User talk:Peter Gulutzan

Climate change contributions

Thanks for your attempts to improve these articles. As you are finding out, making positive changes -- generally, getting the articles closer to WP:NPOV -- is time-consuming and can be very frustrating. Best wishes, Pete Tillman (talk) 14:25, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it can be frustrating. I notice on the hockey-stick-controversy talk page that you once suggested adding something and got some sniping re reliable sources etc. Now I'm complaining about a third-hand account re the NRC report that appeared in a newsletter, and seeing opposition. Nevertheless I didn't support you before (don't know the subject) and am not expecting you to support me (it's boring). I'll keep assuming good faith on most people's part and maybe someday something will click. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 23:46, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

DataStax

Hi. I saw your comment about the revisions to DataStax while I was out of the country on vacation, then I promptly forgot about it. Sorry for the unintended neglect. I hope all has been resolved - if not, let me know and I will jump in. --Drm310 (talk) 16:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

You want

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v252/n5480/abs/252216a0.html William M. Connolley (talk) 19:31, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I can see that this is a hint about my change today to the Nigel Calder article. I didn't see how it affects what I said, though. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Raitt bio

Hi Peter. Yes, I am aware. I suggest you read the scathing AGC review, which incidentally does not reflect on Raitt at all, since she was not Minister of transport at the time, to see how you would characterise it. The "partisan" adjective serves well where it is. How else do you characterise a self-serving review? It cannot be characterised as independent, since the board paid for it. Wiki'll evaluate your fixes if you choose to make any. 66.225.160.9 (talk) 19:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Banned User:IHaveAMastersDegrees anti-skeptic edits

Now that he's been banned, feel free to revert any of his that you find unhelpful.

He won't be missed. His protestations of innocence at his Talk page are entertaining. --Pete Tillman (talk) 17:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I am glad that User:Darkness Shines took the trouble to propose investigation, although I see that the ban is due to puppetry, and would have preferred a ban due to what was in the edits. IHaveAMasterDegree's protests when I complained in December were irritating rather than entertaining, because a surprising number of decent editors somehow found merit on his/her/its edits. And yes I have felt free to remove the majority of those edits, but I've stopped now, so if you see something serious that I missed, please feel free yourself. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually I find that block very suspect, the supposed master last edited four years ago and had but one sock. The data on the master is stale. This is an alternate account, the guy says as much in his unblock request, but I doubt, very much, that IHaveAMastersDegree is a sock of Bearguardian, an account which had never edited any climate change related articles. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

But he certainly never rang true as a new user, either -- "butter wouldn't melt in his mouth". I try to avoid the disciplinary side as much as possible -- in fact I've been avoiding the CC area lately becaise it's such a pain to change anything, in the face of the True Believers.

And yes, thank you DS. You're two for two at Delingpole alone! Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 00:44, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Dear User: Peter Gulutzan: I am writing to let you know that the block on my account was a case of mistaken identity. My account has now been unblocked. I recently noticed that within a few hours of my account being blocked, you undid about forty of my edits, most of them with little or no explanation other than "Removed edit by blocked editor" or variations on that. I do not think that you have given a valid reason for your many reversions of my edits. Please show good faith by self-reverting those forty or so edits. If any of your changes have valid reasons, please state them on the various talk pages and we will discuss there and seek consensus. Thank you. IHaveAMastersDegree (talk) 16:50, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Dear Banned User:IHaveAMastersDegrees: I hope you've figured out that you will be blocked "for cause" instead of the (app mistaken) sock-puppetry business? Please read the Result concerning IHaveAMastersDegree. And avoid making more work for those who are actually trying to improve the encyclopedia, rather than score points, Go away. Pete Tillman (talk) 17:08, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Dear IHaveAMastersDegree: I will revert my reversions if the administrators decide that there was nothing wrong with the way that you edited, or that there was something wrong with the way that I edited. Or, for every individual case where my edit comment was the exact words "Removed edit by blocked editor", I will yield when any independent editor reverts my reversion. Naturally I regret that there was an administrative error, and assure you that I would have used more detailed edit comments than "Removed edit by blocked editor" if I had suspected otherwise. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Marc Morano

