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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Center for Range Voting (2nd nomination)

Normally one "keep" !vote from an article's creator is not a consensus so initially I relisted this but then started having a deja vu flashback to the whole Garrison Courtney mess so I closed it. However, since this isn't normally something a non-admin closer should do, there's a chance it might be reopened by a neutral admin. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:37, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't particularly normal that there was an AfD from an obvious sock of somebody, who registers and, same day, files an MfD in a few minutes. But thanks. I think the other !vote was for merge, and merge to Range voting may be better than leaving it as a separate article; Range voting is a regular can of worms that I'd rather not touch at this point; while I have no COI, I've been pretty involved with the Range voting people; there is stuff in the article that is True (TM registered), but not necessarily sourced, and right now I'm a tad tied up. Looking at the AfD, it would still seem you relisted it, but you would not get any flack from me over that. Given that the Center for Range Voting is notable, covered in RS, there should remain, at least, a redirect to Range voting, hence delete would be inappropriate. You could also have closed as Merge (Keep), which essentially expresses the intention to merge, but doesn't necessarily accomplish it, because it's not just a matter of pushing a button (admin closure to delete) but of actually merging content. Or just as No Consensus, given the low participation.

As to creator, yes, I created this incarnation of the article, but it existed before I was active. It had been AfD'd, with low participation, by the editor who I suspect may be the current nominator.

Nothing wrong with non-admin closures for AfDs that have run the term. Frankly, I'd allow non-admin delete closures, with a speedy tag then placed on the article, and a category created for it. There already is a category, I think, AfD'd pages can be speedied if recreated, why not the first time? Thanks for your work maintaining the project. --Abd (talk) 20:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I had originally relisted it and then closed it. However, as I suspected it might, it was reopened and re-relisted by a neutral admin. Also, lately it is not unusual for brand new editors to drop out of the sky and nominate articles for deletion. In your case, it almost looked like a repeat of the Garrison Courtney mess. When this happens I wonder the same things. Where did this guy come from? How did he know about AFD so quick? However, I usually try to assume good faith and say "well, it might be a long time IP editor who created an account to make the nomination. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:14, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Sekret Kabal

Both User:Short Brigade Harvester Boris and User:Guettarda have expressed disappointment that you haven't included them in the not-so-sekret kabal. Could you rectify this omission, please? William M. Connolley (talk) 18:15, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

No need to thank me [1] William M. Connolley (talk) 18:35, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll thank you anyway. Thanks, my profuse and unrelenting gratitude is due to you for the issues you efficiently raised, for the ultimate benefit of the community. I'll look and attempt to comply with the request. Did either of them !vote in RfC/GoRight? The names I listed were simply those who (1) were in editorial conflict with GoRight and (2) !voted with you and Raul in the RfC. It's neutral. I may have not updated the evidence file, compiled during the RfC, to show all the !votes. I'd give you a barnstar if I didn't anticipate you'd think it was sarcastic. Really. --Abd (talk) 18:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a bit of a problem with the method that you used to determine if there was a cabal, see my complete commentary wondering about some points. Did you try to apply your method to the people !voting positively to see if your method concluded also that there was a cabal among them? You know, making a prediction that the method will say that there is no cabal among positive commenters, and then using them as a control group to see if the method still gives the same result as using the negative commenters (also a cabal) or if it gives the predicted result (no cabal).

And notice that this is all about Jason Patton appearing on the list, and the editors supposedly belonging to the same cabal wondering who in heavens is that person that is supposed to be in the same cabal as them. As a good-faith advice, I advice you that you are including too much irrelevant info there, that this confuses people who are getting stuck trying to understand what is that irrelevant info doing there instead of paying attention at the important info (liek those editors wondering about Patton), and that this hurts the argument that you are trying to make. (Then again, you have been given this advice before by other editors, I expect that the list that I made in the evidence page serves the purpose of refreshing your memory.... hopefully this time you will interiorize the advice instead of dismissing it out as incorrect.....well, good luck with your evidence, I just can't resist at least making a try at giving advice to people when I think that this could help them, so I just had to drop by, sorry if I was a nuisance) --Enric Naval (talk) 16:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

No, this is not all about Jason Patton. The "list" at the point when the above was placed by WMC, purely for amusement, included Jason Patton because he did what qualified editors for inclusion. If you'd read the evidence there carefully, you'd see that there is no allegation whatever that Jason Patton is a member of any cabal. All that happened was that he participated in revert warring with GoRight, then endorsed the position of the RfC certifiers, WMC and Raul654. If you actually want to understand what's been happening, overall, you should read that RfC carefully, the whole thing. And read the full evidence I presented. And notice the complete absence of crossover, that is, agreement across the factional lines. Notice the editors who supported my evidence; two of them were subsequently elected to ArbComm; that should give you a clue that something has been going on that you have not understood, and you've allowed yourself to become aligned with a fairly difficult faction that has gradually been losing influence. ScienceApologist was tight with this group, as was JzG.

