor between time-of-transit and length exactly 299,792,458 m/s is such an important departure from the previous usage of the terms "speed of light" and "metre" that it has to be mentioned in the first few lines in the lead.”

Could you comment upon this gradual transformation of your sentence? Brews ohare (talk) 03:08, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Third opinion regarding Quantum Mysticism

There has been some dispute on inclusion for the Hubert/Yorick thing. I was wondering if you could give a third opinion, since it is getting tedious, and you have a good understanding of the content and the background.Likebox (talk) 03:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the opinion, I appreciate the help. I gave a response on the talk page about the Block style argument you gave. That might also be nice to include, but since I don't really buy it, it's hard for me to write about it.Likebox (talk) 18:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics

Thanks for opening up this discussion. Some had interesting things to say. Some even read the presentation at User:Brews ohare/Speed of light (Example). And some even addressed the issues raised. It was a bit of an eye-opener to find that some cannot understand English, and that some want only to attack me personally, and have no interest in the topic. Brews ohare (talk) 15:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Dispute Resolution

Count Ibliss, After writing a proposed solution on Jehochman's talk page, I looked at AN/I to discover that you are already instigating some kind of mediation process. Have a look at what I wrote on Jehochman's talk page to see what you think. I do believe that for the sake of coherence, the article is ultimately going to have to be written by one (or at most two) persons who have a physics background, and who have not been heavily involved in the dispute. I have suggested a system of submissions to be made to the appointed arbitrators, and for those submissions to be used as assistence in writing a balanced article. David Tombe (talk) 05:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Request for arbitration

Please attend to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Speed_of_light and comment if you wish. Jehochman ^Talk 14:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Arguing from first principles

Count Iblis, I actually agree with your arguments about arguing from first principles on the talk pages. Sources are useless when it comes to a major argument with conflicting points of view. I made a mistake yesterday when I answered to your statement, and I've corrected it. My apologies. I remember now that I did actually quote from a source at WT:PHYS. I provided the link to Maxwell's 1861 paper on a number of occasions. But I still agree with your argment that arguing from first principles is best on the talk pages when there is a big controversy. I considered that I was arguing from first principles in that I was pointing out that deriving Maxwell's equations from first principles involves using the experimental results of Weber and Kohlrausch. Those who were arguing against me were trying to make out that the numerical linkage to the speed of light came automaically with the theoretical derivations. Christopher Thomas clearly understood the issue, but then promptly took the entire debate to AN/I as evidence of disruptive behaviour. David Tombe (talk) 16:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ESCA

I've made some changes to WP:ESCA that I hope you will not find obtrusive. Brews ohare (talk) 22:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Departure

Count Iblis: I am leaving WP in disgust over the small-minded fabrications, distortions and ridiculous accusations. However, I do wish to thank you for your very sane contributions of late, which are a symphony in a cacophony. Brews ohare (talk) 03:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The Nature of WIkipedia

I understand you are far more interested in getting at the truth than getting at facts and ideas that can be verified. I expect of all the places on Wikipedia the safest place to conduct SYNTH is in mathematics, since most of the SYNTH preformed falls under the category of work that mainstream sources don't take the time to show explicitly. But if you consider another situation where two relationship can be clearly combined to produce a connection/conclusion that is not represented in WP:RS it can be a problem. As an editor I expect significant connection/conclusion to meet WP:NOTE and if they don't meet WP:NOTE why is it the connection/conclusion stated in a WP:RS. Its just a bad sign.

In my experience WP:Synth has been a pain when trying to debunk WP:fringe material; mainstream science rarely comments on perpetual motion machines like Blacklight Power or Water-fuelled car proponents. It would be so easy to perform some basic calculations to demonstrate these ideas are junk but nothing would stop cranks from doing the same. It would end up as an argument over opinions in which the most persistent voice would win. In contrast WP:Synth keeps us honest and forces us to find the best sources possible. In the end good students won't use wikipedia as a reference but instead will use us to find better sources.

I'll repeat what I said on the other talk page and say we can never deffer to expert opinion on Wikipedia since its fundamentally impossible to obtain, we can't imagine what a reviewer would say even when we have reviewed papers ourselves. After all there is no way to verify our qualifications to the community nor would that be a good thing. There is enough of a hegemony of knowledge in academics as it is. I think we can only deffer to WP:RS and reasonable arguments framed with our very reasonable policies. If this means wikipedia is one or two steps behind cutting edge research I don't think that's a problem. Let the wrinkles get iron out at the conferences and peer-reviewed journal.

Finally regarding quantum mysticism my original edits tweaked the wording of the disputed text and added a few flags to request citations. Both the tweaks and flags were removed by Likebox which made me suspicious. Since then we have danced all over text and discussed a great deal of basic principles. In his text Likebox has concluded that there are only two viable outcome/interpretations. My initial edits represented a third outcome/interpretations, the existence of a third option makes the text flawed. I would be ok with including flawed text if it was properly cited and attributed to the individual who presented the flawed text. In this case there is no one to attribute the text to but Likebox, please read the Dennett text if you don't believe me. Attribution to Likebox isn't good enough for inclusion.--OMCV (talk) 03:19, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I want to thank you for your patient attention to the quality of science articles on Wikipedia, and for raising the issue of verifiability from first principles which is absolutely essential to get recognized. The issue on the quantum mysticism page (which you know) is that OMCV inserted a text which made quantum mechanics look like statistical mechanics into the text, which I reverted, and this led to the current situation. I am sure it will work out fine.

I think OMCV has a valid point regarding SYNTH from Dennett's article, but it's a judgement call, and I happen to disagree with his assessment. I believe that Dennett makes all the points in the section, in slightly different language, with nearly identical arguments. You know the debate, and you have been helpful.

The reason I am writing is to point out a political issue with your attempts to formulate decent science/mathematics guidelines. I agree with you completely, but I think you are making a sales-pitch error. You should avoid the word "expert", replacing it with "someone who is familiar with the literature" or "conversant with the techniques". I know that this is what you mean when you say "expert", because it is described in the details of your exposition.

The loaded term "expert" will turn people off. For many people, an "expert" is defined as someone with a title given by an expertise granting center, not as a person who knows what they're talking about. In addition, people with PhD's and positions often make elementary errors in their field, and a conversant person from outside the field might be more expert than they are (as you pointed out is true of SBHarris).

Your proposals are essential for giving legitimacy to the tremendous amount of mathematical articles here which are completely unsourced (and absolutely essential). They will never be sourced, if they are any good, since verifiability in mathematics is almost by definition from first principles. I think one way to get supporters for your policy guidelines is to ask mathematical contributors to chip in, or to ask on the project mathematics pages.

On the other hand, I am afraid that calling attention to these articles might lead them to get challenged and deleted, which would destroy the main function of the encyclopedia. Anyway, thank you for your work, and good luck passing your policy.Likebox (talk) 23:55, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

OMCV, I believe that when writing about technical subjects one cannot avoid violating the OR/Synth policies in the most strict interpretation. E.g., if I want to write down a derivation of Planck's law, I need to do that is suitable for Wikipedia readers, while the derivation found in some textbook is presented so that it is suitable for stiudents. The students have read the previous chapters in the book, or can consult those previous chapters, the Wikipedia readers have to do with what else is available on Wikipedia to which we can link from using internal wiki links.

Typically this means that the derivation will have to be far more self contained and thus may differ quite radically from anything that can be found in textbooks. I don't believe that this should be considered to be OR, because the theory and mathematical formalism can, of course, be found in reliable sources. The whole point of including such derivations is precisely to make whatever result is derived more verifiable, not less verifiable.

I'll write on the WP:ESCA talk page more about the necessity of first principle discussions on talk pages. Count Iblis (talk) 18:00, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Likebox, thanks for your encouragement. You and OMVC are, of course, welcome to contribute to the proposed policy. I agree that the word "expert" should be used carefully (I remember having to vigorously defend myself last year when I proposed something similar and was criticized in the way you describe). Count Iblis (talk) 18:00, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration on quantum mysticism

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

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requesting Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Sorry for putting you in there, but I believe that these editors will make the case that I am a "problem editor".Likebox (talk) 23:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Please do not boycott the discussions, because ignorant voices are loud. If they are not feircely opposed, they do become more fringe, rather they win.Likebox (talk) 21:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

In particular, as I feared, this arbitration request is an attempt to block me from editing Wikipedia further. If there are no sensible voices on the other side, I believe that this will happen.Likebox (talk) 21:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

If you think there is no conflict/problems regarding Likebox's activities I request that you take some responsibility for his actions. He is already behaving non-responsively on the Talk:Quantum_mind/body_problem#Who_supports_the_connections_to_mysticism. Encourage him to develop better editor patterns or I would suggest revising your post on the RfA page.--OMCV (talk) 14:08, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Policy isn't everything

Count Iblis, I understand that you entered the conversation a little late. I started discussing Quantum Mysticism the text August 14th [2]. I made a few comments on the accuracy of some text which included requests for citation. The contended text was poorly thought out and looked like it could be a fabricated. The contended text ran counter to what Wigner, Dennett, and many others would attribute to a classical perspective. The language was leading and the conclusions forced. It wasn't as much a matter of first principles but a matter of history, definitions, and underlying philosophy. Frankly the text does not need to be true, it just needs to be attributed to a reliable source. In an effort to help Likebox I actually took the time to read where am i, have you? If you doubt I have philosophically debated Likebox (the Quantum Mysticism talk page is not enough) take a look at my talk page. I also participated in a Talk:Quantum mysticism#scientific discussion with User:MichaelCPrice but he abandoned the discussion. I suspect that Price left because he didn't want to render a judgment against Likebox since Likebox is a volatile editor he has to work with on other pages. I could go on and on. The fact that it took five weeks for Likebox to marginally improve his text combined with his propensity to revert text is the primary problem at this point. If I have to explain an idea more than three times its not a conversation worth having. I abandoned blurry philosophical discussions for more cut and dry policy considerations over the weeks and I'm not sorry for doing so. I'm not twisting policy in anyway I'm applying it in it most simple and basic form, this should be a non-issue. The Dennett material isn't remotely important to the subject of Quantum Mysticism except in Likebox's private perspective. Likebox's efforts to own such material demonstrate that he at least had a misguide perspective on how Wikipedia should work even as outlined by your desired policy.--OMCV (talk) 03:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

(moved form here) OMCV, you have to understand that all this wikilawyering by you is counterproductive. E.g., You start with an argument about nondeterminsim in classical physics, which then becomes an argument about OR/Synth simply because what Dennet may or may not have written. This already is a step in the wrong direction, because what Likebox wrote is almost trivially true based on the physics. Now, Likebox did go along (I think he shouldn't have) and then because he is still approaching the problem from the point of view of the physics you got an ever escalating dispute.

Another example. When I removed the citations tag on the article relations between specific heats and you restored it, you again did not discuss anything about the content and argued purely on the basis of wiki-law. That causes irritation. There are always cases that are not covered by wiki-law and WP:IAR explicitely mentions this. You went as far as suggesting that the article could be deleted. What you need to get into your head is that some limited amount of OR and Synth is unavoidable if we want to have a Wikipedia that also contains subjects above Kindergarten level. Count Iblis (talk) 15:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

If it can be cited it should be cited, there is no excuse not to cite such material except laziness. Wikipedia is the beginning of research not the end. As the beginning it should always point to a WP:RS. Furthermore the WP:RS demonstrates WP:NOTE. Providing a source has value hiding behind WP:IAR has none. My tag was appropriate and since I added another editor has added a source. I'm not the only one with concerns about how relations between specific heats fits into Wikipedia, please check its talk page.

I have never made an argument for "nondeterminsim in classical physics" in fact I have always argued against Likebox misrepresenting the postulates of classical physics as non-deterministic through his misapplication of Dennett's work.--OMCV (talk) 03:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

3RR

Be careful please... Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

There are others watching William M. Connolley (talk) 21:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Iblis, Calling my good faith restoration of the discussion "vandalism" is incredibly poor form. Since William M. Connolley has created a pointer to the other discussion, I'll refrain from pursuing this further, but your behavior here was over the line, and I came within inches of opening an ANI over it. Gigs (talk) 21:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad you didn't. Removing comments that have nothing to do with improving the page is good. But in this case it is fairly clear that people are going to keep talking about this and need to blow off steam William M. Connolley (talk) 21:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me about my 3 reverts. My opinion is that the section should have been deleted earlier per the talk page guidelines we adhere too. Instead someone placed the "don't feed the Trolls" icon there to prevent the discussion from going off the rails any further. Clearly that did not work (Gigs actually removed that icon before writing his off topic comment). I think we should simply be more disciplined and "not feed the trolls" at all.

