User talk:Valerianodiviacchi

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Valerianodiviacchi, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Vsmith (talk) 16:19, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:reliable sources. I rather doubt that dailystormer.com qualifies. Vsmith (talk) 16:19, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

January 2018[edit]

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions at Gambler's fallacy. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing Wikipedia. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you. Toohool (talk) 19:15, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can argue your case on the talk page. Throwing around terms like "politically approved opinion base" means nothing--nothing good, that is. Drmies (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gamblers' Fallacy[edit]

You delete my addition of a scholarly article giving a different perspective on this issue simply because you disagree with it. This is not proper Wikepedia editing. Valerianodiviacchi (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be silly: you can't simply invent motives like that for other people. Drmies (talk) 22:40, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I am not inventing moitives, that is what you and the other editor said. Both of you disagreed with the scholar's reasoning and conclusions and deleted my addition. What s the appeal process for this dispute? Unless both of you are mathematicians or philosophers of mathematics, this argument will will be a waste of time. What is the appeal process? Valerianodiviacchi (talk) 00:18, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
  - You have no idea what our motives are; if you think that's what we said, you can't read English. (Plus, I didn't even revert you.) Toohool said your source was a "confusing and poorly reasoned paper" and I said you can discuss your case on the talk page. You haven't done that yet; I suppose it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. As it happens your paper was published on SSSR, which does not make it an academic paper since there is no peer review. As it happens, the author seems to be a real scientist, but he does not work in probability theory or in math, and the paper was not published in a peer-reviewed academic publication (it's not listed on the author's PubMed CV either). So my math expertise is not an issue here; your knowledge of WP:RS is. As I said before, twice now, you can discuss this on the talk page. You can take it to dispute resolution too, but if you really want to get all self-righteous, take it to WP:ANI; I give it three minutes before someone figures out that this was not a reliable source, and one more minute before someone denies you all credibility because you have cited a neo-Nazi website claiming it to be an acceptable source. Drmies (talk) 00:56, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

SSRN is neo-Nazi? Glad I did not waste time arguing with you. I will appeal.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerianodiviacchi (talk • contribs)

You must have a really short memory. Here: your first edit. If you happen to know where the publisher of The Daily Stormer lives, there's a lawsuit looking for him. Drmies (talk) 04:31, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what neo-Nazi website Drmies is referring to, and I'll also note that the paper was apparently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Gambling Business & Economics. But the most important issue here is the undue weight policy. When we have a wealth of reliable sources that say the gambler's fallacy is a fallacy, it will take more than one little-cited paper by an author from a different field, published in a low-influence journal, before we would include the opposing view. But beyond that, the paper's title and the way you are summarizing it are misleading. The paper makes its point that the gambler's fallacy may in some cases be rational only by redefining the term "fallacy" to mean a behavior instead of a belief. What the paper tells us is that someone who is following a rational betting strategy (if you accept the assumption that Martingale could ever be a rational strategy) might appear to believe in the gambler's fallacy, even if they actually don't. So it's basically reciting a truism: Someone who doesn't believe the fallacy doesn't believe the fallacy. That adds nothing to our article, and in fact will only confuse readers. Toohool (talk) 02:14, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See above, Toohool, for the neo-Nazi site. Drmies (talk) 04:32, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You accuse me of fabricating motives but then go back a year in order to fabricate motives from a past article to argue your case in this one? I only got involved in this as part of a project in a data science class to determine how long it takes for an anarchic experiment in democratic knowledge accumulation to become, as eventually they always do, a cult of a few restricting knowledge to acceptable forms. Turns out it does not take long. I will file an appeal. If I am excluded from editing forever, no big loss since I never expected to be back anyway.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerianodiviacchi (talk • contribs)

Hi, Valerianodiviacchi. I saw the post you made on ANI and thought I would try to help, because I think there's a fundamental misconception going on here.

At the core, the issue isn't whether the article mentioned in your edit is credible (although there is an issue there as well); it's that it is a single, primary source of a fringe viewpoint, and that type of addition is not appropriate for an encyclopaedia. As such, it is excluded under Wikipedia policy. I note that you were directed to WP:UNDUE, which is part of the WP:NPOV policy, but I think WP:FALSEBALANCE is a little clearer on the subject:

While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. There are many such beliefs in the world, some popular and some little-known: claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones. Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. We do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers, for or against; we merely omit this information where including it would unduly legitimize it, and otherwise include and describe these ideas in their proper context with respect to established scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world. (Emphasis mine.)