At that point, Enric, I was completely uninvolved with any of these editors, and neither was I involved with the articles. What you've done is give me advice for months that was either (1) obvious, or (2) wrong. I listen to it all anyway. Of course I'm not going to leave all that detail, and if you imagine and expect that I would, you've not been paying attention.

I do understand and believe that you have been trying to help, but there is a possibility you have missed. Given my age and experience, as well as my qualifications, you really should suspect that I might understand things you don't. I generally understood Oppenheimer-Phillips process, I'd been studying stuff like that since I was about twelve years old. I also knew what I didn't know, i.e., the limits of my knowledge; ScienceApologist quite clearly has more knowledge, but not necessarily better ability to express this kind of physics well for a general readership. Together, I think, we were able to to a better job than either of us alone could have accomplished, but, please note: SA had an agenda that relates to Cold fusion. Part of what I was doing was to make sure that he didn't "accidentally" create POV slant to later be used at Cold fusion. That was what some of the back-and-forth was about. This wasn't about the science itself. --Abd (talk) 21:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

One more point. The evidence isn't complete. Notice that no conclusion has been put up. All there is are some lists. So what do you think is the "method I used to determine that there was a cabal"? I have not revealed that method, only some pieces of it. --Abd (talk) 21:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Good point, I'll look again when you are done. Notice that I have made a motion to get more time to gather evidence, this means that you will also have more time to develop your evidence well and get it finished by when the arbs start making proposals.

I'll just mention that I think you missed an important point of my advice (which you can take or not, of course): humans are falible and they get distracted by things they perceive as out-of-place. So, even if frame very carefully your list, people will still get confused by finding the name of an editor that they don't recognize, and this will distract them and cause them to start side discussions and can damage their perception of your evidence. Your point would be better served by putting some context "two more editors that didn't comment later on the other page: X and Y"

I look at Talk:Oppenheimer–Phillips_process, and I see SA explaining you a few misconceptions and errors that you had. Anyways, you say that the article currently explains the process well to a general readship? Well, doh, I would go and add a "layman summary" section using only the Bohr model and warning that quantum mechanics has made that explanation inaccurate. But that's me, and I should go first and check how the guys at Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics have solved that issue in similar articles, and look if there is a featured article or good article in this topic, to see how the author solved it. Anyways, moot point since I'm not going to be touching that article for a long time, and when I do that I'll be asking SA or some other editor to make sure that I don't botch anything.

And about that thing of watching SA so he couldn't purposefully introduce POV-slanted errors into the article to push his POV in cold fusion.... well, remember AGF and stuff, and don't throw bad-faith assumptions in the middle of comments because it annoys the other editors, and they will be less open to collaborating with you if they know that you do those assumptions when you talk about his actions. (Really, stop doing that, it really hurts your relationship with other editors, others have told you before about this, stop doing it already) --Enric Naval (talk) 14:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

First of all, SA did appear to "explain" misconceptions, but I did not actually hold those misconceptions. He simply assumed them. This is why it's so dangerous for you to be judging such interchanges, you don't understand enough of the physics to follow them with understanding. SA's comments did not revise my understanding of the physics, generally. He'd simply misunderstood my text, assuming that I it implied things. If it was important, we could look in detail. I did discuss this at article Talk, but you seem to have an assumption from the comments of some highly opinionated and attached editors such as Mathsci, who has shown no knowledge at all of the cold fusion field; he's got who may have the math, we may assume, to understand the theoretical work, but the whole point of the cold fusion affair is that established theory was missing something, and math alone wouldn't find it until the mathematicians among the quantum physicists look where they didn't expect to find anything. Math is only as good as the assumptions you feed it. Likewise there is Kirk shanahan, who goes further and actually distorts the experimental record, claiming, for example, that there were no controls when there were, as the literature shows, and generally impugning all evidence by merely showing that he has a possible explanation for some of the results that doesn't involve nuclear reactions. He then simply assumes that the rest of it must be artifact, that's clear. Several editors have tried to pin him down on this, and he simply starts attacking them, he claims that it's obvious and they are too lazy or not bright enough to understand the record. In fact, I do understand Shanahan's objections, generally. And you frequently don't believe me. Why, Enric? If you looked at what underlies your assumptions, you might realize what has been happening. You would be confronting the roots of your feelings, which many people dislike doing, very much.

You have mentioned, I think, Scuro and Miamomimi. Same thing happened with them, most provably with Scuro. Take a look at the recent ADHD arbitration, where I was named as a party. It all became pretty obvious. Many of the same kinds of charges you have made against me were made by Scuro, and see how ArbComm dealt with it. Scuro got off easy. I did not support the filing of that case, by the way, it was my judgment that it wasn't necessary.