I tried to propose that as a general wiki rule here, but I didn't get much support for that. Count Iblis (talk) 21:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

A comment pointing out a new source to be considered for inclusion in the article is anything but off-topic. If you didn't think the source was reliable, then that's something you discuss on the talk page. You don't just delete the discussion because you don't agree with it. Gigs (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Only peer reviewed sources are allowed. If the Hockey Stick were a case of scientific fraud, then you could write a wiki article about it similar to this one. Count Iblis (talk) 22:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Whatever local consensus you all have on the talk page for that article does not override the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Peer review is not required of sources used on Wikipedia, active talk page discussions about the article are not suppressed, and calling people you disagree with "trolls" and "vandals" is seriously out of line. Gigs (talk) 22:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Using newspapers

"If we allow this statement with this particular source, then we also have to allow in other newspaper articles that e.g. claim that there is no consensus on climate change" - so what? Remember, as far as Wikipedia is concerned, we don't care if global warming is actually happening or not. All we do is report on what people are doing and saying about it. That's what the NPOV policy means. Readers should not be able to tell what position Wikipedia is taking on any particular issue, because we're not supposed to have a position. If an editor cannot edit a topic neutrally, then I'm afraid that he/she needs to stop editing it. Cla68 (talk) 23:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Newspapers are notoriously unreliable when they report on science. Even the best quality newspapers make big errors regularly. Then, if we have a wiki article that focusses on some scientific topic, it would be difficult to use a newspaper story as a source, even if for that particular case the story seems to be ok. Because you could not do that as a rule. Rather, you would have to make a judgement on a case by case basis. But then that judgement would be Original Research.

At the discussion on the RS board, I linked to an old discusssion on the Special Relativity talk page where I also noted the tension between letting not so reliable sources in and the policy against OR. Therefore it is better to only allow high quality peer reviewed journals to be used as sources. Now, if a statement can be sourced from a peer reviewed source and there also exists a well written newspaper article that makes the same statement, you could decide to also give a citation to the newspaper article. Count Iblis (talk) 00:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

That might actually be true about newspapers. The fact is, however, that WP's current RS policy is very clear, even mentioning the NYTimes by name, that major newspapers are reliable sources and are allowed, even encouraged. The policy does not prohibit the use of newspapers in science or any other article, except maybe BLPs. Cla68 (talk) 00:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Placement

Please revisit the placement of your comment at ANI. I believe it is in the wrong section. –xeno^talk 14:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Global warming

Go ahead and reply if you want to. Just because someone archives the discussion doesn't mean that it isn't still viable. In fact, I allege that you and Tony are trying to suppress a media report that you don't want people to see. I'll readd it just to see if this is the case. Cla68 (talk) 18:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Godel's incompleteness theorems

I have been trying to introduce a streamlined proof into this article for a while now, and meeting with opposition. I think that this might be a good test for WP:ESCA.Likebox (talk) 23:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Same idea at Halting problem. This one is getting reverted by another user, who has opposed a modernized proof in the past. Modernizing the proof in this article is more of a question of taste, because the usual method is just as transparent as the modern method.Likebox (talk) 01:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Scharnhost

Can't say I'm entirely happy with [3]. If this was going into GW, it would get ripped out again as only a preprint. I notice that it is "to appear" in Annals of Physics, and that was in 2002. Did it? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, it was published. We can also give the original references (dating back to the 1970s, I think). I prefer the aticle by Liberati et al. because it gives a detailed introduction in which they explain the real issues associated with faster than light travel in a rigorous yet easily understandable way. Note that the third author is Matt Visser, clearly not someone whose expertise one has to doubt.

One could perhaps qualify the statement that the Scharnhorst effect is well established as it only has been shown to exist on paper. But then, its existence only depends on well established physics (quantum electrodynamics), not on speculative ideas. Although, there may be some physicists who doubt the validity of the calculations. Count Iblis (talk) 22:08, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't look like the Scharnhorst effect article is in agreement about the faster than light transfer of info. Brews ohare (talk) 00:02, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the disagreement. See e.g. here:

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0107091v2 Count Iblis (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The last section of the article says that "However, several authors argue that the Scharnhorst effect cannot be used to create causal paradoxes." Maybe that has nothing to do with faster-than-light signaling? Brews ohare (talk) 00:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC) On reading the article you linked, I see that that is the contention. Sorry. Brews ohare (talk) 00:34, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, what happens is that there is still a nontrivial step to take from faster than light signals to contructing a real causality paradox. In the generic case, you can do that e.g. in this way. It is no good to simply say that faster than light signals means that in some frame cause and effect is reversed as explained in the article by Visser et al. (and I'm not sure if that happens at all in the Scharnhorts case, I'll have to re-read that article). The point is that when you attempt to contruct a real causality paradox, it doesn't work in the Scharnhorst case. Count Iblis (talk) 00:42, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

There are several proofs that no causality paradox can occur in QED, the simplest of course is that local commutativity still works. The paradox itself is just some stupid wave business, like phase velocity.Likebox (talk) 18:40, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Bold is good

...but after I revert, you need to discuss. See WP:BRD. As I said in the edit summary, I can't find the support in the cited source. Dicklyon (talk) 02:21, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I just started a new section on the SOL talk page. I think the article is quite clear... Count Iblis (talk) 02:29, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Chaitin and Godel

Chaitin never proves Godel's theorem, he just asserts that it is easy to prove from undecidability (that's absolutely true). If you were to take his proof of undecidability and turn it into a Godel theorem proof, you would end up with essentially what is called "Boolos short proof" on the Godel incompleteness theorem page. His argument uses "Berry's paradox", and he also doesn't care to use "Print your own code". But sources are not really a big issue--- people are not unhappy that this is unoriginal. People found sources for similar arguments, and this stuff is old enough that nobody is too upset. The real issue is that they don't like it because it doesn't sound like what they already know from textbooks, although it is filling in intermediate steps in well known results, in a clear and correct way.Likebox (talk) 03:55, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Dicklyon

Hi Count Iblis: As one who has tried to work with Dick several times I have this advice: If it is a matched debate between equal numbers. it may be worth a try, although it will take a week or more of back and forth. He will argue that it is "bloat", "complexity creep", or "symbol soup", and would be better in a completely different article. Dick will insist that you find a source you can quote verbatim as saying exactly what you want to say before he lets anything into this article. There is a good chance he will dispute the source as being a "primary" rather than a "secondary" source, or is not authoritative for some reason, or conflicts with other sources. He will say your Talk page arguments do not satisfy WP main-page guidelines WP:POV or WP:SYN or WP:NOR. He will not say specifically how the guidelines are violated. He will snipe, but not roll up his sleeves to propose an acceptable version (to him) of what you want to say. If you are outmatched, forget it; let WP take the fall. Brews ohare (talk) 04:29, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Seems like odd advice when I'm just looking for a bit WP:verifiability. Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

And to verify you must actually read the sources. That can be a non-trivial exercise, which is not appreciated all that much on Wikipedia. This is one of the reasons I wrote WP:ESCA. Count Iblis (talk) 14:45, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

That would be great advice for you to follow in this instance. Dicklyon (talk) 16:07, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I read both articles, you did not. You admitted that and that you wouldn't be able to read the articles (at least not when we were discussing that yesterday). It takes two to tango. Count Iblis (talk) 16:50, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I was referring to the advice on WP:ESCA, about discussion and such. Dicklyon (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Which says among other things:

If you find yourself in a dispute with other editors about a technical point, then discuss the issues as much as possible from first principles using the underlying theory and/or from the empirical evidence. That approach often brings out the needed context, which often is the source of the dispute. Do not simply appeal to direct quotes from textbooks or scientific articles, as then the proper context may be missing.

In this case any such discussions was impossible. One party did not what to read the articles based on which the matter could be discussed. In fact, if you read the article it is hard to see how the dispute could arise at all. Instead direct quotes were demanded.

So, you could say that what happened here is the extreme opposite of what WP:ESCA says. I wrote these guidelines to deal with problems that can arise when you have one or more editors who actually do read the sources (and/or who can be experts). Even then there are potential problems if you are not careful. I've seen such problems and corrected them (particularly in many thermodynamics articles). If you then think about how these errors could ve been avoided, then you naturally arrive at sticking to WP:ESCA. Count Iblis (talk) 17:11, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The "first principles" part of your essay was the part that I and others had objected to as contrary to WP:V and WP:RS. But what about the other parts?

If you make edits to an existing article, which you have checked as described in the previous point, and you find that a statement you want to insert disagrees with other statements made in the same article, then you need to get to the bottom of this conflict. It may be that the conflicting statements are true under some conditions not explicitly mentioned in the article. That is, the conflicting statements are sometimes true; that is, despite apparent conflict, they simply apply differently. Before deciding to delete material, you need to convince yourself that the conflicting statements really are wrong in any context consistent with the way the Wikipedia article is written. In case of doubts, you need to discuss this on the talk page of the article and/or contact members of a relevant WikiProject.

and

Keep in mind that two discussions are involved: reaching an understanding of what is going on, and providing arguments for the article.

When I asked you to explain how your source supported the questionable assertions that you added, all you had to say was "read the paper". And I did volunteer to accept any other editor's verification if they could find support in the paper for what you're saying. As it turns out, that seems to be unnecessary, as A. di M. took out the unsupported "only" and toned down the rest to what looks to be more verifiable there – but looks like I still need to change "information or energy" to "signals" to agree better with the source. Dicklyon (talk) 17:24, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, the guidelines only deal with the case where editors have a non-obstructive attitude. It is ok. to be sceptical of some edit but you have to actually read the article. The whole article by Visser et al. specifically deals with the potential problem posed by faster than light information transfer and considers the Sharnhorst effect as an example of such a case to see if it poses problems. When you take the attitude that you'll defend the position that information is not transferred faster than light no matter what the article is actually about, unless some direct quote can be found, I thought that any discussions would be futile. Count Iblis (talk) 17:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I was not taking or defending any position on the physics, just trying to get you to show we where the two contested points were made in your source. If they did this without using the word "information", you could point out something to help me find it, rather than "read the whole paper" and hope I come to the same interpretation that you did. Dicklyon (talk) 18:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light

This arbitration case has been closed, and the final decision may be viewed at the link above.

• All editors are reminded to be civil at all times and seek consensus where possible, and encouraged pursue dispute resolution when necessary.
• Brews ohare (talk · contribs) is warned for his conduct in this dispute, and placed under a general probation for one year, under which any uninvolved administrator may impose sanctions if Brews ohare fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia or general editing and behavioral guidelines, policies, and expectations, despite warnings.
• David Tombe (talk · contribs) is also warned for his conduct in this dispute and during the course of the arbitration case, and is placed under the same general probation but for an indefinite duration. David Tombe may not appeal his probation for one year, and is limited to one appeal every six months thereafter.
• Both Brews ohare and David Tombe are banned from all physics-related pages and topics, broadly construed, for twelve months.
• Violations of the topic bans or general sanctions may be enforced by blocks of up to a week in length for repeated violations, to increase to one year after the third block. All blocks and other sanctions applied should be logged on the case page here.

