Talk:Heaven and Earth (book)

Prot: Why?

Apart from some sock edits, there isn't a lot of reverting here, so it is unclear why the page is protected, let alone why it needs prot until 03:57, 13 August 2010 (UTC). So it isn't really clear what needs to be discussed to end the prot. Not that I care much, since it is prot on my version, in clear violation of WP:WRONG William M. Connolley (talk) 13:18, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

A short protection is reasonable, to resolve brewing disputes. ATren (talk) 13:27, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Who's brewing a dispute? A semi protection would have stopped the problematic IP edits, and simple encouragement to get an account. The scibaby socks shouldn't result in no editing to the article being allowed. Verbal chat 13:28, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Viridae has a long-standing grudge against some of the editors here, and is best buddies with Cla68 (who is still griping about an argument he had with WMC three years ago). It's an attempt to annoy or provoke without actually editing the article. Don't take the bait. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if AT considers 2010 to be a short protection? Howver, as well as the clearly f*ck*d up duration, the question was: exactly which dispute are we being protected from? I don't see anyone attempting to discuss whatever the issue is supposed to be William M. Connolley (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if AT considers 2010 to be a short protection? No, of course not, but it's clearly not 2010. ATren (talk) 14:46, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The edit protection is a week. It's the move protection that goes to 2010. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:50, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Oops, *I* f*ck*d that up. apologies, and striken William M. Connolley (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that people just revert sensible improvements instead of giving them appropriate consideration and collaborating to further refine the text. The article is poorly written. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:23, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Spiffy, but vague. Care to be more precise about what changes you might like to see (you get extra bonus points if the current protection is even vaguely relevant to your suggestions, or perhaps more accurately V does) William M. Connolley (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You're too late on that, but nonetheless if you have suggestions for improvement please make them. If you don't have suggestions for improvement - please find another page to talk on William M. Connolley (talk) 21:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm never late Connolley. But your personal attacks on Viriditas Viridae and snarky commentary are very unbecoming. It's really no wonder you lost your tools. One of the changes I made was to clarify that the "is a popular science book" bit is meant to indicate that the book is in the popular science genre not that it's a bestseller. If I'm mistaken on that feel free to correct me, but the link is to the genre and not to a sales category. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:56, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You've got the wrong V. You also need to read User:William M. Connolley/For me/The naming of cats, unless you're being deliberately impolite. Diff? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:01, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I made a series of edits including this one clarifying that one source was disputing another [1]. A third party source would be needed to establish there are factual errors. Other edits follow. Are you not familiar with how edit history works? There's a tab at the top of the article page. Cheers. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

[2] is you downplaying IP's errors; I'm not sure why you think anyone else would regard that as an improvement. Don't bother to thank me for correcting you about the V's William M. Connolley (talk) 22:19, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

(24.205.142.176 was Scibaby too.) -Atmoz (talk) 22:26, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The IP's edit were no more problematic from a behavioural standpoint than anyone elses edits, so semi protection, locking one side out of a content dispute is clearly inappropriate. The article is protected because almost every edit for the 24 hours up until the protection was a revert of some form. Looking at the accounts that were edit warring, I see two of them have been blocked as socks, so will now remove the protection, as thre should be noone to continue that side of the revert war. Lastly SHB, next time you make accusations of bias, please provide supporting evidence, or don't make them at all. Viridae^Talk 20:57, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You've got your timeline a bit wrong. They had both been blocked before you applied protection. Lastly, V, next time you make protections, please make appropriate checks beforehand, or don't interfere at all William M. Connolley (talk) 21:43, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with Viridae's actions here, and will note that Nishkid64 just locked Ian Plimer for similar reasons and longer duration, yet that action draws no charges of "interference". ATren (talk) 22:12, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Nishkid64 applied semi-protection, not full. That's the difference. -Atmoz (talk) 23:29, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, OK, I missed that. In any case, Viridae is uninvolved, and he protected it (on WMC's version, btw) when he saw what appeared to be a revert war on an article that was just involved in an edit war last week, then reversed it when parties informed him that the socks had been blocked. I see no problem with his actions. We don't all have finely tuned Scibaby radar. :-) ATren (talk) 23:48, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You're very forgiving when it suits you. It doesn't take much in the way of radar to spot Scibaby socks *when they have already been blocked* a point you seem to have lightly skipped over William M. Connolley (talk) 22:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

It's called assuming good faith. Read about it sometime. :-) ATren (talk) 22:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Semi-protection does seem appropriate here, given the repeated interventions by Scibaby sockpuppets. (Is there any way of blocking him for good, i.e. blocking the underlying IP address?) -- ChrisO (talk) 22:23, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, Scibaby socks are named accounts not IPs, so semi-prot wouldn't even work, right? ATren (talk) 22:26, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

He uses both IPs and named accounts, in fact a very wide range of IP addresses (see here). Semiprotection requires not just a named account but an autoconfirmed account, i.e., at least four days old with ten edits. He does create "aged" socks to get around this but semiprotection would at least inconvenience him. His two latest sockpuppets here were new accounts so semiprotection would have helped. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I thought he used only autoconfirmed accounts. ATren (talk) 23:51, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The lede

I have rejigged the lede slightly. In good faith and attempting to maintain balance and I'll revert if anyone requests it.