Bad-faith assumptions about SA? Enric, did you follow his Fringe science ban? SA is known for some rather devious stuff, such as making harmless spelling corrections in order to troll for a block so that he could then, knowing he had a great deal of support, complain loudly about being blocked for making harmless edits. They weren't harmless, for him, because disruption was, in fact, his intention, and when that was shown, and in spite of all the support he had from WMC -- who quite strongly dismissed the idea of blocking someone for harmless edits (even if banned) as "stupid" -- and many others, he was blocked, and is now on a short leash. Don't get me wrong, I assume that SA's purpose is to benefit the project, and I supported SA's efforts to continue to work on articles during his block; he merely believes that his POV is correct and true and that the project is benefited if his POV prevails over all others. Was I "proxying for a banned editor" in doing this, Enric? Remember, I reverted his edit to the article, making a spelling correction, while he was banned? Why was that not "proxying" when my reverts of JedRothwell were? Is it because of the POV of the editor? Please realize, you've been looking at things through a very tinted lens. SA is a "majority POV-pusher," par excellence, he's stated that, in Galileo's time, he'd be solidly on the side of banning his work. Doesn't that give you some pause? Doesn't it worry you that you are aligned with an editor like Mathsci, who is editors who are quite like ScienceApologist in certain ways, only worse? You have jumped on board a sinking ship, Enric, and, yes, given your energy before ArbComm, you could indeed be sanctioned. Is it uncivil of me to warn you about that? On my own Talk page, when I previously asked you not to post here? Why did I ask you that, Enric?

I asked you because I saw that your warnings and questions here had no effect but to further enrage you. I've not been blocked or even warned by neutral administrators about the actions that you are so convinced are so negative. Believe me, I do pay close attention to warnings. --Abd (talk) 15:42, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Although this may be you talk page, you are not entitled to make personal attacks against other editors as you have just made against me. Please refactor your comments. Mathsci (talk) 16:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, if my comments above are "personal attacks," what you have written elsewhere about me, in many places, for a long time, would have to qualify abundantly as such. Ask a neutral editor to warn me or to mediate this if you wish to pursue dispute resolution on this. You edit warred to remove yourself as a party from the case, and you were allowed to get away with that. Have you ever considered why? Let me tell you: it's because being listed as a party is basically unimportant, you were shooting yourself in the foot by trying to be excluded. Your behavior will be examined, where it is relevant to the present case, as it is.

Nevertheless, since you have requested it, I'm striking the comment. Why argue over useless distinctions? --Abd (talk) 16:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

@Abd. Meh, too late, that list of editors has already unleashed quite the storm-in-teapot. I understand that one editor notified every single editor that appeared on the list, because of the list being under a header saying "There is a cabal". Oh, well....

Hah, you also made a minor correction to an article that you were banned from, just like SA did (yeah, I know, the details differ). Quite honestly, you can warn me in my talk page about anything you want. I don't think that you can't come up with anything worse than what other people have already posted there XD About me misjuging you due to the influence of other editors, I'll say that there are just too many experts in science saying that you are simply wrong. I see that some actually agree with some of your points, but that this get drowned out by how you insist in upholding stuff that you have been told that is wrong, you should really correct this behaviour if you want those experts to go and support you.

About me jumping on board of a sinking ship, I can't agree with that. Ditto for being sanctioned by Arbcom. It's this sort of statements that made me an evidence section titled "comments out of touch with reality". Anyways, what sort of sanction do you expect Arbcom to give me? A topic ban from cold fusion? An admonishment about a certain editing behaviour that I have? If so, which behaviour? --Enric Naval (talk) 02:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

First of all, SBHB did not notify every editor. Just the ones who had not already commented in the RfAr, I think. Whatever he did, it's quite remarkable, his notification list was the editors who I would not have any basis for including in the "cabal," at least not yet. Beetstra, for example, he's obviously not a cabal editor, he doesn't support the cabal positions, at all. The only "hit" is his support for my ban, and he was peeved at me at that point, he's got a temper, but, generally, he calms down and we can then get some serious work done, and quite a bit has been done, overall, he's been very helpful, as you know. (He makes the wall of text argument, but then replies with more text; his evidence in RfAr/Abd and JzG was embarassing, he presented voluminous evidence for moot points, I think he was concerned that ArbComm would demolish the blacklisting process, instead it merely confirmed what I'd been arguing for all along: blacklisting wasn't to be used for content control, a web site shouldn't be blacklisted because it's allegedly "fringe" or "POV," but only for linkspam, which wasn't happening with lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com. There are other possible reasons for blacklisting, but they all amount to serious damage being done by allowing links (such as a site hosting malware). Content control is to be left to editors and is not to be the province of administrators, as such. This is an example, Enric, where my position was severely opposed by a series of editors, but was, in the end, quietly confirmed, and accepted as consensus.

If anyone has been actually uncivil to you because of your behavior toward me and I'll check it out and probably ask them to stop. Two wrongs doesn't make a right.

Too many experts in science saying that I am simply wrong? Who? I hope you don't mean Mathsci! He doesn't know cold fusion from a cold beer. Remember, the whole point of cold fusion is that something was found that classical theory, which is what he would know and possibly even be expert on, did not explain. Nothing that he has written provides any clue that he's familiar with the actual research. He's a mathematician, not an experimental scientist. His expertise would be purely with theory. It's possible that one of the early theories was correct, but it is way too soon to tell, Preparata -- I've just seen RS that may be on this, it's now up on lenr-canr.org -- did predict helium proportional to heat and no neutrons, early on. Enric, my claim is, based on many conversations, that you do not understand the physics or the evidence, and that this leaves you with nothing but emotional reactions on which to base your opinions of me. You have no way of discriminating between cogent criticism of my comments and raw POV assumptions and assertions, and, I hate to break your bubble, but real experts sometimes have strong opinions and argue unfairly.