For the Arbitration Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Count Iblis: You have identified some failures in the direction and focus of this remedy, which I find entirely to the point: they are subject-related instead of action-related. That is due to the obsession of ArbCom with content (which they are supposed to avoid) instead of behavior (which they abdicate). Most probably, in my own case, the remedy would be something along the lines you suggest, limiting my opportunity to push a point (not an idiosyncratic WP:POV, but a point) when others do not wish to discuss it. Rather than limiting the number of my edits, I'd suggest as a remedy forcing me to place my responses under separately titled subsections on the Talk page, where they can simply be ignored by those that find the matter settled and not worthy of further discussion. Intervention in these subsections by those aiming primarily to ridicule or interrupt discussion should result in Administrative reprimand. Brews ohare (talk) 19:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe you also are concerned with how Talk page discussions get out of hand. I know you have suggested some unusual methods for dealing with these issues, which appear to me to be practical when good faith editing is at work and participants are really focused upon WP and not themselves. However, the Case/Speed of light, from my perspective, is not in this category. As outbursts from various editors show, they are simply abusive, derisive, off-topic, and various other things that are simply to score "brilliant" repartee and enjoy irking all parties. These eloquent exchanges are interspersed with ridiculous "summaries" of positions that are intended as reductio ad absurdum and are complete falsifications. What can be done? My view was that WP guidelines should be enforced rigidly, uniformly across all editors, and immediately. Enforcement of WP:NPA WP:Civil WP:Talk does not require analysis of content, and can be enforced by any Admin that can identify sarcasm and putdown. Reference to WP:NOR WP:Fringe WP:POV & such on Talk pages must be confronted by the offending text, and not bandied about as self-evident assertions. In my view, that would make much of what happened on Talk: Speed of light impossible, and force address of content. What do you think? Brews ohare (talk) 19:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Brews, I agree with you here. I think that the Arbitrators are probably very experienced in dealing with disputes on politics pages but may have little experience in dealing with this sort of a problem. Their judgement may also have been influenced by some experience they may have had when dealing with clear cranks on science pages. Add to that the general resistance here on Wikipedia to discuss things from first principles (which actually arose in the early days of Wikipedia to stop crancks right in their tracks; Wikipedia was almost exclusively edited by non-experts when it started), and then you can see how things could go wrong during the Arbitration case.

In case of pages on politics, e.g. related to Obama, you can have people who strongly argue in favor of some fringe theory (e.g. Obama was not born in the US). Now, these sorts of dispute can never be settled by discussions in the talk page and I think the Arbitrators have learned to excuse incivility when people become irritated. They will then tend to punish that editor who talks too much arguing against some consensus on the talk page.

But physics is not politics and the factors you write about are now the relevant factors. A discussion about physics should not drift away from physics. I do believe that there were not enough discussions from first principles and too much from phenomenology. Did you e.g. notice that William Connoley also could not reach agreement with the others? He also did not reply to my long posts explaining the fundandamentals. I think the reason is that it is more work to do that and easier to reply to the others, but then the discussion does go around in circles. Count Iblis (talk) 20:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

To follow up on this, do you have some ideas of how to get the notion of stiffer guideline enforcement and novel approaches to discussion in front of the WP community and get some changes made? I am not thinking of my own situation, which I regard as beyond repair, but some general changes. Brews ohare (talk) 20:32, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you could try to write up some new proposed policies and then ask people to comment on it. I tried to do that when I wrote up WP:ESCA to which you also contributed, but that mainly deals with problems you can face if you are not in a dispute. But it takes a lot of time for people to accept new policies here (if that happens at all). E.g. the way Diclyon has often engaged you or and recently me is not ok. This is even well before the discussion degenreates into ad hominem attacks. When he refuses to even argue on the basis of the relevant physics, then that's already wrong. But there are no Wiki policies that recognize that this is wrong (except WP:ESCA). And this is the point where conflicts start.

You may also want to take a look at how User:Likebox and User:OMCV started to fight. You'll see that while Likebox cannot control himself as well as you can, it is User:OMCV who is playing the role of Diclyon here. I also had a dispute with OMCV about the page Relations between heat capacities which I wrote. OMCV suggested that because it didn't cite references it should go to AFD, without even discussing the actual content.

So, I think you can find evidence, not just from your own experience here on Wikipedia, in support of such policies. Count Iblis (talk) 21:03, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Did you e.g. notice that William Connoley [sic]also could not reach agreement with the others? He also did not reply to my long posts explaining the fundandamentals - by coincidence (I asure you :-) I replied to you on my talk page a few hours ago. FWIW, and I'm not going to push this much further, I ended up decided that DT (definitely), Brews and Physchim62 (both probably) didn't understand the basic physics. But also that I didn't care enough to wade any further into the article William M. Connolley (talk) 21:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I just replied there. You can just take your time in these discussions, in my experience that leads to better quality discussions than "rapid fire" discussions. Count Iblis (talk) 23:25, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Likebox

I've tried to elaborate on your proposal in several comments. Maybe you could assist again in this situation?? Brews ohare (talk) 20:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I just defended your participation on AN/I. I'll change one sentence that suggest that your involvement is annoying. What I meant to say is that if Jehochman complains about that, then why does he support the physics topic ban? Count Iblis (talk) 20:21, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

What I see in the Likebox interchange is a growing emphasis on behavior and less on content. The drive is moving toward restrictions. It seems to me that WP should aim for cooperation, not admins telling everybody to lay off when consensus is not achieved. Cooperation is not the easiest response, it seems, and to get the boss Admins to put someone in the doghouse seems easier. That situation should be reversed: calling on the boss Admins should be the last resort. The reason that isn't so, from my jaundiced perspective, is that in practice calling in the boss is usually going to mean the most vocal get their way. That would change if the result was instead that everybody suddenly found themselves in lockdown with to-the-letter enforcement of guidelines. Soon, calls to the boss Admins would evaporate. Brews ohare (talk) 20:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

But there's no boss on WP, and in your case the most vocal did not get their way. But that's a good step to admit that cooperation is a good aim and not easy. Try it. Dicklyon (talk) 21:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Count: If you want to do Brews a favor, encourage him to stay out of disputes, instead of jumping into them. I am sure you can hold your own regarding Likebox without your help. Also, while it is true that editors can often get away with unsourced variations of proofs if not challenged, when they are challenged, unsourced material has to go. That is policy, regardless of what you think of it. Your proposal of new standards for science articles is not policy. But regardless of that, please help Brews by keeping him out of disputes. Thank you. —Finell (Talk) 05:44, 24 October 2009 (UTC), corrected 18:17, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Finell is so-o-o protective of me, and so-o-o understanding of the issues. Brews ohare (talk) 15:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

WP needs a better approach to dissent than the gag order. Your efforts with WP:ESCA are a beginning, but even that is meeting resistance by the opposition to Likebox. It is hard for me to understand where this hard-nosed dictatorial approach comes from, and that makes it hard to find a solution. It is not, in my view, simply irritation with a persistent editor. Sometimes it is a rigid support of a particular view. However, the resistance goes beyond that to a resistance in principle. It is evident that Jehochman, Finell, and many others that have no immediate involvement, and so have no emotional exposure, are dead set against discussion. Brews ohare (talk) 15:48, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

It appears to me that WP:SYN WP:POV WP:OR are designed as exclusionary in focus and that is how they are used. Of course, they have a positive role in certain circumstances, but it is clear that they are widely misused. A simple example is how Dicklyon uses these guidelines to insist upon verbatim quotes from sources he accepts before he will concede to drop labeling an argument WP:POV or WP:SYN or WP:OR. An example of trying to open the door a bit is mentioned in WP:ESCA, which tries to allow derivations leading from sourced premises to sourced conclusions. However, even that limited role is met with hostility more than by discussion of the underlying problems. Brews ohare (talk) 16:30, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Earlier I attempted with a little bit of success to modify WP:Civil to include a few remarks about the one-line Edit Summary. That included a lot fo stiff resistance because many editors like Dicklyon love this summary and (IMO) love it when you don't have to justify your reversions (and its concomitant, don't have to think much about them). Perhaps the guidelines for WP:POV etc. can be modified to have some inclusionary exceptions?? Brews ohare (talk) 16:47, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Another guideline that needs attention is WP:Fork, which is again exclusionary in nature. This guideline needs serious revision as it is used almost exclusively to prevent the presentation of alternative views, to prevent presentations for different audiences, and to prevent more detail on subtopics than can be given in a general article. Brews ohare (talk) 17:15, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The point of the guideline is to keep alternative views within one article on the topic, as opposed to in separate articles. It should never be used to suppress alternative views. The WP:SUMMARY style article accommodates sub-articles with more detail, so that's not a problem. As for different audiences, we have the major division between the English and simple wikipedias, but no great mechanisms beyond article organization, including summary style, for separating different levels of treatment of a topic. I've seldom seen that become a problem when editors discuss what they're trying to do and work toward a consensus on how to present it. Dicklyon (talk) 20:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Count Iblis: I appreciate your sense of proportion in my recent encounters, but it is apparent to me that there is a large group of editors including several Admins who are not interested in WP or in any effort to understand what kind of actions would make it work better. They find all such discussion threatening, and are busy archiving segments of my conversations to mount a site ban against me. I suspect that you and Abtract are next on the list here, so I most certainly would understand your withdrawal from this encounter to pick a different battle. Brews ohare (talk) 05:32, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

• Count: Please stop involving yourself in matters relating to Brews ohare. You are becoming a disruptive influence. AGK 12:02, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Administrative actions

At the current moment, I am placed on probation. At the same time, you being unfairly judged by people who do not know you. Thank you for your help, it is good to know someone is following the content of disputes closely, not just their form. But I think that rocking the boat more will only make things worse, at this moment.

One thing in what you wrote might be inaccurate, I'm not that old, I'm 36. That's only about 6 years past the traditional expiration date for a physicist. I don't think I will fork a Godel article, because there already is a proof fork for the article on which I put the simplified proof on the talk page. It's dead now, and it could be revamped to present the proof, but I don't think that's a great idea anymore.

I was able to twist the constructions in the proof to prove what I think might possibly be a nonclassical theorem. If it turns out to be new, I'll publish it. Then I guess I'll have to trade in accusations of OR for accusations of COI.Likebox (talk) 00:28, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that "rocking the boat" is not a good idea (in fact, it is never a good idea). So, putting this matter to rest is a good idea if you feel there is too little support for going ahead with it. 36 is not old, but old enough not to be treated like a 4 year old :) Count Iblis (talk) 01:46, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

It's possible that I'll put it to rest, but only if I can find something actually original along these lines. The proofs I am presenting are simple rewrites of standard proofs, to emphasize the construction and the computer program involved. If there is something new that can be said about the old methods (maybe there is) I'll publish it in an appropriate venue. If there is nothing new that can be said, then I'll try to place it here again. It's really a question of OR.Likebox (talk) 18:44, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Syllogism on WP:NOR

It appears that the "discussion" on including explicit reference to syllogism on WP:NOR will lead to no change. It seems to be impossible to focus this discussion on the simple point that lack of such a sentence leads to exclusion of material because some editors regard simple syllogism either to be excluded or to be excludable by WP:NOR. This discussion appears to be an example of how nothing can be accomplished. I am at a loss as to what can be done to keep such things on topic. I am sure that reminders of the main subject will be taken as tendentious. Brews ohare (talk) 15:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Blocking discussion

You will notice that a motion has been made to prevent further discussion of a topic by setting a time limit of one year before anyone is allowed to bring up the subject. This action appears to me to be a violation of the spirit of WP, as well as being totally unnecessary. What is your opinion? Brews ohare (talk) 23:41, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree, this looks very strange to me. Count Iblis (talk) 01:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

New gag orders

Hi Count Iblis: As you can see, my caution regarding Admins is well justified. It appears it is not a matter of intelligence or subtlety of mind, but a straightforward power play. It's not me, of course, that is the object of these actions: Admins wish to establish complete control and insure that their decisions are final and absolute, and that no appeal of any kind or of any merit can prevail unless it is their whim to grant it, like a boon. There is neither point nor pleasure in contributing in this poisonous environment. WP is being hijacked; to what end remains to be seen. Brews ohare (talk) 22:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Dangerous advice

With this edit, you're giving some very poor advice to Brews ohare. Encouraging an editor to use WP:IAR as an excuse to disregard an Arbitration-imposed topic ban will not fly. The ArbCom has seen the 'It was only a minor edit, so it's not a ban violation', along with the 'I was using IAR to improve Wikipedia, so the ban doesn't apply' arguments before. Unless it is your aim to get him in serious trouble (and banned from all editing, not just physics-related topics) then you really need to think about the likely consequences of what you're telling him.