Please explain yourself on reverting my Marc Morano comment in the talk section. I only cited a source that is much more reputable than the other sources. It is a record of the US Senate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jvaughters (talk • contribs) 15:03, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I will conceded this revert but urge you to not revert the recent change. I agree that the one you reverted was not a great addition, but the new change is much more informative and removed a poor personal opinion from an author that was not supported by the reference.

I am only using your talk to discuss this article since you have failed to comment on the article talk page and feel free to remove this if you agree with the most recent changes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jvaughters (talk • contribs) 15:55, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

BLPs Quoting Blog Posts By Dana Nuccitelli

You have been deleting a raft of citations, pointing at the BLP noticeboard: "BLPs Quoting Blog Posts By Dana Nuccitelli" section. I have not found this section or any discussion on the topic in a search of the archives. Can you point me to it? M.boli (talk) 12:52, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

@M.boli:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive199#BLPs_Quoting_Blog_Posts_By_Dana_Nuccitelli Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:37, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Righto! Thank you. M.boli (talk) 00:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for reverting my edit, I erroneously thought the topic ban ended this month. I have notified the administrator who issued the ban in the first place at User talk:Sandstein. --Kaj Taj Mahal (talk) 15:36, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Commons

Hi, I manually moved the survey image you posted to Wikipedia (English) to the Commons, where I simply turned it into an updated version of the original. This is consistent with WP:TOCOMMONS. Since we are the only eds who have commented so far, please consider just deleting this talk thread, as it would be confusing and useless to transfer it as well. TPG lets us delete talk threads if all agree to do so, and I do if you do. More, I think doing so is best. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:18, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Somebody has already put up a "keep local" request. In any case, although I'm sure you're right about where the image should be, I don't want to overwrite the commons page until we're sure there are no objections. I'll say more on Talk:Surveys of scientists' views on climate change.Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:54, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Revised opinion graphic

Thanks for taking this on.

Once we settle on captions, could you please also correct the Bray and von Storch results, per this? Assuming no one comments by then. TIA, Pete Tillman (talk) 00:54, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I have made what I think are the changes that people have been suggesting. I'll say more on Talk:Surveys of scientists' views on climate change.Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:54, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

reply :)

not sure if you've been pinged but here is my reply [1]

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! Arianewiki1 (talk) 14:10, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Collapsing

Hey Peter - regarding this, the reason I collapsed that section of the discussion was because it was almost entirely about Tetra's edits use of AWB, not answering the original question of capitalization standards. Since the DRN discussion ended with TQ losing access to AWB, and the goal now is to get that clear consensus, I collapsed that area to tidy up and focus on the discussion regarding capitalization, and the consideration of extending the discussion to MOS (particularly if anyone new wants to chime in). If you don't think it was appropriate, I won't challenge that - maybe it'd be worth separating what I collapsed into it's own sub-header? I'll leave that for you to consider. Thanks! ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 16:42, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Dear Mr/Ms Hamster: I understand and sympathize, but regard my question to Tetra quark as relevant because it addresses the proposed change's implementation difficulty. I have added a WP:MOS section now. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:06, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough - thanks for the reply and the mention @ MOS :) ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 17:11, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Verbosity

You undid an edit I made, in which I had replaced 11 words with 1, and you left the edit summary Doesn't look verbose. I can only conclude that you don't know what "verbose" means. It means "using more words than necessary". So, if you can express something in 1 word, then expressing it in 11 words is verbose. Kindly don't revert the hard work of other editors if you don't understand the reason for the edit. 200.83.136.145 (talk) 02:33, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

As you deletions changed the meaning considerably, these explanations don't make sense to me either, and I agree with Peter Gulutzan's revert [2]. Please take it to the talk page, and remain civil.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