I'm not asking any particular editor to "support me." However, Enric, there are plenty of real scientists who are in quite strong agreement with me, both in direct conversations, mostly off-wiki, and in terms of examples you can see. Try looking at the videos of Robert Duncan (physicist), or the experts who spoke at the seminar he gave on cold fusion at the University of Michigan recently. If you can't find the URLs I could get them for you. How about trying to become more informed?

I've been arguing for the use of RS guidelines to determine due weight, and for the principle that if facts are in reliable source, they should not be excluded from the project, though how they are presented may be subject to caution. And due weight at articles should then be determined by the weight of reliable sources. What ArbComm has been too unclear about is how this is done. I'm promoting the concept of measuring NPOV by degree of consensus obtained. The goal should be to maximize it, but at no point does this mean giving up the rights of the majority or pandering to minorities. Wouldn't it be preposterous to neglect the views of the majority in favor of "maximizing a consensus" where the majority didn't willingly accept it?

This is where my prior organizational experience comes in. I've worked with highly diverse groups of people who could sometimes hardly agree on the time of day, and yet I found, that, with patience, consensus could be found, and all agreed that it was better than what they originally preferred. All. That some of us would imagine this isn't desirable -- even though it might sometimes be difficult -- shows me how seriously deranged some of the community is in some ways. It ought to be obvious.

And the result of that blindness is Scibaby, 300 sock puppets. What motivated this editor to do that? If you think that the editor was simply perverse, you haven't been paying attention. This editor was abused, Enric, and when you abuse people, some of them don't take it lying down, some of them respond in ways you might not like. One can never be sure, but what if Scibaby had been welcomed, perhaps by an editor with similar POV, who explained to him why the article was the way it was, showed him the backstory which had been compiled and where the real consensus that had been worked out, and why this was better than simply pushing this shared POV (if it's a minority POV, and the consensus is broken, the majority POV will prevail and might easily be worse than the status quo.) And then the new editor was invited to review the backstory, the evidence and arguments presented, and if anything was missing, the two of these could discuss it and decide if the backstory needed some work, and, if they could gain consensus on this, based on new evidence and arguments, the consensus might shift. Scibaby might have been converted into a fully cooperative and useful member of the community, being welcomed and respected and not just rejected because of his "ignorance" or "POV pushing." Enric, this was part of Jimbo's vision, and it's been subverted by too many editors and administrators who never understood it.

If a new editor was truly disruptive, the one to call for blocks and sanctions would be someone from the editor's POV! I also worked in San Quentin State Prison and was familiar with how prison gangs worked. It was explained to me by a long-time inmate, a lifer. A Muslim had been stabbed; this was a Muslim who was "white," I forget the actual ethnic background, and the one stabbing him was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood; I was told that it was done because the attacker wanted to make a name for himself. These inmates were in a transitional part of the facility, they would be sent to another state prison. As was normal, the stabbed inmate refused to give the name of his attacker to the prison authorities. I was told that there were ways that the black muslim inmates, who were pretty tightly organized, would find out where the attacker was being sent and a message would be sent to the leader of the black muslims there. And this leader would have a conversation with the Aryan Brotherhood leader there. Nobody wants a race riot in the prison, it makes life seriously unpleasant, for all sides. And the attacker would be punish. By his own people. No race riot, but rough justice. It's actually ancient tribal law. We could derive some lessons from it.

Most of us recognize that we can build a better project if we can cooperate. But how? I think I know how, Enric, and that is why I've been considered disruptive for years. Gradually, I've been demonstrating little pieces of it. Most of these pieces aren't highly visible, they might be as simple as starting up a mediation page in my user space and inviting two editors who have been edit warring to discuss their dispute where I can guide it. I saw two editors seriously headed for blocks from edit warring, one was an expert and one not. Either one or both could have been blocked, easily. Instead, they ended up in complete agreement, Enric. Complete. And they've been able to cooperate ever since. What is the value of that?

Cold fusion is a particularly difficult article because the alleged scientific consensus was formed by abnormal procedures twenty years ago. Originally, the weight of RS was negative, but now the weight of publication in reliable sources favors cold fusion, by a substantial margin. Science moves on, it is not static. I'm not proposing that Wikipedia "right outside wrongs," but only that we follow policies and guidelines instead of synthesizing what amounts to raw personal opinion and POV from obsolete sources, no longer applicable. I came to the conclusion that there are low energy nuclear reactions, all right, though there remain other possibilities. (Hydrino theory, for example, doesn't necessarily involve any nuclear reactions, but only previously undiscovered energy levels for neutrons, at fractional energies of the Bohr minimum.) (It goes all the way up to 1/237, as I recall, in the theory, at which point the electron is in a very small orbit, energy way below normal, quite close to the nucleus, and its velocity would exceed the speed of light if it went to 1/238, i.e., that's the limit.) Do I believe hydrino theory? No, not at all, but, Enric, there is reliable source on it, which is why Hipocrite finally put up contrary reliable source, which I accepted, even though the overall quality of those sources did not necessarily match that for the hydrino side. I'm quite willing to "err" on the side of what seems to be majority opinion among scientists in general, even where I know that specialists have a different opinion.