Instead of encouraging him to further test the limits of his ban, perhaps you could try to help him find other tasks that he could participate in that would benefit both him and the Wikipedia project. Brews has always been welcome to participate in policy discussions — as long as that participation isn't driven by his past conflicts at physics-related articles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Dear Count: At least three admins, and other editors, have warned you against giving Brews this kind of advice. You are drawing him into the kind of situations that Brews does not handle well. You are entitled to think that the arbitrators and admins are all wrong, but that won't help Brews at Arb Enforcement or AN/I. While you're at it, consider the possibility that you are wrong and that the consensus of Wikipedians is right about what is best for Wikipedia. And even if you still believe that the consensus wrong, reconcile yourself to the fact that consensus normally prevails on Wikipedia except in very limited instances (such as consensus to violate a core policy). IAR is especially poor advice to give someone who is on probation and topic-banned for disruptive editing. Brews earned those sanctions precisely by IARing and by being unable to understand that he was, in fact, violating policies and guidelines. Finell (Talk) 20:59, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that I'm wrong. The fundamental problem is that the topic ban is far too wide and it doesn't even address the core of the problem in the first place. I think every reasonable person should see this. Now, as I just wrote on TenOfAllTrades' talk page, I'm not saying that Brews should violate his topic ban. But to say that "the consensus of Wikipedians is right about what is best for Wikipedia" is ridiculous as far as imposing sancions is concerned. Because how do you then explain that someone like ChildofMidnight can edit all the politics pages, was only banned from Obama related pages for a limited time and that recently when he made trouble again, it was decided on AN/I that the Admin who complained about his behavior should shut up? And this quite typical of how the real trouble makers on Wikipedia are treated. Count Iblis (talk) 21:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

No one thinks that they are wrong. Nevertheless, the decision is what it is, regardless of anyone else's opinion, and the decision is enforceable according to its terms. Also, you keep talking about the topic ban and ignoring the probation. I don't like it that some editors get away with more than they should, either, but that won't help Brews if someone takes him to Arb Enf. Please note that I have not done so, and am trying to keep him out of more trouble than he is already in. I was referring to "the consensus of Wikipedians" about the policies that you are trying to modify, not about sanctions. Brews' tendency to argue on and on, over and over, is the main thing led to his sanctions in the arbitration, and it would be very easy for him to fall into the same pattern on policy talk pages (he already started, but has since wisely stopped). —Finell (Talk) 22:11, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Count, I'm concerned that Brews is going to dig himself into deeper trouble with his attempts at policy editing, as long as those attempts arise from conflicts and arguments that began at Speed of light, Free space, and other physics pages prior to his topic ban and probation.

Put simply, Brews seems to be operating under the assumption that all of his problems arose because other editors don't understand Wikipedia policy nearly as well as he does. If only those other editors could be made to understand the policies, then all the disputes would evaporate, because everyone would be able to see the right way to proceed. Since his attempts to explain to those editors what they've missed weren't successful, he tried instead resolve the problem by putting the right words into policies to justify his position.

During the arbitration, he was very busy trying to modify WP:CIV so as to describe references to policy in the edit summaries for reverts as a breach of civility; he further attempted to cut and paste a similar statement across at least four or five other major policy pages. Why? Because some of his opponents referred to policy in their reverts of his edits.

His more recent attempts to modify WP:NOR have been hampered by his topic ban, as the only problems he knows of are in areas where he was involved in direct, unproductive conflicts. He would like to have the words "simple logical deduction" and "syllogism" in the policy because then, the next time a dispute about the inclusion of a particular conclusion arises, he will be able to say "Look — the statement that I included is a syllogism, and syllogisms are expressly permitted by WP:NOR. End of argument." Unfortunately, Wikipedia just doesn't work that way. Words in policies aren't magical incantations that can suppress disagreements and dissent. Superficially apparent syllogisms may actually be faulty; language is a slippery and inexact thing, not well suited to mathematical analysis.

When other editors noted that the proposed modifications to WP:NOR would be prone to misunderstanding, confusion, misuse, and abuse, he returned to the old refrain: you just don't understand...if you understood, you'd see that I was right...I just need to rephrase my explanation, and point out how foolish you all are, and you'll see the light.

It's a serious problem. Unless and until such time as Brews 'gets' that his own actions played a major role in the restrictions he must now worth within, he's not going to be an effective editor of articles, and he's not going to be an effective reformer of policy. As long as he sees the primary cause of his current troubles as the result of policy defects, he's not going to be able to move on. Rewriting policy isn't going to help him to interact successfully with the Wikipedia community.

While he's not formally barred from policy discussions (as long as he stays within the bounds of his probation — which he has been testing sorely of late), I would strongly advise him not to work on policy right now. I will encourage enforcement of his topic ban, as I don't think it does anyone any good for him to rehash old disputes. The policy modifications that he's been proposing are a refighting of the battles that (in part) led to the Speed of light arbitration in a new arena, and it's just not going to end well. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I see that there are reasons to be concerned. Knowing Brews a bit, I think there are many topics that he could contribute to without any problems at all, but they would fall within his topic ban. Any technical topic close to his professional expertise would be ok., but topics like speed of light, free space, quantum vacuum etc. could be problematic. So, why not ask Arbcom to modify the restrictions? You could think of appointing a mentor, Finell had suggested that before the Arbcom imposed the topic ban.

Then if Brews wants to edit some topic, he has to ask for it first and then the mentor will have to approve it. A request to participate in some discussions about certain policies could be denied and participation to some technical physics topic could be approved. The mentor has to be someone who understands the issues involved here, so perhaps Finell himself could be the mentor. Count Iblis (talk) 01:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

While I think those are changes that the ArbCom might be willing to consider in the future, I fear you may be putting the cart before the horse. What Brews would need to do is demonstrate – for some reasonable period of time – that he's capable of editing and interacting with other editors productively and constructively within the bounds of his current topic restriction and probation. Unfortunately, he's not been doing that. The speed of light arbitration closed roughly two and a half weeks ago. In that time, Brews has made roughly four hundred edits to Wikipedia, of which just ten are – mostly minor – edits in the article namespace. (Three more edits are to article talk — one of which was a violation of his topic ban.)

The bulk of his edits since the Arbitration case closed have been related to arguments over his own Arbitration, attempts to modify policies which touch upon his Arbitration, and a very ill-considered leap into an AN/I discussion about possible sanctions for another tendentious editor. It's not helping his case. At all. Bluntly, he needs to demonstrate that his continued presence here is a net benefit to the project and not just a time sink for other editors, or it's likely that he'll rapidly exhaust the three strikes in the arbitration sanctions. (He's already down one, remember.) He needs to develop a positive track record of beneficial contributions; instead, he's been cementing the perception that ArbCom's restrictions were on the money.

One more thing — I can't speak for Finell, but when (or if) the time comes it may be inappropriate to attempt to recruit him into a mentorship role. Brews described him less than a day ago as a prostitute who was servicing me, after all. You would need to find someone with whom Brews could develop a rapport, and who was willing to dedicate the time to the effort. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a major complication here is that the topic ban is so wide while his main interests are firmly within physics. Compare with ChildofMidnight who was topic banned from all Obama related pages. Imagine that he would have been banned from all politics pages...

Anyway, perhaps Brews could be interested in contributing to some applied mathematics topics, but then the Admins have to agree not to put his edits under the microscope and look if this somehow can be argued to fall within his topic ban. What topic exactly depends on his interests and expertise. E.g. if I had been topic banned like Brews then a math topic to which I could contribute could be based on this, Wikipedia currently as no articles on this topic, so I could spend all my time editing alone without causing any trouble. Even if other editors were to join, the topic is inherently not of the type that is likely to cause the type of problems that we saw on the speed of light page.

But if even these sorts of topics are not allowed, then you cannot escape that the topic ban itself is part of the problem. Note that if Brews were to get involved in something completely different, then that is certainly not a guarantee that you would not see any problems. After all, most of the trouble on Wikipedia can be found on the politics pages. Applying logic in a political debate can be a recipe for a disaster, not just on Wikipedia, also in real life. Count Iblis (talk) 03:21, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Part of the problem, I think, is that you're still thinking of Wikipedia administrators as a single, monolithic entity. (For goodness' sake — you can drop the capital 'A', too!) While I probably wouldn't care one way or the other if Brews started editing physics articles to add uncontroversial text and useful footnotes, I can't speak for anyone else, and I certainly wouldn't encourage Brews to ignore his editing restrictions. If he wants to work in articles that may be close to the edge of his topic ban, his best bet would probably be to ask the ArbCom directly. They have an email address, and would probably get back to him in a few days. Alternatively, he could post a request at WP:AE in advance of any edits, and get a sense from the editors there of what they think the boundaries ought to be.

I'm starting to wonder, though, if you really haven't grasped how disruptive and unpleasant Brews' behaviour has been, or how close he really is to getting banned entirely from Wikipedia. He really is down to his last chances here, and the Wikipedia community deserves to see some attempt on his part to make the relationship work, before the rest of us put any more of our time and effort into him. I really think you need to focus your efforts on encouraging positive, productive efforts from Brews, rather than trying to persuade everyone else to make additional allowances. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think contacting Arbcom may be a good solution. I just wrote to Brews below that perhaps Brews could make a list of articles he would want to edit and that perhaps it would be better if other editors and admins with whom Brews has disagreed with in the past would make a request on his behalf. Because the admins at Arbcom don't know much about physics, so they would not likely grant any request from Brews himself.

Disruption by Brews? Look, I'm used to quite a lot, see also here, from the good old days here on Wikipedia :) Count Iblis (talk) 15:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it is extremely unlikely that you will be able to recruit other editors to make a request on Brews' behalf unless he demonstrates first the effort I've described above. I strongly suspect that many editors who have had disagreements with him see the Arbitration outcome as a fair and welcome respite, and are still waiting for evidence of improvement in his approach to Wikipedia. Speaking for myself, in the last week or two he's already consumed an inordinate amount of my own time relative to his benefit to the project. Until I see useful, uncontroversial, worthwhile contributions from him, I truly don't want to speak to or about him further — and I will encourage administrators to fully enforce his probation and topic ban. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:30, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a side comment. That link from Count Iblis that gives an example of classic canvassing to Republican and Conservative talk pages for recruiting editors for the global warming article discussion, is chilling. I think an even greater concern is if it is done covertly with an email list, which would be almost impossible to prove. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and I think on some Israel/Palestine related pages such an email list convassing did occur, leading to all these articles being on some sort of probation. Anyway, in case of problem editors in Global Warming, the problems were solved without anyone having to be banned or restricted. Today, these editors do not cause trouble, even though they occasionally appear in the talk page.

About Brews, I think that Finell, Headbomb and some others would find it ok. if Brews were to edit some physics articles (but not just any physics article). It's the domination of the talk pages in order to get his way that was the problem and that can happen on any page. I would say this is more likely to happen outside of physics or math than inside this area.

Then, about Brews being involved in discussions about policies, I think he accepts that there is little consensus to change the NOR policy. What I proposed to Brews is that he could work on drafting alternative policies which do not involve getting some big consensus, like this proposal which will likely become an essay, but which could still become a de-facto policy on any page if there is a local consensus for that. Count Iblis (talk) 17:09, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Continuing Entropy/reversibility offtopic

What if the universe is expanding / number of dimensions of the Hilbert space is increasing? Time evolution would still be unitary, but it would be irreversible on the global scale. And the QM entropy is strongly subadditive, so the total entropy will only increase. --Dc987 (talk) 20:53, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Recent Speed of light

Hi. I recently did a little work at Speed of light for the first time. I didn't get into any serious arguments, but I can see how they could easily escalate. Would you happen to know if it has always been like that, or is it the result of the recent turmoil. Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it always has been a big mess over there. But then, I only started to get involved there just before Brews was subjected to the Arbcom case. Count Iblis (talk) 22:34, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I hope that in time it will get better. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Just out of curiosity, I looked at the revision history statistics of Speed of light before 2009 and in 2009. Not sure what to make of these statistics. --Bob K31416 (talk) 00:35, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Complete misconception

TenOfAllTrades describes my statement as: Brews described him less than a day ago as a prostitute who was servicing me. This is rubbish, a gutter mentality, and great disservice to me. There also is no excuse for this remark, as I have already explained in detail what my remarks meant to me. Shame! Brews ohare (talk) 14:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brews! I've seen such escalating disputes based on mis-interpretations quite often here. I think this is one more argument why you should be allowed to edit your favorite physics topics again. Perhaps you could make a list of topics you want to contribute to (or create new articles on). Then go to Arbitration Enforcement and email your request. Or, perhaps it may be better if not you but Admins like TenOfAllTrades, Jehochman and physics editors like Finell, Headbomb with whom you've disagreed, would support this and they would make the request on your behalf. Such a request may have to include that you agree not to edit policy pages. Count Iblis (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

You're a literate, intelligent man, who served as an editor for a scientific journal. You know what 'escort services' are.