HaeB, thanks. Apparently we all agree what verbose means, and the article's talk page would be the place to discuss further. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The meaning was not changed at all. That's two false claims made in reverting my change. What is your actual reason? Do you have one? 200.83.136.145 (talk) 18:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

200.83.136.145 has been blocked for one week after a separate incident, and the IP was added to Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Best known for IP. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:35, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

HaeB, thanks again. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:42, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Universe capitalization

Hi,

I certainly don't mean to be exercising ownership over Universe; apologies if it came across that way. I reverted to "Universe" simply because that's how this page has been for a long time (I checked 500 edits back as a random sample — I wasn't an active editor of that article at the time, in 2013 — and it primarily used "Universe" back then), which I consider an example of the existing consensus on this particular article. A single editor changing two of the dozens of uses of the word in that article from a proper name to a common noun strikes me as a bad idea. Wikipedia policy is to maintain consistency unless there's a consensus to change an article, I thought. It is certainly true that I prefer to treat the word "universe" as a proper name when used as the name of the Universe, but I would revert changes to be consistent if the existing version always used it as a common noun in the absence of a consensus to make the change. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 18:44, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

ASHill And I apologize for not finding the edit that you said you were reverting. I see it now. If you would like to revert again, in a way that ensures that the editor whom you're reverting SarahTehCat sees that you're reverting, I'll make no further objection at this moment. But if you had bothered to read the RfC discussion that you participated in, you'd know that universe was the earlier spelling and there was discussion on the article's talk page which decided not to change, but Universe was stuffed in with the ridiculous edit summary "Fixing the proper noun usage to be inline with presentation here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Universe)". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:11, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't remember whether this was one of the articles that had been changed from "universe" to "Universe" at some point in the past; I did check that it wasn't one of the ones changed in January 2015 by Tetra quark. Apologies for not digging more than 2 years into the past of this particular article. (Separately, I've asked at WT:MOSCAPS if we want to try to come to an actual conclusion on this.) —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 20:55, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't know it was possible to revert a registered user's edit w/o their being notified of said revert. :/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 08:22, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

It's easy, just revert manually instead of clicking Undo, as Ashill did to you here. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:00, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

And for reference, I did it that way not to avoid notifying SarahTehCat but because I was only undoing a small portion of her edit. I've now reverted the two uses of "universe" to "Universe". —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 14:16, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad you just stated that you didn't do it so that I wouldn't be notified because otherwise I'd be really irritated; to me, unless you're an unregistered user, such an act is one of disrespect and cowardice. But your reason seems to me to be that you thought it was so minor you didn't want to bother me with it, is that it? If so, then I understand and am not irritated for the reason so stated. Although, I still think "universe" should not be capitalised except perhaps in the first sentence (hence why I left that one alone); this is because in this case it acts as an opening, and the capitalisation somewhat serves as a declaration of it being the topic and such a big one (both literally and figuratively). Not sure if I made any sense whatsoever just now, but hey it made sense in my head. xD — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 00:24, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't anywhere near that thought out; frankly, I've never in the past considered the notification effects of using or not using the undo feature. Personally, I put pages I care about on my Watchlist, and that's how I learn of changes. (I've been editing at Wikipedia since long before these notifications existed and find them, on the whole, more annoying than useful, but maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. ;) ) I edited manually rather than click the undo button simply because there were more changes in your edit that I wanted to keep than that I wanted to undo, so it was easier. I'll consider the notification effect in the future. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 01:11, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

@SarahTehCat: And if you want, you're welcome to join the v e r y extended discussion of capitalization of universe at WT:MOSCAPS. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 01:12, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

@SarahTehCat:: You were right and ASHill was wrong, but ASHill has experience and the backing of Wiki Project Astronomy, so the particular edits that you did had little chance of survival. If it makes you feel any better: most of the editors who participated in the recent RfC "voted" that universe should not be capitalized. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:28, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