You'll see, Enric. I assume the mediation will proceed. I'm not a "scientist," Enric, but I understand science, the principle, and, as I've mentioned, I've studied nuclear physics since I was about twelve. What I really am is a writer and editor, mostly a writer, but I was once an editor, professionally.

Ah, yes. The hazards you face at ArbComm. I just wanted to make sure you understood what you are getting into. You want specifics? Well, that would take much more text from me. Yes, you might be banned from cold fusion. Others have been banned for less, actually. It would be a bit of a shame, you are not the worst editor involved. I doubt that I will push for any sanctions against you, I'm far more concerned by admin abuse, which does more damage than individual editors can generally manage. (Note that most administrative actions are just fine, but the exceptions can be doozies, and they can cause permanent harm, very difficult to correct because it's off-wiki, i.e., damage to the general reputation of Wikipedia. Once those opinions are written, the world is not a wiki, it's not just a matter of Undo.) But your evidence presentation, as it is, will be a sign to ArbComm that you are obsessed, that you have personalized the dispute, and you might be subject to a ban, or possibly, some editing restrictions or even just a reprimand or "advice." It can be very difficult to predict what ArbComm will do, specifically, I can only tell you that there is a risk, always. I certainly understand that. You are almost certain, I'd say, to be advised regarding dispute resolution procedures, about which you seem to have little clue. You might try reading WP:DR. Hint: simply warning editors isn't part of DR process, nor are AN or AN/I. Trying to get editors banned is not part of DR process, that is what happens when the process breaks down. More than others, you have to some degree, engaged in direct discussion, but I have seen little sign that you respect what's being said to you. Enric, I suspect I'm twice your age. That gives me no special rights, but it should give you some pause. If I'm correct, I have far more experience with the world than you have. If you want to learn quickly, you'll drop your idea that you understand more than a little. That doesn't mean agreeing with me. It simply means abandoning your own assumption of being right, and becoming open to new possibilities and new ideas. If you can do this, it will benefit you for the rest of your life. If not, well, you will not be able to say that you weren't advised. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

*sighs* I think that you are wrong in many aspects, and that it would take too long to explain them, and that we have already talked about many of those aspects in relative depth, so I don't think that rehashing my arguments again turns out to be a fruitful use of my time.

I think that we should go back to writing our evidence to the arbcom, since arbs are supposed to read it and reach a decision that is based on it, so the evidence better be well written and convincing. While this discussion is interesting, it is draining me out of time that I need for other stuff on-wiki and off-wiki. Let's use that time in writing that evidence. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I apologize for distracting you. Can we agree on something before you go? Do we agree that we both want ArbComm to make the best decision for the welfare of the project, being appropriately informed and presented with the best arguments? --Abd (talk) 13:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we can agree on that. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Good sign. Fare well. Given time, we could resolve this, but ArbComm may expedite it, and there may be some serious good come out of that. I'll be responding in the case to the claims you make about my behavior, hopefully, all of them, but it will probably not be at the top level, because most of it is moot for the case. But you raise lots of interesting issues, and if it were not for the fact that it would be mooning the jury, I'd love to respond to each. --Abd (talk) 14:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: Apologies

Abd, first off, I do not appreciate your insinuations that I am not acting neutrally in my role as a clerk in this case in such a public manner. If you have an issue with how I am performing my duties, it would be far more appropriate for you to approach me directly rather than openly state that you "hope I will grow into the role". I do find this highly insulting and ask that you at the very least remove that portion of your comment. There were details surrounding the Arkady situation that you were not made privy to due to the privacy policy; I was only told very little myself, but enough to realize that the actions Raul took were appropriate, albeit a bit hastily done and/or best left to someone less involved in the case. I was not "begging" anyone to behave; it was a friendly notice thanking him for his efforts whilst asking him to take a step back should it happen again. If you are wondering why my comment to Raul was made in such a different tone to, say, this one, it's because you have been asked multiple times to be more careful about how you word your statements so as to not offend others, whereas that's the first time to my knowledge Raul has taken such an active role in case management.

The "statements" I was referring to, requesting you reconsider their wording, do include your evidence where you mention a cabal. If you have already reworded it to attempt to avoid making unfounded accusations, or have provided additional evidence to back it up, then that is fine; that was the main concern in that discussion. To be honest, with all the incidents springing up all over the case, I haven't had much time to read much of the evidence properly myself.

As for your question about notifications, I'm not entirely clear on what you are asking, but if you mention a user in your evidence, and you feel that they play a major enough part in said evidence to merit notification, you are welcome to post a notice to their talk page letting them know that they have been mentioned and they may wish to comment as well. Notices posted to non-user talk pages are probably inappropriate as being too general. Any notices given out should more or less stick to the points I mentioned so as to avoid being biased in any way (basically, "I mentioned you in my evidence here (link), you may want to comment, kthxai", with more diplomacy and less lolspeak).