Your refutation of my objection to your comment was an unhelpful and irrelevant link to your talkpage history. Despite your ongoing problems, I've spend an inordinate amount of my own time to try to help Count Iblis to help you return to normal and productive editing, above.

I'm done with you. I hope he can help you. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:35, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades: I believe that I am the ultimate authority about what I meant, and if I say you have misinterpreted my remarks that is not debatable. Your insistence on a pejorative interpretation of my remarks despite my disclaimers is perverse, contrary to WP:AGF, and a lowering of discussion to a gutter level I have never before witnessed. Brews ohare (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Brews, I looked at the controversial comments in question and I agree with what you have just said. You have been totally misquoted, and in a despicable manner. I have seen this strategy of mischievous word linkage being played out before in this arena. By 'escort' you were specifically referring to the idea that an administrator was happily allowing an interfering non-administrator to act as his spokesman. And he has then somehow managed to infer a totally different meaning, such as to allow him to claim that you indulged in an insult.

In my experience, this kind of false word linkage is used to detract attention away from a truth that is too bitter to swallow, and it is a tactic that is used in order to find injury in the allegory itself, so as to enable punishment to be enacted against the person making the allegory. I've seen it all here. You say that it has degenerated to a gutter level that you have never before witnessed. I would have to agree with you on that point.

It doesn't actually take any skill to indulge in this kind of behaviour. David Tombe (talk) 05:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

For reference, here's the quote, "Of course Finell doesn't have admin tools, but he likes to think he does, and TenOfAllTrades is an Admin who enjoys Finell's escort services."[4]

In my opinion, the remark is somewhat strange, and at least it's not clear what is meant. Also, this could have been handled better. Ten could have indicated the possible interpretation to Brews and asked him what he meant. Then perhaps, Brews could have lined out the problem parts and replaced them with something clearer. Sorry for the Monday morning quarterbacking, but I think this approach would be better in the future. Also, we all have to be careful to be clear in what we write, especially in sensitive situations. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

What is clear is that Brews meant to insult both of us, which is uncivil, not to mention counterproductive and self-defeating. The only question of interpretation is the exact nature of the insult he intended, which is not that important. —Finell (Talk) 17:11, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Finell, you have to understand that you, me, Brews and the others are involved in a dispute in which we sometimes agree and sometimes disagree. Then, it is not ok. to lecture others in a tone that suggest that you are the boss. That in itself, even if it is well meant and communicated in a civil way, will raise tensions just as much as a direct insult would.

In this case, what happened was that TenOfAllTrades clamed that Brews had been canvassing. But he was dead wrong. You then parroted that and added that Brews should stop contributing to the NOR talk page. But wheter or not Brews input there was really that problematic can be disputed. Bob K31416 wrote on Brews page that he found that Brews was contrubiting there in a good way. And while I did see that the discussions had run its course and could be concluded, I did not see disruption there.

To say that what Brews is doing is "counterproductive and self-defeating" is nonsensical because Brews can always leave Wikipedia. It is Wikipedia who needs people like Brews not the other way around. While Brews has made mistakes, by treating him much worse than the typical edit warrior on the politics pages, we are not helping ourselves.

If we lecture Brews, saying that "you cannot contribute to physics anymore, find something else to do, bla bla bla" and if by some miracle Brews does not go away and decides to hang around and contribute to policy pages and we then again make objections, then perhaps we are the ones that are extremely unreasonable here. We then deserve nothing better than that experts like Brews, Likebox etc. who have caused some minor problems, simply leave Wikipedia. Count Iblis (talk) 17:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Finell, After reading David's message and reading the actual quote and looking at its context, it does seem like it is an insult, but with enough ambiguity so that we have this discussion here. I think the AGF approach of pointing out to Brews at the time that it can be interpreted as an insult, would have been a strong way to react to it. (I know it's easy for me to say that now.) Also, in the later discussion of that incident, Ten could have used the same wording as the quote, for example: Brews described him less than a day ago as "an Admin who enjoys Finell's escort services." Then there wouldn't be this current issue of misinterpretation. Unfortunately, sensitive situations require extra care not to complicate the situation and escalate conflict when composing messages on both sides of an issue. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:18, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Bob & Count Iblis: There is a grain of truth in saying that my wording was ambiguous. However, I explained immediately in more detail what I meant, and Finell and TenOfAllTrades insist upon telling me what I meant, despite my clear, unambiguous statements to the contrary that predate their inexcusable introduction of unambiguous gutter language. They then accuse me of their crimes. That's pretty annoying, pretty arrogant, and pretty stupid. It belongs in some parody like 1984, not on WP. Letting them off the hook by a grovelling suggestion that in some universe they may have had some justification is unacceptable. Brews ohare (talk) 05:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Re "I explained immediately in more detail what I meant" - Did you mean immediately after you wrote it? I didn't see it. Perhaps you can direct me to it? --Bob K31416 (talk) 05:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC) Never mind. Sorry for the followup. It only keeps this unpleasant situation alive, when I should let time heal it for all those involved. Best regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 05:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Brews: Please point me to where I told you what you meant. All I said was that it was derogatory. Do you deny that? —Finell (Talk) 05:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

This problem has all been caused by the big lie about what constitutes disruptive behaviour. The term 'disruptive behaviour' theoretically means behaviour that causes actual disruption. But throughout these debates, the term 'disruptive behaviour' has been used with a different meaning. The tactic of giving words a different meaning from their real meaning, for the purposes of distorting the truth, is described in George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-four. Throughout these debates, the term 'disruptive behaviour' has been consistently used to refer to opinions that are not acceptable to the party. Brews has hence been consistently accused of 'disruptive behaviour' in relation to opinions that he has been expressing. The term 'disruptive behaviour' in that respect has always been one big lie.

Any attempt that Brews makes to undermine these ongoing lies is always met with accusations of incivility and assumptions of bad faith.

If however, Brews was the one with the block button, it would soon become clear that these kind of tactics would not work. They only work when executed by somebody with the block button, or by somebody who is pandering to those with the block button. David Tombe (talk) 06:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I had to check the text this conversation is based on [5] to see who was making sense. The obvious interpretation of the text is that its an insult. Anyone who doesn't realize this is an imbecile and anyone who claims this is not the most obvious interpretation is dishonest. When I insult someone I have a tendency to stand by my insults or apologies, I don't generally make a big drama about how my insults were misunderstood only to continuing to denigrate my opponent [6] but to each there own. I just thought the original text should be accessible in this conversation, here it is again [7].--OMCV (talk) 15:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

OMCV, You are one of these people who can imagine that you have seen a speck in one persons eye and meanwhile fail to see a log in somebody else's eye, and still expect everybody to believe that you are only an innocent neutral onlooker. David Tombe (talk) 16:32, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I make no claims to be innocent, my intent was to redirect the readers and ranters to the evidence and not the spin. Tombe, if you don't want to respond to the content of my comment that's ok I understand. As for what you wrote, I love the mixed metaphor with biblical overtones but I guess I should have expected nothing less from a conversation centered around 1984. I'll keep my eye out for any logs.--OMCV (talk) 16:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

OMCV: Your considered and open-minded introduction of "imbecility" and "dishonesty" into the discussion surely is a very forward and heartening addition to your record of accomplishments. Brews ohare (talk) 16:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess this is yet another example of why it is not good to continue to discuss alleged instances of incivility. It often leads to much more incivility. The Adminstrative infrastructure on Wikipedia is too much focussed on these sorts of disputes. The best thing is to get back to the original point asap. I think this was Brews involvement in the policy pages. I'm more positive about that than Finell and some others. I do see the potential of problems, but so far they have not materialized.

Another thing is that if Brews makes positive contribution that an involved editor (in this case Finell) does not like then talking down to Brews on his talk page also raises tensions. This is incivil, even though no offensive words are used. Count Iblis (talk) 17:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

ESCA template

What's with the ESCA template spamming? Your essay didn't turn into a guideline, did it? Dicklyon (talk) 17:57, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Irrelevant, because per local consensus it can be decided to be the "de-facto" guideline. I'm adding it to all those pages where sticking to these guidelines has been absolutely essential and where not sticking to these guidelines would very likely lead to big problems. I'm not going to add it to just any physics page. E.g., I'm working off-line on the entropy page and a lot of discussions will likely be needed when I upload the new version. Count Iblis (talk) 18:03, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I object to this portrayal of your essay as a guideline, and will remove the template from any pages where I see it come up on my watch list. Dicklyon (talk) 18:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

You are free to do so. If consensus is lacking on some page then, of course, the guideline cannot be used there. However, if you are one of a few editors who object to it on some page, you have to stick to these "de-facto" guidelines on such a page. Count Iblis (talk) 18:09, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Your revert summary makes no sense; you say "Revert, as we do need first priciples discussions here in the near future when I, BenRG or someone else is going to add detailed derivations to the article." But the template and essay don't really impact on your need or ability to have such discussions. The essay seems to try to give more power to those who can do a better job of arguing from first principles, essentially tipping the scales toward editors like Brews ohare and yourself who feel that their own logic should be given more weight than reliable sources. This essay arose out of disputes with Brews, who is now banned from editing physics article. If you want to carry on in this style, that's up to you, but don't pretend to have guidelines supporting that effort. Dicklyon (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand the essay. Count Iblis (talk) 18:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Dicklyon: You are rewriting history here. WP:ESCA was a creation that long predates my awareness of it. I contributed a bit about multiple meanings of technical words that arise in multiple technical arenas. There is no connection whatsoever to the "disputes with Brews" and dragging this point in is simply defamatory excrescence. Brews ohare (talk) 17:14, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say you were aware of it. The count started it in Aug 2009, after several times coming to your defense for trying to add stuff based on your own reasoning against my protests that your approach had no support in reliable sources. Dicklyon (talk) 17:31, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I have started a complaint/discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Fake_ESCA_.22guideline.22_spamming. Dicklyon (talk) 18:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Consider this your only warning from me, Count. Placing such a template is disruptive, pure and simple. Get the consensus to turn it into a guideline, then you can post it, not before. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:34, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

We can forgive the Count's revert that was done at the same minute as the warning; I reverted it back. Dicklyon (talk) 18:42, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Why should we forgive it? It's bad enough that Iblis put his template on 12 physics pages with no consensus. What justification was there for him to revert Dicklyon when he removed this misleading template? —Finell (Talk) 05:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Because on the these pages where I reverted I happen to be more involved that Dicklyon and I made the correct judgment that there is a consensus in favor of the guidlines. Count Iblis (talk) 14:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Comisseration

Hi Count Iblis: I see you engaged with Dicklyon and others over WP:ESCA and I wish you success. However, there are ominous signs that a Utopian belief that all act for the good of WP and in their best lights should not lead you astray. Brews ohare (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change in guidelines

Hi Count Iblis: It occurred to me that possibly a guideline could be written to outline a procedure for dealing with minority opinion that would be less contentious than the present free-for-all. The idea is to point out to the majority that Main Page disruptions by a minority view can be handled by 3RR plus some Talk page analysis. That process can be escalated if needed by taking a majority poll to establish a motion that changes in a Main page discussion contrary to the majority opinion on that topic will be taken to AN/I. The minority is counseled to carry on their formation of a proposal for insertion into the main page, and when ready, to use a formal submission format to propose a particular insertion to the majority. The majority is counseled to then either accept the proposed change to the Main Page, or to reject it according to a formal rejection format that requires inclusion of recommendations and reservations for further consideration by the minority.

I'd hope that if the minority tries this a few times they will either find a formulation that suits the majority or give up.

I hope that some such outline of the strength of the majority options will calm the majority fanatics enough to allow minority discussion to proceed without cries of disruption and screams for arbitration.