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, which means that it is not and never can be at the forefront of research, because it exists to summarise an existing, accepted body of research. As a result, primary sources like journal articles are actually not the best thing to use here. It may be acceptable at some point in the future if it gains sufficient traction within the academic world to be referenced extensively in secondary sources, but at the moment, it has all the encyclopaedic importance of something someone once said in a pub.

If you made the edit as part of a data science project, then you were beginning from a faulty premise and your project is doomed to fail, I'm afraid. Hope the info I've given here helps you understand why. (PS: please remember to sign your talk page edits with ~~~~.) Marianna251TALK 16:14, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, my project has succeeded. This explanation and argument for deletion could just as equally be made against the "retrospective gambler's fallacy" section that I added that was only edited for minor aesthetic reasons by editors and is still present --- though perhaps not for long. The only difference is that the editors do not understand how one argument relates to the other and thus accepts the retrospective view through naivete. Ultimately, all decisions of allowance or deletion in any writing will be made for aesthetic reasons and rationally justified after the fact especially when editing is done by those who view the work as a source of meaning. Thank you for your time but there is no need to continue argument on this. Good luck on your work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerianodiviacchi (talk • contribs)

So you weren't trying to contribute to Wikipedia, you were trying to make a point? --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Inspector General ‖ 20:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of arguing this on your own talk page, you should discuss your proposed changes at Talk:Gambler's fallacy. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Welfare State ‖ 20:38, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was trying to contribute and to see what happens. I am not allowed to do two things at once? This is why projects such as this always eventually become what they did not want to become. If there is this much trouble on a simple issue few persons care about, it must be impossible to contribute anything challenging. I will not contribute again; you win; let it go.Valerianodiviacchi (talk) 20:48, 23 January 2018 (UTC)valeriano[reply]

I'm afraid you're simply wrong. If you regarded Wikipedia as "an anarchic experiment in democratic knowledge accumulation", then you began from a false premise, because it's an encyclopaedia with policies and guidelines, which means it is a) not anarchic, b) not democratic, and c) not an indiscriminate collection of information. Marianna251TALK 01:53, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you read Wikepedia's own entries on its history and on "encyclopedia".— Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerianodiviacchi (talk • contribs) 03:40, January 24, 2018 (UTC)

Gamblers' Fallacy[edit]

I am not inventing moitives, that is what you and the other editor said. Both of you disagreed with the scholar's reasoning and conclusions and deleted my addition. What s the appeal process for this dispute? Unless both of you are mathematicians or philosophers of mathematics, this argument will will be a waste of time. What is the appeal process? Valerianodiviacchi (talk) 00:18, 23 January 2018 (UTC) My insertion is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gambler%27s_fallacy&oldid=821600380#When_the_Fallacy_may_Become_Rational[reply]

It's nothing to do with disagreeing with the reasoning. This is a single primary source from 11 years ago, by someone whose credentials are not even in the right field, published in Social Science Research Network, which is a pre-print service. your edit gives undue weight to a single view, and may in act amount to a novel synthesis. Oh, and it also fails our style guide. Guy (Help!) 23:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC) I have already argued all this in the previous talk page. This repeated page is an error.[reply]

I have a degree in mathematics, and have taught statistics related classes. As I pointed out here, the math in the paper is simply wrong. I'm stunned at how many people are listed in the third footnote. I started to call them reviewers, but the footnote is worded very carefully. It makes a reference to reviewers, but then goes on to thank a list of people, including some extremely notable people such as Kahneman and Thaler, without characterizing those people. A casual reader might be fooled into thinking those people had actually read the paper. I don't believe for a second that Richard Thaler read the paper, and missed the math errors in the first couple pages. The math errors are not arithmetic errors, so might be missed by people who have not taken a probability class, but anyone who has taken Probability 101, will understand that one has to take care in counting cases. The error is mildly subtle (it took me a few minutes to track it down), and I'll AGF that it is not deliberate, but if that error passed peer review, then the peer review system is broken.S Philbrick (Talk) 15:18, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That said, you did ask about the appeal process. The first step is to engage in a discussion on the article talk page. I contributed there, not simply stating that it is wrong, but showing the corrected calculation. At a minimum, you need to engage in that discussion. If you are persuaded that I am wrong, and cannot convince me, we can discuss next steps in the appeal process.S Philbrick (Talk) 15:22, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is already on appeal. As I already told you, this talk page is an inadvertent repetition. Look above. This is new though; you want to turn Wikepedia not into an encyclopedia but a peer review journal. Wikepedia editors really have no clue as to what they are doing. As I said above, I will never edit again; you win; let it go.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerianodiviacchi (talk • contribs) 18:23, January 24, 2018 (UTC)