I hope this answers your questions and addresses (at least somewhat) your concerns about my conduct in this case. Should it not to either, please feel free to contact me, particularly if you have an issue with my actions. Again, I would ask that you remove the section of your statement where you call my actions into question; the rest of it I don't particularly care about whether it stays or not, since it sounds as thought it was largely accidental, and (aside from the one section) your comment was mostly constructive. See you around the case. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:25, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll admit that I continue to be concerned about the clerking in this case, and some aspects of your comment raise rather than reduce the concern. I've never before seen a clerking problem in the various cases in which I've commented, nor in the three recent cases in which I've actually been a party, except for this one; however, "concern" doesn't mean that I'm ready to formally complain. For one thing, it seems to me that you are being severely tried, by editors who are really not paying any attention to warnings, or who conveniently interpret warnings such as "Do not edit other's comments," as referring to others but not to them.

This case is being watched rather intently by some, and will be reviewed by others in the future, and if one set of editors is warned for violations of procedure, and another set for violations of procedure, but one set of warnings is relatively harsh and the other set is obsequious, it can present an appearance of partiality.

I recommend that you not particularly study the evidence, that's not your job, and if you form a strong opinion from it, it might affect your work as a clerk. As soon as you have a strong opinion from the evidence, you might have an obligation to recuse! But you are responsible to the Committee, not to me.

I will review the statement, I assume it's the one you closed, and redact anything regarding you that isn't necessary.

I do not believe that evidence from Raul654 should be trusted in cases where he is involved, and it's become quite clear he's involved here. It is blatantly obvious that his interpretations of evidence are self-serving, where I know the situation he's describing, so why should I trust that his secret evaluations are more neutral? Because of all the charges of "meat puppeting," I'm probably going to have to present evidence on Raul's activities, which, in my view, have seriously damaged the project, in almost incalculable ways, long-term. So that Raul is allowed to interfere with this case is of great concern, I hope that you can understand that. That's why I requested assurances from an arbitrator.

No suggestion was made that Raul or you should reveal specific checkuser information, but I only asked that you verify the names of checkusers who have confirmed an identification, which is perfectly appropriate, and, indeed, necessary. Unless there are very good -- and very unusual -- reasons, checkuser results should be documented, i.e., the privileged admin should take responsibility, and others should not report and rely on the evidence without attributing it, if possible. Otherwise, without any actual verification, the testimony of one becomes the testimony of many.

The most amazing thing about this case to me is the number of times that editors other than clerks have altered the statements of others, even after being warned; likewise, I can't recall an editor openly edit warring on case pages; WMC actually hit 4RR today. What was done? How many "last warnings" are necessary? This exchange is mind-boggling to me. He had been warned before. I have no doubt that I'd have been blocked for this kind of behavior.

His Talk page responses are so outrageous that I've just now realized he may be trolling, to try to make a point about adminstrative recusal, which is central to this case. It's been the position of certain admins, including WMC, that it's preposterous to consider that an admin should recuse from further action against an editor if the editor insults the admin or claims that the admin is involved. However a clerk isn't an ordinary administrator, and is charged with a duty which should be performed, a clerk is subject to continual supervision by ArbComm; the bailiff in a court would not resign if insulted, they would simply continue to do their job. Recusal of a clerk is up to the clerk and Arbcomm, which is immediately available if there is a dispute over clerk involvement. An ordinary admin would never properly block an editor because the editor insults the admin, but a clerk might have the opposite duty, because disrespect for the clerk is disrespect for ArbComm and can constitute direct defiance of the Committee.

However, I do appreciate, as I mentioned above, how severely you are being tested. I'm not disturbed, personally, by WMC's disruption, it greatly simplifies my job, making the issues behind my complaint more clear. So I apologize for any improper aspersions regarding your conduct, and my comment about "growing into the job" was intended as a confident prediction that ultimately you either are or will be properly dealing with the difficulties. Yes, you are a volunteer, and it's appreciated. --Abd (talk) 23:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I did redact. If there is anything else that you believe I should redact, please let me know. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 23:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Notice to all users involved in Abd/WMC

This is a general notice to all users involved in the Abd/WMC arbitration case that further disruptive conduct within the case will not be tolerated and will result in blocks being issued by Clerks or Arbitrators as needed. More information is available at the announcement here; please be sure to read that post in full. Receipt of this message does not necessarily imply that you are at risk of a block or have been acting in a disruptive manner; it is a general notice to all that the Clerks and ArbCom are aware of issues in the case and will not be tolerating them any longer. If you have any questions, please post them to the linked section. Thank you. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I approve. I highly encourage the clerks and arbitrators to be strict about this, with all editors. If you are too strict and, say, short-block me for some real, minor, or imagined offense, no harm. It's your job. I will, however, try to be careful, I dislike making the same mistake more than once. A short-block for the purpose of restoring order should be easily made; if a bailiff ejects someone from a court, it may possibly delay a case, if the participant was crucial to it, but it should not prejudice it, i.e., the fact of the ejection shouldn't be relevant, though the behavior that caused it might in some cases. --Abd (talk) 00:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Thought