Any thoughts about the possible success of such an approach, or modifications? Brews ohare (talk) 15:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brews,

Yes, I think following such a procedure makes a lot of sense. On many politics pages similar procedures are probably already "unwritten rules". It may be worthwhile to make this more explicit by formally making it a guideline. Count Iblis (talk) 16:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll try making a draft essay on my user page - I'll let you know when that happens. Brews ohare (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is a draft proposal. Brews ohare (talk) 17:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Brews' POV

You have summarized some interesting points. Although they came up in the body of Case/Speed of light, I don't think they are the fundamental source of my difficulties there, which (unlike the issues you raise) were not fundamental in nature, but behavioral. Brews ohare (talk) 15:55, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the problem was how people behaved in the debates. Count Iblis (talk) 16:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

3RR

As you're reverting rather a lot, I'm leaving a note here about the 3RR policy, which I think you may have violated the other day. It says that we may not revert more than three times in 24 hours, and every revert of another editor's work counts toward the total; it need not involve the same material each time. I'm leaving this note as a fellow editor, by the way, not as an admin. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 02:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

My preference for ESCA is some wording that would allow you to agree that the essay status is ok. If it also says "failed policy", then that's not a problem for me. Because I'm not so sensitive to the precise wording (just look at all the fuss about my use of the word "guideline" on the talk page), I would be ok with you or someone else making such edits. Yesterday I asked Eppstein to do that.

Likebox and perhaps also Michael C. Price insist on more detailed wording that you and some others don't seem to like. Count Iblis (talk) 02:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course there's a fuss about your use of the word guideline to misrepresent your proposed guideline that failed to gain consensus, and to spam physics talk pages with a template pointing to what you misleadingly called a "guideline" in the template. Guideline has a very clear defined meaning on Wikipedia, and when one uses that term here is is understood to have that meaning. Note the very substantial consensus against your proposed guideline, the very substantial consensus to delete your template, and the very substantial consensus against your proposal to change WP:NOR. And see where your egging Brews on, despite several admins and other editors warnings you not to do it, got him. (Please spare us another argument about how the arbitrators and admins are wrong about it all. Their judgments have operative consequences. Yours, like mine, don't.) Are you really so desperate to have a supporter that you have to jeopardize someone who is already under ArbCom sanctions? If he had followed the advice of others, instead of yours, he could be editing articles and wouldn't be blocked a second time for violating those sanctions (although his poor judgment in following your advice and in how he chooses to conduct himself here is obviously a factor). You should try to improve your hearing. —Finell (talk) 04:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments I just saw now on Brews' talk page seem to suggest that more editors are agreeing with me now. Look, I don't know Brews personally, but we have to be open to the fact that physics/engineering may be a large part of his real life too. Now, as you wrote, you and others did gave him advice. But then that didn't work. My advice was not prescriptive, rather it was giving him constructive critisicsm on what he was doing. Instead of blaming me for Brews not following your adivice, perhaps it is better to accept that Brews has "free will" and makes his own choices. If his real life interests are what I suspect they are, then your advice could never have worked.

I'm not saying that it was wrong for you to make your suggestions, just that after a few times you and the others should have come round to the idea that Brews' interests are perhaps rather limited compared to most other people. WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT applies to everyone. Count Iblis (talk) 17:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria

Your request for clarification of the West Bank / Judea and Samara arbcom case finding is extremely troubling on several levels.

For one - you have accused him in a completely unrelated venue of being disruptive in the scientific articles, and approached the line of making a personal attack.

Second, you are trying to use Wikipedia process for a clearly improper goal - to essentially bribe an administrator to go away and bother someone else rather than continue to pay attention to your area.

Third, you're abusing that process by asking for a change without any relevant change in status.

The whole affair rises beyond odd to the level of improper. I could apply WP:DISRUPT and WP:POINT policies to this easily.

This is not a type of behavior which is compatible with long term Wikipedia participation.

I would like to strongly recommend that you reconsider your behavior here, and strike and remove the request for clarification. You have already made the attempt, and that bell cannot be unrung, but in the clarity of a sober review of your own actions you decide that this was a mistake and undo it yourself, I believe that nothing more need come of it.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 18:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

To fix the page the page formatting, and to preserve an appropriate record of the request, I've refactored your strike. If as it seems you have withdrawn your request I suggest you ask the clerks to remove it. Paul August ☎ 11:58, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

science articles

Despite my views on policy, I do take seriously your concerns about the care given to science-related articles. You and others who share your concern ought to look at this mediation case [8] - on the one hand, those of you who have thought most about problems with science articles at Wikipedia may have very constructive suggestions for resolving this dispute. On the other hand, this dispute may be a useful case-study for you. I wrote that I thought you should consider proposing improvements to existing WP policies, rather than suggest science-related articles are exempt. I sincerely blieve this - perhaps our NOR and V policies should say more about a need for precision and adequate contextualization (I really mean this, such improvments would not only help improve science articles but other articles too, my comment concerning your dispute with Jayjg really was meant to be constructive, I hope you see that). Maybe analyzing what is behind the longstanding conflicts at this article will help you and your collaborators come up with good ideas about how to improve our policies.

The link is to discussion at the mediation case. I just left my own comment which summarizes th conlict as I see it, reading it first ay help orient you if you never followed the debates over this article. Best wishes, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll take a look and I'm sure some other regulars at WP:ESCA will be interested in this case. Count Iblis (talk) 17:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Slrubenstein | Talk 14:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg

If you have a complaint against Jayjg and his edits in science articles, compile your evidence and take it to WP:ANI, and by evidence I don't mean "omg, jayjg was found to be naughty in West Bank/Judea and Samaria. Believe me, I know the details, I clerked the case. I mean, you need to collate relevant evidence, that is Jayjgs problematic editing, and why it should be dealt with in whatever manner. WP:AE is not a free for all, it is only for actions derived directly from Arbitration cases. Continuing to bring up unrelated matters is not acceptable conduct.--Tznkai (talk) 18:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

On monitoring problems

Regarding this query. Many of the editors who are now concerned by Brews' conduct were not (and still are not) involved in the disputes surrounding speed of light. As one such example, I had no idea who Brews was or what conflicts he was involved in until he started making controversial changes to core Wikipedia conduct and content policies. I didn't have SoL watchlisted, but I – like many experienced Wikipedia editors and administrators – did have core policies on my watchlist. (They're popular targets for both vandals and POV-pushers.) Shortly after the close of the SoL arbitration, Brews also injected himself quite vociferously into a user conduct dispute on the Admins' Noticeboard.

So in at least those two ways, Brews has drawn a substantial amount of scrutiny on himself from editors who were not involved in, had not interest in, (and may even have had no idea of) the SoL conflict. It should be relatively unsurprising that Brews' attracted a certain amount of investigation by other Wikipedia editors, and it should be unsurprising that many of those editors know little or nothing about what's going on right now at SoL.

It should also be noted that the community as a whole is capable of looking in two places at once — keeping an eye on Brews and watching for flareups at Talk:Speed of light are not mutually exclusive things. The other side of that, however, is that the community isn't psychic. If there are additional user conduct problems at Talk:SoL that need to be addressed, then you are welcome to ask for assistance in the appropriate forums. You can't assume that someone else will step in for you. The short outline for Wikipedia dispute resolution is at WP:DR. Wikiquette alerts is the page to go to first if people are failing to adhere to suitable standards of civil conduct. (Incidentally, it would also be fallacious to suggest that since there still remain disagreements at SoL, Brews and Tombe were not part of the problem.) If intermediate interventions fail, then you can request a modification of the SoL arbitration, or start a new case.

Finally, if you're interested in solving any ongoing disputes at Talk:SoL, it might best to bring that up somewhere that's not Brews' talk page. It's best not to open discussions there which might tempt him to violate his topic ban. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Reply to TenOfAllTrades

I agree with the points you make here. I.m.o., the current problems on the SoL page are not so bad that it requires intervention. I just found it strange that some involved editors there (e.g. Dicklyon) found it necessary to look at what Brews is doing now. I also agree that Brews' and Tombe's behavior was problematic on the SoL related pages but for different reasons: Tombe being the typical physics crank and Brews dominating the talk page, who happened to be wrong about the particular issue as well.

I think that problems should be solved in a rational, pragmatic way. If some solution does not yield good results, then re-evaluate the situation and come up with something that does work. In case of Brews, you need to consider his interests and expertise, which is technical physics like electronics, mechanics etc. etc. (and not fundamental physics, like speed of light quantum vacuum). That's the area where he can make the most valuable contributions to Wikipedia. You are dealing with a retired Professor who has plenty of time on his hands.

Brews certainly has caused trouble, but it should be recognized that this did not have much to do with the physics nature of the topic (in his case, the case of Tombe is different). The topic ban is causing problems because Brews is persuing the only other thing he is interested here on Wikipedia: getting involved in wiki-policies. What he is trying to do here may certainly have led to resitance from you, Jehochman and others. But this should not be construed as merely "fighting old battles" for the SoL case.

My view of Brews' involvement on policy pages

Brews shares a view with me, Michael C. Price and Likebox (all of whom did not agree (or would not have agreed) with Brews on the SoL case), about how Wikipedia pages on technical scientific subjects should be edited. None of us are arguing in favor of letting one or two editors dominate the talk pages or be otherwise disruptive to get their way. Likebox has not a clean record on Wikipedia either. But I think both Likebox and Brews now understand that you always need to have the consensus of the other editors you are working with. Merely waving some policy or presenting some argument and then getting your way "by authority" can never work. The whole point of the essay WP:ESCA is that editors could agree to persue editing this way. You can at most request others to stick to it, but not force them if they don't want to do that.

Now, if you look at the SoL page, what you see is that Dicklyon is objecting to a unit conversion based on OR. I do agree that there are other good reasons not to include the SoL in imperial units, but this is also an example of waving a policy in an unreasonable way. This precisely the kind of thing that Brews, me, Likebox, Michael etc. are trying to prevent.

The way forward

Simple: allow Brews to edit any article (physics related or not) via some mentoring agreement. Brews must notify the mentor if he wants to do some editing. The mentor could consult with Wiki-project physics when in doubt. The mentor can deny his request or give Brews the right to edit the requested page for some time. This way you can also restrict Brews involvement on policy pages if that is seen to be problematic. You can also think of Brews having to submit a small summary of what he wants to do on any particular page to Wikiproject physics. Count Iblis (talk) 21:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

At the moment, your proposed way forward is out of our hands. Brews is almost completely banned. This results partly from his own poor judgment and persistence (stubbornness?) and partly from his following some very bad advice, including yours and Tombe's, despite several several admins' and other editors' warnings to him and to you. Some introspection on both of your parts (you and Brews; I wouldn't expect any from Tombe) would be wise. —Finell 22:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

What bad advice did I gave Brews? Did I tell Brews to dominate talk pages again? I don't think so. Count Iblis (talk) 22:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Count Iblis, you've made essentially the same proposal several times on several talk pages, and been told the same thing each time. I'm not going to repeat myself again. Just (re)read your talk page. (See #Dangerous advice for one such example.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Count Iblis:

• There are several other examples on Brews' talk page.
• You repeatedly waved WP:IAR in the face of someone who was just sanctioned for ignoring rules. Lots of people, including admins, told you that was bad advice, but you kept doing it.
• You kept telling Brews how right he was, and how wrong all the arbitrators and administrators were. That helped keep him churned up to keep rearguing how unjustly he was treated, which helped keep Brews going, getting himself deeper into trouble.
• You advised Brews to reject the advice of everyone else, including administrators, to go back to editing articles and stay out of disputes, so he would stay out of trouble. Result: He's in more trouble, just like the rest of us warned. The only one who gave Brews the same advice was Tombe. That should have been enough to tell you that you were wrong.
• You brought Brews into your policy controversies at WP:ESCA and WP:NOR, where you were hopelessly outnumbered, so you would have 2 or 3 supporters, instead of 1 or 2. Those controversies are part of what led to the "enhancement" of his sanctions.
  

Now, suddenly, you seem to be distancing yourself from Brews, saying how you always thought he was wrong about Speed of light and how his disruptiveness, which you previously said wasn't disruptiveness, is the cause of his troubles. You could have helped Brews with good advice, or at least with no advice, instead of supporting him all along, and now abandoning him. And to cap it all off, you, in your pontifical style, propose a "way forward" after Brews' has dug himself into such a deep hole that there isn't one, and certainly not one that resembles your proposal.

Have you considered how little support your ideas have among your colleagues on Wikipedia? Have you considered why that is the case? —Finell 12:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Look, IAR, like it or not, exists. When you and others told me that Brews would be permanetly banned if he were to violate the topic ban, I no longer argued that Brews should work on physics here. So, you are completely wrong here, as you suggest that I kept on waving IAR. I did not.