@ASHill: If it were edited, why didn't I get notified of that? Pages go onto my watchlist as soon as I edit them, so I should have been notified. And lol, that is an awesome word..."curmudgeon". I haven't heard that word in a long time, although maybe that's because I'm an...anti-curmudgeon? Haha, lol, that word doesn't exactly work for the opposite of curmudgeon. Lol. XD

@Peter Gulutzan: Yes, that does make me feel better a bit. :) Although I can't say I'm happy at all to find out that Wikipedia has its own political hierarchy. >:| Such a format is completely antithetical to the entire spirit of Wikipedia, and to be absolutely honest, it p**ses me off. >_< — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 16:45, 2015 March 16 (UTC)

@SarahTehCat: Yes, my edit is in the edit history and should have appeared on your watchlist if the article was on your watchlist. If it didn't, I'm not sure why.

Peter Gulutzan misrepresented the discussion and overestimates the cohesion of the astronomy wikiproject; it's not nearly as clear-cut as he makes it sound. In fact, by my count, 13 editors (counting you) who participated in the discussion supported "universe" always and 13 consider "Universe" a proper name when used as the name of our universe. And the exact numbers of the vote are irrelevant anyway; the point is simply that there's no clear consensus one way or the other. So in the meantime, normal practice is to maintain consistency within each article and to keep things as they are, absent a consensus to change them.

Most edits to Wikipedia are uncontroversial, but when there is disagreement about what is best, there has to be some structure for resolving these disagreements; wikipedia uses WP:CONSENSUS. For better or for worse, this structure is sometimes annoyingly bureaucratic and can be difficult to penetrate at times. However, it's a set of procedures that are designed to facilitate cooperation amongst thousands of editors who sometimes each have different opinions. Again, you're very welcome to contribute your opinion to the discussion at WT:MOSCAPS. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 17:23, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Re the revert: yes it's there, perhaps SarahTehCat missed it due to expecting something else in the edit summary. Re how to count: I didn't bother replying before because I thought the truth was obvious, but now I have done so. Re "keep things as they are, absent a consensus to change them" -- that hypocrisy has (yet again) been exposed above, where you started by saying you'd have gone with universe if that had been the original consensus, but you dropped the subject when I observed that universe had been changed to Universe with a ridiculous edit summary and no consensus to change. And of course you're not mentioning the 1000 edits that were done with WikiProject Astronomy's approval, changing sun to Sun or earth to Earth or universe to Universe etc., in the last few months with usually no discussion whatever, let alone "consensus", on the talk pages of the victim articles. Indeed your accusation that I'm "misrepresenting" is correct -- I have to be careful because I don't allow foul language on my talk page. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

It is true that I haven't responded to every statement you've made that I disagree with; at least that's one way in which we agree. :D Yes, the Universe capitalization was changed a few years ago, but it has been that way for a while, and I don't think it makes sense to revert to the years-old version because one editor changed two of the dozens of occurrences in that particular article. In fact, I have gone through and reverted some of Tetra quark's over-the-top edits. However, the most advanced editing tools I use are the undo button (which actually does still work for most of TQ's January edits, I found, since the majority of them are by simple statistics lightly-edited ones) and copy-and-paste to a text editor with a good search and replace feature, so I can't keep up with TQ's AWB edits.