I stumbled across the arbitration between you and William M. Connolley. While I have no desire to become involved, it sounds like several contributors find the length of your comments unwieldy. I've often found that it takes me longer to write well and briefly, but it overall speeds communication and makes it more useful. So if you can find a way to cut things down to just the main points, I think it would be seen as an act of good faith and would result in a more productive conclusion to the arbitration. Just my two cents, Awickert (talk) 07:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Try using bullet points or numbered points. Even if the same amount of text is produced, people can find navigating it a little easier and it might even help keep your thoughts focused. This ain't literature. --Wfaxon (talk) 09:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant!

Wall-o-Text (TM)

Always a good idea to protect your interests from those who might seek to profit from your loss!  :) --GoRight (talk) 01:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Look, there is an obvious problem with Wall-o-Text. It irritates the hell out of some editors. The issue is what to do about it. Not writing it can mean, effectively, self-censorship; if nobody is interested in it, that could be appropriate, but I know that the charge that nobody reads it is self-serving deception. What should an editor do if the editor thinks that a long post is, say, driving editors away, filling up a Talk page with useless garbage?

To me it is obvious. Delete it if it's truly useless and off-topic, or collapse it if there might be something in there useful, but it was just too damn long. Do so civilly, and don't edit war over it. If someone deletes my Talk, what do I do? It's been done many times, you know. I don't use undo except perhaps very rarely. Sometimes I just accept it, big deal. Sometimes I'll put back a link to history. Sometimes I'll summarize it with the body in collapse.

Someone who truly thinks it doesn't belong there, and if they are trying to ban me from Talk, they must think that, can just delete it, it's fast, it's easy. It can be done with undo. If nobody reads it, nobody should respond to it, because once someone has responded, it's more difficult to delete, though collapse can still be used.

The reality: the length isn't the issue. The real issue in the RfAr is that I challenged the cabal, twice, with RfCs. And it worked, both times. Yeah, I have to establish this cabal business or they will have me for lunch. Nuisance, I didn't want to go there, it is a lot more work than just the plain WMC use-of-tools-while-involved thingy, but it was made necessary by the pile-in. I think you recognize the names, you know them well. It's a little broader than I'd expected; editors who, I thought, were neutral, merely sucked-in, when I look at positions in ArbComm cases, weren't.

There is a lot of newspeak language control going on. Cabal doesn't require secret conspiracy, such that cabal members would be conscious of it. The cabal is easily visible from the outside, that is why all the quotation of WP:TINC is so nuts. It's "the emperor has no clothes." So many people see it, and, as you know, those who are stepped on by the cabal are very aware of it. However, there are cabal members who are do understand who is in the faction, they know what they are doing.

Why not just "faction"? Because faction is neutral. I wouldn't be using the term "cabal" if I weren't defining it by a set of negative common characteristics that violate fundamental Wikipedia principles. I'm not going to be proposing sanctions against cabal members, per se, at least not in this case, but I do need to make plain what's going on in the RfAr, and how the proposals and reactions there are absolutely predictable. Otherwise it can easily look like I'm defying consensus. I'm not. We are seeing typical cabal activity, even more than usual, resulting in severe participation bias. Unfortunately, it will take many hours to put this together, and I'm in New York this weekend, and I have business to take care of tonight and tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm making comments here and there, but those comments I can make in squeezed-in minutes; for example, this evening the kids were eating dessert and I made a comment on Wikipedia Review, before putting them to bed. No research. Just text written off the top of my head, which I'm certainly not going to do in an RfAr. That's what I can do here on my Talk page, also. I can do it quickly. --Abd (talk) 02:09, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

You probably expected this...

...and I know you just posted it, but your new evidence is well over the 1,000 word limit. If you wouldn't mind shortening, that'd be good. Moving it to a subpage is fine as well. Thanks. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:59, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I expected it. That was a tad fast! I'm in the middle of refactoring that. --Abd (talk) 21:03, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Notice

I have added diffs to my evidence and might change it. Therefore you should make sure that your lengthy responses on your user subpage are in fact to the most current version. You have chosen an unhelpful way of presenting evidence. That was your choice. It's now up to you to make sure your subpages are coherent. Mathsci (talk) 22:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, though I can certainly read History myself. I've responded to a version that is cited by permanent link. I may or many not update it, just as you may continue to update or alter your evidence. The evidence is not exactly a discussion, it is preparation of case material, and you are completely free to alter it to improve it as you see fit. The audience is ArbComm, and the goal is for it to be as complete as possible at the point at which they read it. Some might be reading early, but that's not what I'd recommend, precisely because evidence might change.

And I'm free to respond to your evidence from permanent links; I'm not obligated to respond to it at all, much less to later revisions, which could create an endless loop. If you wrote something you wish to retract, say so, and I'll make sure that's reflected in my response; in some cases I might even withdraw my response.