I never told Brews how right he was on the points where he was perceived to be disruptive in the Speed of Light case. All I said was the the decision to ban him from all physics pages was wrong, albeit it I and Brews himself argued that Brews should stick to the topic ban (after you had pointed out that IAR will not work, and after William Connolley's qestion regarding pysics discussions had been clarified; e.g. Brews cannot even contact me to write about some physics problem on a physics page).

I never adviced Brews to simply ignore advice of others. My opinion, never explicitely communicated to Brews on this matter is that if someone says something to you, listen to what the person says, regardless of whether it is someone you like or not. Evaluate it pragmatically. Brews is old and wise enough that he doesn't need to learn these sorts of lessons from me. To suggest otherwise seems to me disrespectful of Brews.

My advice to Brews was based on my own pragmatic assessment of what he was doing, of his interests (I happen to know Brews from quite some time before the Arbcom case, most of his critics do not). The fact that my advice would differ from that of a few others is entirely natural. If ten people formulate some adive then why would all ten statements be the same? If you, Jehochman and a few others agree, then what gives you the right to say that you are correct and then target all the others who disagree with you. That's simply ridiculous!

Brews was contributing to WP:ESCA before the end of the Arbcom case, and Brews conributions there are consistent with his opinions that he always had since he joined Wikipedia. It hasn't anything to do with the Arbcom case. I know, because I actually interacted with Brews way before the Arbcom case. You, Jehochman and the few other Admins do have no idea about this.

I always said that Brews was wrong about his point about the Speed of Light. At the time, my personal opinion was that his editing style was not really a problem, as I could read through his talkpage edits. However, I'm just one of the editors and every editor has to take into account what the consensus is. If most editors you are editing with say that the way you are editing is problematic, you should always take that into account. Brews did not do that. This doesn't mean that if I can read through his postings I should not all of a sudden say that I cannot read through his postings.

About my ideas, I have the support I need for my ideas. Because what matters is local consensus, not global consensus. Many articles are editited as if WP:ESCA is policy.

Why do have so little support globally? I think that is because of the Kindergarten like combatitive mentality of many people here. Some of your arguments show this. E.g. you mention that because what I was saying on some very specific point was similar to what David Tombe was saying, I should have seen that I was wrong. What kind of ridiculous argument is that?

Another example, some people are saying Brewes to stay away from X, I and some others disagree. The people who want breews to stay away then become angry at me and the others. This is simply a gang-like mentality that you seem to support. You accuse me of causing trouble for Brews, because I do not want to join the gang.

About Brews editing articles, my impression (given Brews interests and expertise) was that the door was firmly shut when the topic ban was clarified to mean that even the remotest relation to physics in an edit would be an infraction. So, I was fully expecting Brews to leave Wikipedia. I'm glad that he did not. But the fact that he did not leave in itself implies that he is contributing to policy pages, because that was the only other thing he was interested in (also prior to the SoL case). That Arbcom complains about this proves that Arbcom did not understand the situation.

Final point, I'm defending Brews because it would be a loss to Wikipedia if he were to leave. Arbcom sees things in the wrong perspective in this case. They have been dealing so much with editing disputes on politics pages, that they reason in terms of incentives/punishments for editors, the editors themselves having little positive value to Wikipedia. If 90% of all contributors to the politics pages were to leave, the situation would actually improve a lot. In case of Brews, they don't seem to have realized that the topic ban prevents Brews from making the sort of positive contributions to Wikipedia that at this time no one else can make. Count Iblis (talk) 15:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Your most recent advice to Brews[9] was sound and constructive. Thank you. —Finell 03:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Please note in my recommendations towards Brews I never commented on ESCA. My statement regarded your activities "Iblis' activities associated with ESCA demonstrate". I don't plan to waste any more time discussion ESCA in any context. I'm also not going to address your other concern. For the moment a resolution has been found for that cocnern and opening discussion on the subject could undo that resolution. I do believe like many others the spirit of your comments towards Brews are in very poor form. We don't want him to treat this situation like an entitled faculty member. He has no tenure here. He going to have to make do like everyone else.

I do worry you have an obsession with being a minority and its going to lead to you to more troubling situations. Perhaps this is your intent, I don't know. You have made many edits on Wikipedia, I believe considerably more than me, but I also believe you haven't created too many articles. Thus it came as a shock when I informed you that you needed references on one of the few pages you created. How much non-science or even non-physics have you edited? I think broadening you prospective would help your effort to become a better editor. Perhaps working on a page where you are not the expect but can fix mistakes experts would ignore. I offer these suggestion respectfully, Good luck.--OMCV (talk) 13:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I have edited a few politics pages and some other science articles on topics I'm not an expert in. Some articles need to have references some do not. I'm not prepared to add references to an article if it isn't necessary just because some Wiki-policy demands that there have to be references.

About Brews, you also need to consider that many editors agree more or less with my position. Look, I've known Brews from long before the Arbcom case. The people who accuse me of giving bad advice to Brews, typically have only known him from after the Arbcom case and tend to construe all his activities on the politics pages in that light (fighting old battles, refusing to drop the stick). Brews and I talked about issues related to editing the kind of scientific articles which we both like to write which some editors do not like: Articles that explain things from first principles. Brews, Likebox, and I have contributed to such articles and occasionally experienced obstruction by some editors (Brews a lot more than me). That's why we agree on ESCA. Count Iblis (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Anything that isn't a primary source should have references this includes many news sources (TV and newspaper) which inadequately source their data/information on a regular basis. Sadly we have no jurisdiction over that realm. Wikipedia as an encyclopedia is most definitely not a primary source and we do have jurisdiction here. Ever article on Wikipedia should have references for a number of reasons: to point the reader to primary sources (WP:RS&WP:V), indicate the subject's noteworthiness (WP:NOTE), prove the text isn't better suited for a primary source (WP:OR), and allow other editors to verify that the subject matter is described fairly (WP:NPOV). Without references all of these checks fall apart and value of the project is almost completely lost.

You have stated that "What matters is if the statement is consistent with the way theoretical physicists think about this." Are these theoretical theoretical physicists or actual theoretical physicists because my imaginary theoretical physicist can say what ever I want it to say while representing main stream consensus science. I realize this issues doesn't bother you since many people have mentioned it to you many different ways (including myself). You have an innocence that lets you believe true consensus (on subjects not even addressed by a community) can represented without attribution.

In regards to Brews: It is possible to negotiate from two types of position: first a position of power where demands are made and terms and conditions are debated and second a position of weakness using respect, reason, and kind requests. You need to drop the idea that Brews is operating from a position of unjustly vanquished power. The only power anyone gains is from respectfully operating within this well thought out system. This doesn't mean you don't get to lodge complaints, it just means you work within the system as it is until the system changes.--OMCV (talk) 23:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)(I apologies for my broken grammar.)

Indeed, this kind of disregard for policy and guidelines is part of the problem of these editors not getting into successful collaborations sometimes. I know what the count means by "I'm not prepared to add references to an article if it isn't necessary just because some Wiki-policy demands that there have to be references." I too often add stuff that I'm pretty sure is right, without finding a source for it. But I've learned (at least) three things about editing here: first, if you want your stuff to last, cite a source, as this will make editors think twice about changing it (and particularly, cite an accessible online source if you can, so that they can actually see what what you said is right, and learn something if they were unsure or confused), and especially if you're correcting what someone else wrote, cite a source; and second, if someone challenges what you wrote, or you challenge what someone else wrote, the one with support in reliable sources is going to win, and that's as it should be (sometimes it's a long fight to get to that result though); and third, arguments from first principles often don't converge, either because an arguer is unable to stick to solid logical reasoning, or because the usage of terms in a field is not very logical and runs contrary to what one would logically expect; again, rely on what's in sources instead. Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for suggestions

Hi Count:

Thank you for your suggestions at Arbitration/Requests/Clarification, which very clearly protect WP from even a wild editor (which I am certainly not) while allowing contributions. It is evident that your suggestion would work well for WP, and allow me to contribute in areas where I have expertise. I notice that the growing list of "me too" admins paid no attention to it. The lack of response of any administrator, and instead their adding mindless "me too" comments echoing each others' support of the status quo, may suggest they interpret proposals as challenges to authority, whether they originate with me or anybody else, rather than asking themselves whether the proposals (or some modifications thereof) serve WP. That is unfortunate.

You made a constructive suggestion. Thank you. Brews ohare (talk) 16:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brews, it is very good to see that you are still interested in Wikipedia and interested in contributing to physics articles (hopefully very soon), despite everything that has happened. From my experience here at Wikipedia, I'm conviced that almost everyone here will have some ownership issues. I think the Arbitrators are inflexible because they do not want to change the way they have been playing their game. They "own" the game they are playing.

So, perhaps we need to think about appealing the topic ban. I think that will have the best chance of succeeding if some as of yet univolved heavy-weights and Admins appeal on your behalf. They can propose some deal along the lines I proposed on the clarification page for the time being until the original topic ban expires. I think people like Raul654, William Connolley, Gwen Gale, Durova could be suitable people for this.

Meanwhile, nothing will stop you from writing wiki articles offline on your computer. Pending the appeal, that would be a good thing to do, because the argument for relaxing the topic ban will be precisely that you would produce or contribute to good quality articles. During the appeal you could show what you've done if the Arbitrators would agree to you posting your work on your user space. Otherwise, the Arbitrators would only look at your editing history and see that you have not contributed to any wiki article outside of the topic ban and unrelated to policy pages. They simply do not understand that there are people who are mainly interested in physics. Count Iblis (talk) 16:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A few outsider comments. I note elsewhere that you kind of "outed" Brews. If what you said to Durova was true, then I think presenting that information to the ArbCom would be very useful, if it hasn't already been made, us liking to retain experts and all. Second, I very seriously urge Brews to consider Carcharoth's proposal on the Clarification page. But, the reason I actually came was about the userspace creation/development question. It seems to me that avoiding the directly "physics"-related articles might be a good idea for a while, as a demonstration of good conduct. Adjusting userspace content to remove material critical of ArbCom and others would definitely help too. But I think there are a lot of pages, extant and otherwise, regarding individual physicists or books relating to the topic which either don't exist or exist in rather poor shape. I used to do a little work with the Biography project in the past, and I would be willing to help review and pass on to mainspace any biography articles which he might work on in userspace. Although I am much less well informed on content relating to individual books, I could try to help there as well. But maybe asking for userspace development of such content while the mainspace ban is in place might be useful. And, of course, despite what you said to Durova, if there are any articles not related to physics Brews might be interested in, be they his home town, favorite song, or whatever, I would definitely urge him to at least consider working on them. If he isn't sure whether such content exists or would meet notability, I would be willing to help out where and how I can. John Carter (talk) 18:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Contplanck.png

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Rigorous definition of temperature

Count Iblis I think this is one of your contributions [10] I have made this comment and I would be most interested in the answer! [11] --Damorbel (talk) 21:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Appeal for Brews_ohare

Wow! The reaction of Durova and here to your discussion is amazing, and discouraging. There is no indication here of interest in the welfare of WP, neither in general nor in particular. It amounts to bureaucratic evasion of any helpful involvement, "refactoring" your well-phrased appeal as an improper attempt at influencing a judge. Brews ohare (talk) 18:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Lawyers

As I mentioned in Talk:Climatic Research Unit_e-mail hacking incident#Some of the suggestions in Wikipedia:Editing scientific articles may also work for this article, I suggest you research any claims you make that can cause people to be strongly mislead before you make them. In any case as I demonstrated there, my research suggests you were wrong and in fact most of the current Arbcom are not 'lawyers' and this includes the situation in the Brews ohare case. If you did research your claim and have evidence I'm wrong or research it now and find I'm wrong, you're welcome to present the evidence here (you can also do it there, since it won't be fair to deny you a right to response although I can't speak for other editors). You can of course ask arbcom members whether they're 'lawyers' and see what they say, if anything. However I'm not interested in debating anything else like whether there are too many 'lawyers' even if they aren't a majority or whether we need more science educated arbcom members or even whether a law student counts as a 'lawyer'. Nil Einne (talk) 22:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry

you did make me laugh but it is an official page of sorts so you cannot leave it like that really. --BozMo talk 21:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

For the better feedback than I have received from others.[12] Have you looked at Black hole lately? Do you like the direction it's going? Jehochman ^Talk 06:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the Black hole article has improved a lot. The parts related on modern physics could perhaps be rewritten so that they become more interesting to lay people. Think about the way Kip Thorne explains these issues in his popular book. Count Iblis (talk) 16:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Salt and Pepper