I think there was too much discussion of the topic in the lede. It needs to be clear that the book does not represent a mainstream view, but I think it was going a little overboard. I also felt that the first sentence was a little clunky with the mention of Adelaide University. It's still clear that the "conservative press" has lauded the book but that "others, including scientists" have derided it. Thepm (talk) 04:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I reverted for you. Look at the archives for this page please. A large cohort of editors argued this article into some sort of consensus, and it would be good if you did not re-start that process. Thanks. ► RATEL ◄ 06:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll note that we state that The Australian is "one such conservative source" but then later use the same newspaper as a source for the quote that the book is "so wrong as to be laughable." Could you also make some sort of edit that addresses the inconsistency? Thepm (talk) 06:36, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The Australian is mostly conservative but occasionally carries a dissenting opinion. I'm not sure we need to state that subtle nicety in the article. But I'll look at it. ► RATEL ◄ 06:40, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time. Thepm (talk) 06:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Criticisms of the book

Reading through the article, the criticisms of the book seem largely to be of the "I don't like it" sort. There's lots of "disservice to science", "it's nonsense", "another case of alarmism" and "it's science fiction" comments, but little criticism of substance. There is nothing that I could see that says "Plimer said X which is wrong because of Y". Surely there must be some more substantive criticisms that have been reported in the press that could be included? Thepm (talk) 06:07, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The exact scientific errors and criticisms can be found in the refs and footnotes. Read the article properly. Wikipedia is not the place to restate these arguments. There are over 100 errors in the book, as one of the refs points out. ► RATEL ◄ 06:28, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

In which case, do we really need a list of all the people that agree together with their "I don't like it" comments? Wouldn't it be better to provide a list of the key errors? Thepm (talk) 06:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

They said more than they don't like it, they said it was full of errors. When an expert in climate says a book about climate is full of errors, that's the important thing. We don't need all the scientific and mathematical jargon to prove it. The encyclopedia has a general readership, and the experts can go to the sources. ► RATEL ◄ 06:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Plimer's errors are probably peripheral and fairly minor. If they were major errors regarding the thrust of Plimer's arguments, I'm sure the Pro-AGW editors would gladly include them. This should tell us why the criticisms are confined to vague claims as User:Thepm pointed out. 71.254.15.230 (talk) 18:11, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Should I assume then that the article is fine just the way it is? Thepm (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Unless you want another major stoush, yes. ► RATEL ◄ 06:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

New ref: http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/371-7da-7-1e William M. Connolley (talk) 08:54, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Well spotted - I added it. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:33, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

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Citing Andrew Alexander's opinion

Ratel added a cite of an opinion about the book by Andrew Alexander (journalist) on 16 July 2009. After later changes and additions the cited text became "The British Daily Mail's right-wing[44][45][46] columnist Andrew Alexander called it "the best book on science and scientists I have ever read" and declared that "piece by piece, he takes apart the work of the fanatics."[47] David Gerard removed it all on 12 May 2020, with edit summary = "rm deprecated source the Daily Mail WP:DAILYMAIL ("generally prohibited" per RFC; should not be used or trusted for any claim or purpose". I reverted, saying that the edit summary was false because this is a cite of opinion, which is not prohibited. David Gerard re-inserted, restating the Daily Mail claim and adding "In any case, it is clearly WP:UNDUE, and its addition appears contrived." Although David Gerard is wrong about WP:DAILYMAIL, WP:UNDUE is a real thing. My opinion is: the text should be restored to what it was before David Gerard's edit. Are there other opinions? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:04, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I can see a few people in WP:DAILYMAIL claiming it lets opinions through; the final RFC summary, as endorsed by multiple admins, clearly doesn't. Last time this was raised at WP:RSN, a short while ago, it generated a lot of opinion on opinion, but not a consensus to change the RFC. If you want to change the outcome of WP:DAILYMAIL to let opinion through, WP:RSN is the venue to do so - not a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS on a talk page - David Gerard (talk) 17:09, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

David Gerard: you are wrong, as I've explained before. But your WP:DUE and "contrived" objections can be looked at -- the "multiple admins" closers agreed that some opinions are okay but one said re citing this kind of column: "it would still be acceptable (though one might question why we need the opinion of Person X from the Daily Mail." That can be decided here. Are there other opinions?Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:53, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I added it originally, mainly to show how the right wing press were in violent agreement with the denier elements of the book. I think that is still shown in the WP article without the reference to the junky Daily Mail and its journalists. I approve of the removal of the Daily Mail from the list of RSes. I approve of the removal of the text I inserted. Ratel 🌼 (talk) 00:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

OK. Unless a bunch of other people join in and say otherwise, I guess we can call this a consensus to remove in this case. In other cases, if I happen to notice David Gerard again removing a valid cite with an incorrect edit summary, we'll see how it goes. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 00:53, 13 May 2020 (UTC)