His edits were pretty strongly criticized by editors on WT:AST; by my reading, only @JorisvS: supported the substance of those edits. I certainly see no "approval" for the 1000s of edits. Complaints by astronomy project members about those edits led to his AWB privileges being suspended. You present the astronomy wikiproject as a monolithic entity that all gets along and agrees on this issue; if only that were the case! In fact, several astronomy editors (Drbogdan, Arianewiki1, and Isambard Kingdom) prefer to treat "universe" as always a common noun, but I don't think they've gone through and done widespread reverting either. (I'm not really sure who's a "project member" or an active editor of astronomy articles, so that's subjective.) By my reading of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy/Archive 16, there's very little support for his widespread edits and plenty of reasons why it is a bad idea (some quite strongly worded). And moreover, the string of uncivil comments and edits contrary to consensus by Tetra quark, most of which involved other astronomy editors including me, were what led to his current indefinite block. So I'm really unclear why you somehow hold an entire project responsible for one rogue editor; what else were we supposed to do? —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 19:21, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, @ASHill:, but that last sentence seemed rather rude... σ~σ — SarahTehCat

Ashill and I have simultaneous arguments happening on wt:moscaps, and I doubt that repeating them here is impressing SarahTehCat or anyone else, so I suggest we end this thread. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:56, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Climate change DS

(I have deleted this conversation from my talk page. Let it be clear that I received a discretionary sanctions notice for ARBCC on March 18, in correct form and politely worded. My reply was influenced by the outcome from a mistaken accusation that I'd received a few days earlier from a different editor, and I thought that there was an intent to accuse me of something on WP:AE. I know more about DS notices now, and apologize for not knowing before.) Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:08, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

No ping request

Hi Peter, At Talk:anthony watts, please don't ping-template me with every post. That's what watchlists are for. While I appreciate the effort of making it easy for me, in fact it's giving me an extra thing to do - turning off the little red flag in my user panel. I'll see what you say without that, at least at that location.

thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:21, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

News And Events Guy: sorry. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 01:23, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

No prob, you meant well and it was appreciated. But now that we're engaged it's extra work for both of us. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:29, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Copy/paste error?

In this edit, you copied in a lot of text, some of which was apparently mangled in the formatting during transport. I am guessing that most of it was an error and that you only intended to post that first paragraph. I'm going to take the liberty of removing all the rest. Please fix it if I removed too much. Never mind. You already saw it and fixed it yourself. Let me know if there's something I can help with. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 15:24, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Rossami: It's great to see that editors like you would catch this sort of horror. Apologies and thanks. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:30, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

By now...

By now I have grown used to editors who try to intimidate me with accusations which they pretend could lead to blocking. I'm going to make this a standard reply: hit me with your best shot, eh? Bring your accusation to any administrator-watched forum/noticeboard and we'll see who gets in trouble. You'll see I am a regular at these boards: JzG (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA). Guy (Help!) 19:30, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

For the benefit of other editors stalking this talk page (I wonder how many there are?), Guy is responding to this and echoing my own words. In the event that the current disputes over the articles Anthony Watts (blogger) and Watts Up With That result in sanctions, I wouldn't want JzG/Guy's edits to be ignored. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:55, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

If I were filing an AE complaint, citing WP:ARBCC#Principles and the prohibition against BATTLEGROUND editing, then I would cite someone's statement "hit me with your best shot" and braggadocio about AE/ANI experience, as an example BATTLE attitude instead of TEAMWORK attitude. The collegial response is to civilly list reasons one disagrees, and then say if that is not satisfying, you're willing to participate in the WP:Dispute resolution venue of the other party's choice.... and to politely follow through with that, if they take you up on it. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree, whiich is precisely why I copy-pastes Peter's response to the DS-notice from above. Of the two of us, only one has a long-term history of promoting the climate "skeptic" view, or involvement with climate articles generally. It's not me. Guy (Help!) 08:00, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

The position one takes on a subject has nothing to do with the way one goes about it. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I have never claimed to be a regular at AE or ANI. I have of course been involved with climate articles, especially when poorly sourced or unsourced accusations are made that "so-and-so is a climate denier" -- just as Guy/JzG is doing now. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

(Redacted Thread)

User:Tillman: I'll consider sending a greeting when the "climate change skeptic" arguing dies down. For the information of all who stalk my talk page: I have never corresponded with any Wikipedia editor about any Wikipedia matter via any means other than Wikipedia pages. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:04, 4 July 2015 (UTC)