You know you'd just be sitting there for hours with a magnifying glass and tweezers. Sounds like work to me. ;) But I get what you're saying. Gerardw (talk) 15:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

UCS para at SOoCC

Hi, can you have a peek at User_talk:Jaymax#SOoCC please. Ta. ‒ Jaymax✍ 23:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Global warming

Hi Count:

Your engagement in global warming is a generalization of your earlier concerns with settling scientific debates from first principles. This time the context is broader, and one deals with non-experts. It is very interesting to me to see if some methodology evolves here that has application beyond the topic. Is it possible to have a convergence of view? Perhaps your notion of segregating the discussion into "politics" vs. "science" is a way to do it. I'm hopeful that some notion of process will come out of this discussion. Such evolution of technique would really be an interesting aspect of work on WP. Brews ohare (talk) 21:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brews,

Yes, separating politics from science has been the way we've dealt with editing disputes in the past. The Global Warming Controversy article was created specifically to make room for sceptical voices in the news media. Wikipedia is not just about science, it simply reports on everything that is notable enough in the real world. So, one cannot leave out widely held opinions from Wikipeida even if they have been rigorously debunked scientifically. One can then create content forks that of course also have to be edited in a NPOV way. Count Iblis (talk) 00:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

It begins to look that a metadiscussion is needed to review procedure apart from this specific topic. You've used my case as an example of where things can go without some better process, and some argument like that has to be accepted by the contentious parties. Brews ohare (talk) 14:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I found Martin's position very strange given that he didn't have the patience to discuss editing the SoL article with you but now he's lecturing us how to edit the Global Warming page. :) . Count Iblis (talk) 15:40, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

arbitration notification

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

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requesting Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, Please comment at the arbitration case or on my talk page- I'm notifying a large batch of editors. tedder (talk) 02:34, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Respect for truth

Your blog, sadly, disproves the assertion on your user page. Fix one or the other; I recommend fixing the blog :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 23:40, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been too busy with real physics to write a lot about my metaphysical ideas. I try to make sure the blog has at least some scientific impact, see e.g. footnote 2 on page 12 of this article, so I don't want to post just any thought I have about this subject. But you are right, I should write more frequently. Count Iblis (talk) 00:08, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't do this

[13] ATren (talk) 00:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Global warming

Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, global warming, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is any problem with your edits. Thank you.

We're just slowly plodding through the list of editors to make sure everybody is fully informed. --TS 13:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Unblocking Brews and David

I was thinking of petitioning to have them unblocked, based on the claim that the old dispute is resolved, they weren't doing anything worthy of such a punishment, and their services would be useful. I also would like to ask that topic blocks might be too serious, replace them with page by page decisions. I don't know what you think.Likebox (talk) 22:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I will direct attention to Brews only at first, but I still think that topic ban on David is an overly draconian way to deal with the issue.

I don't think that one should try for anything other than a full lift of all restrictions. First, I made some feelers on speed of light to see what people think. I don't think that any of them are seriously opposed to lifting all restrictions, in that they would not voice an opinion against, so long as they are not made to look like they did anything wrong (I don't think they did--- ArbCom just overreacted a little). Headbomb might be the exception to this, but I think that it can be made clear that nobody is claiming that anyone's judgement was at fault. I don't know why this should affect his admin prospects--- perhaps one could put in a good word for him when the time comes.

The argument that I was planning on giving is that the remedy has outlived its usefulness. There is no further point in continuing a stale block over a contentious debate. I was going to say that nobody did anything particularly wrong, but diverging points of view led to bad feelings, and a consensus for a ban which is no longer necessary. If everything works out, I'll try to do the same for David, even though he may not have been the best editor in the universe.

Wikipedia bans/blocks are designed to get the encyclopedia to work better, not to be punitive. So there is no reason to keep them going once they are no longer beneficial to the encyclopedia.Likebox (talk) 01:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Headbomb and Finell definitely oppose.

I think that it is possible to make an argument as follows: sometimes you get protracted disputes on matter where there are two sides which are politically hostile. In order to make sure that ideas are not suppressed, we must be extra careful to block only based on gross misbehavior and policy violations, not on the content of ideas.

This means that any ban which outlives its usefulness should be reconsidered, since the ban is not a punitive measure, but a method of improving the functioning of the encyclopedia. It must always be considered that where there are political disagreements, there can be over-dramatized accusations of misbehavior caused by bad-feelings. If the violations are minor, then we should not endorse one point of view with a ban on the other point of view. Rather, we can take the less serious step of saying "this is what the page should say for now, per sources and consensus, and the minority view can be briefly represented on the talk page."Likebox (talk) 01:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Count Iblis, I was actually going to suggest myself that any appeals regarding the 'speed of light' case should be split into independent appeals as between myself and Brews. Although the case came about because Brews and I were involved in an identical argument, which has absolutely nothing to do with relativity, the prejudices which were held against me at the ARBCOM case were almost totally based on the knowledge that I am anti-relativity. It is therefore unfair that Brews should have to suffer any prejudice on that basis.

The argument was of course complicated by the fact that an extreme fringe of relativists enjoyed the consolidation that might be superficially inferred from the 'defined constant'. It was therefore a sensitivity issue and not an 'original research' issue. The ARBCOM decision was a total over reaction which probably brought Brews down on the back of my off-wiki activities.

So I would support the idea of an individual appeal on behalf of Brews. Meanwhile, wikipedia really does need to sort itself out when it comes to dealing with sensitivity issues. While I am anti-relativity, I have never pushed that agenda on wikipedia. My speciality is Maxwell. I have done alot of research, and I hold original ideas relating to what I believe are flaws in the epistemological evolution to relativity that began with Heaviside's 1889 paper. Most of my physics edits have been non-controversial and they have been designed to make topics in electromagnetism more accessible to the general reader. I have corrected alot of erroneous material in history sections as well as simplifying the mathematical relationships that are involved in the classical laws. I have operated on a basis of fixing the summaries and removing chaff to the sections further down the page. David Tombe (talk) 07:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Likebox and bans

Hi Count Iblis:

I am aware of your very strong efforts to fix Talk page discussion by "arguing from first principles", which I view as a mechanism to get the thinking process going instead of knee-jerk reactions. Now Lightbox has identified an instance of these issues and appears to me to be very able to formulate the problems.

I'd like to propose that the two of you engage together to solve these problems with Talk pages. If some tools and procedures can be evolved that actually make fruitful discussion the likely outcome of Talk page encounter, that will be far more important to WP than even the content of WP itself: it becomes an algorithm that has wide application.

Your own efforts have come closest to fixing the problem so far, and is a democratic procedure. My essay added the possibility of some administrative involvement.

I hope that practical guidelines can be devised that can be tried out and shown to have effect in a variety of cases. Brews ohare (talk) 16:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Brews. As far as the count goes, I support his ESCA proposal very much, and I hope it becomes a widely accepted guideline. But it is focused on accuracy of content, not on the politics. I am currently trying to make sure that talk-page politics is better.

I think your bad experiences left a bad taste in your mouth. But generally, Wikipedia's talk page discussions have been forceful and productive. Just to show you an example of a year-long talk-page out-and-out fist-fight that was productive, look at the archived debate I had with PdBailey at radiation hormesis. I really think that speed of light is the exception rather than the rule.

Part of the reason is the large number of editors. That leads to a circus. On "hormesis", it was basically the two of us slogging away at each other respectfully for over a year. The discussions improved my understanding of the subject, and I think PdBailey and I came to agree on what should be in the article, although we still disagree on whether the effect itself is real.Likebox (talk) 17:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The division into politics and accuracy is not my choice; it is more a matter of maintaining good mind set. The basic premise is that understanding is a process, and reliance upon preconceptions aborts the process and leads to divided camps. There is a lack of appreciation of how strong a force preconceptions are, and how delicate a matter is development of clear understanding. One must be willing to accept even the bizarre as possibly containing some truth from some perspective, and let things grow, even if it takes long engagement. The Procrustean bed analogy is very apt, and a good procedure would avoid this syndrome. Brews ohare (talk) 17:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

My engagement with D Tombe over centrifugal force has some parallel with your experience with PdBailey. We slogged it out over a long period, and although we did never agree, the article benefited from clearer explanation and more examples. We avoided degenerating into catcalls and invective, I think because we both really were interested in the subject, not in pedantry. We both came to understand each other as participants, but to observers like those engaged at Speed of light our exchanges appeared to be nothing but debate (which unfortunately is how they view discussion in general): all evolution was invisible to them. Brews ohare (talk) 17:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Count, could you take a look at User:Likebox/DraftMotion and tell me what you think? You know what ArbCom does. Do I need a list of diffs to support the amendment to finding 1?Likebox (talk) 20:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I just posted a few comments on the talk page of the draft motion. I think you do need a list of diffs to support every assertion about editing behavior you make. E.g., if you write the Brews expert contibutions are needed, then just give some good examples of his edits to physics articles and then briefly explain what he was doing there and why him being an expert was important for the development of the article. Count Iblis (talk) 00:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that Brews's point above is absolutely correct in relation to centrifugal force. Brews and I had been debating for a long time, and although we hadn't come to any agreement, things were definitely moving. There was constructive debate underway. But then it was brutally interrupted in July 2009 by a ridiculous AN/I circus in which attempts were made to have the two of us topic banned. That AN/I circus was in effect the original precedent for these political trials. It was the first precedent in my awareness of mediaeval pillory type justice emerging on wikipedia.

As regards the centrifugal force issue, none of us had actually been breaking any rules, but that circus at AN/I was attempting to steam roll in a new kind of regime in which prolonged debaters would be bowled out at the pillory. And the instigator of that circus, on his own admission more or less acknowledged that his motive was nothing short of the fact that it was about a topic in which he himself was unqualified to comment on, and as such, felt left out of the discussion.

So when I then came to help Brews out on another issue a couple of weeks later, and investigated it to find that I actually agreed with Brews on this occasion, the ugly face of zero tolerance quickly emerged and I was swiftly pagebanned. Headbomb on seeing the swift success of Physchim62's action against me at AN/I, then decided that he would do the same thing for Brews. And it escalated from there to an ARBCOM hearing. I am strongly of the opinion that ARBCOM had their minds made up from the very outset of that hearing as to what their agenda would be. I would say that they pretty well ignored any evidence that didn't suit their agenda. They allowed no end of malicious allegations to accumulate against Brews and myself, while at the same time showing very little tolerance for counter-allegations against the other parties, or of defences issued by myself or Brews. This was clearly visible in the manner in which evidence submissions from myself or Brews were shifted around to other locations, in a clear demonstration of contempt, under the guise of administrative procedures, along with other oblique comments from arbitrators clearly representing a nod and a wink at the accusers. David Tombe (talk) 03:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi count. I am beginning to appreciate the core issue in the dispute, and it is a difficult one. I have to sit and think long and hard about moving forward.

I can't support statements that compare ArbCom to medieval justice, or to Jacobins, or to the Gestapo. I don't think that these statements are responsible. They certainly don't help matters here along. ArbCom is not acting based on pure politics or based on the content. They are just trying to make discussions flow smoothly.

My concern about talk page suppression of ideas needs to be balanced against ArbCom's fear of endless talk page spamming. I am pretty sure now that what people were upset about were overly long talk page comments by David and Brews, which have the property of crowding out other comments. I don't think the content of the ideas (which is better than the prolix style indicates) was the main issue. If the comments are brief and to-the-point, these editors can contribute a great deal to the project.

My goal was to protect controversial topics from censorship, not to protect prolix editors from being asked to keep it brief, responsible, and to the point.Likebox (talk) 16:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course, reference to medieval justice is not useful. And prolix comment may be an issue. But neither of these is your point, which I would take to be the lifting of a ban that serves no purpose today. You don't have to establish that justice was or was not done, or that the remedy was effective or not effective. All you have to establish is that recent history indicates useful contribution and no disturbance, so a test is in order to see whether lifting the bans will cause trouble again. If trouble does result, action can be taken.

The only "evidence" needed to support this case are some diffs showing useful contribution. Those anxious to maintain the ban will then provide diffs to support a view that trouble is still likely. ArbCom will weigh the matter and decide whether lifting the bans is more trouble than its worth to them in terms of their time and effort. Brews ohare (talk) 22:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)