Thanks also for the good, if obvious, advice about coherence. --Abd (talk) 22:52, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Rejoining the editing community

Hi there, you probably don't remember doing so, but a while back you stated that if I wanted to rejoin the editing community then I should contact you. My account that was blocked was user:macromonkey, for POV pushing amongst other things. You said that I should contact me as part of your comment in a sockpuppet investigation against me. I would like to rejoin, as I have made good contributions and could continue to do so again: I did apply for Wikiproject Rehab but for some reason the lines of commmunication went dead. It probably didn't help that the user who founded this Wikiproject was one of the key users in getting me blocked. But that doesn't matter now: the past is the past. If you would be willing to help me I would be very grateful, and if not, then I can understand and that is fine. Thank you for your time, 217.42.67.57 (talk) 23:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC) (Macromonkey)

Well, I'm a tad tied up at the moment, having gone to ArbComm for a review of the actions of an administrator, and these things are almost always risky, so I can't guarantee that I'll be able to help. However, you may email me, my email address, directly, is abd AT lomaxdesign POINTY THING com. I may not have time for as much as a few weeks, but when I can, I'll look into this further and see what I can do. I take your request as being made in good faith, and I will pursue it that way. Meanwhile, I'd urge you to see if you can reopen the Wikiproject case, and especially approach the editor who helped get you blocked. Be nice, assume good faith, thank that editor for whatever you can figure out to be thankful for, try to heal the dispute by respecting the editor. Set aside mistakes the editor might have made, and do not accuse anyone of anything, unless and until you've become sufficiently uninvolved to be able to see the matter clearly. Usually it doesn't help. Point me or inform me as to how you applied for help with the WikiProject. And good luck.--Abd (talk) 23:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't understand the email address. (pointy thing?). And thank you for at least considering my request. I think that reapplying to the wikiproject would be flogging a dead horse a little however, so do you have any other advice on how to go about being unblocked? I suspect a direct unblock template on my talk page would be unsuccessful as the situation would not be thoroughly investigated and considered. Thanks, 217.42.67.57 (talk) 18:30, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at WP:AN regarding this issue. Please see [2]. --Jayron32 19:24, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

You are a leader.

This is yet another example of a situation where you seemed to be the only one expressing a position, but it was later found to have broad consensus. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Duncan (physicist) It's an AfD where it seemed to be snowing "delete", but shortly after you commented, it was snowing "keep". Of course, it wasn't just you: one person can't create consensus singlehanded. Others added information to the article, checked the notability guideline etc. Still, I think your comment was a major factor. Admirable!

No wonder you're not fazed by situations where everyone present disagrees with you. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:27, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Look, I've been in situations where almost all my friends have been horrified by my actions. I remember when I decided to found the Arizona School of Midwifery. I had previously, with my wife at the time, founded the Committee for Arizona Midwifery, and we ran informal training, but the state regulations -- which I helped write -- were going to start requiring schooling, after certain practicing midwives were grandfathered in (by exam), as was my wife and another woman who was a Nurse-Practitioner. (I delivered some babies, about thirty, but worked mostly on organizational issues.) For what we were doing to become fully legal, we had to have that school going, so I hired a British nurse-midwife as an instructor -- that took some paperwork! -- and set up the program. The existing members of COMFAM thought that there were already too many students for the number of cases we were handling, and didn't want the school advertising that it was open, and they acted to seize the equipment, they actually broke a lock on the clinic door. I called the police. I didn't want anyone to get into trouble, but I was proceeding with what I saw was the ultimate welfare of all involved. Some years later, one of the women ran into me and said, "We couldn't see it at the time, but you were right." It was really hard on my wife, these were all her friends, this might have contributed to our divorce not long after. In the end, almost all of them joined the school program, and several of them graduated and got licensed, and then, there being more trained midwives than the market could bear, the School shut down gracefully, so, for a time anyway, the future of lay midwifery in Tucson, Arizona, was assured. These midwives could practice independently, but the regulations required that midwives make sure that women got adequate prenatal care and screening. We had very good outcomes, as was normal for practice like this. The risks of home birth were balanced by the risks of hospital birth (mostly increased infection risk).

U

(My position was that I was founding the School independently, and that I had the right to do that, I wasn't demanding that any of them help. Only one person actually left the activities because of that sequence, and started doing births on her own -- and I think she got into trouble -- the rest did accept it. But this was a community where consensus was expected, almost all women, and being so assertive, as I can be, wasn't liked. Maybe there is a reason why there are men and woman, instead of everyone being as nice as most women are! Sometimes a barrier must be broken. On the other hand, maybe there would have been a way to do it without disruption, had I been more skilled.)

Thanks. --Abd (talk) 23:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

You're very welcome. That's cool that you were involved in midwifery! I've added another quote of you on my user page: User:Coppertwig#Neutral point of view ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:26, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a suggestion for you, Abd: at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley/Workshop#Don't debate proposals with no support where you say "When a proposal or article talk page comment is made, editors should not argue against it or reject it until it has received support from at least one other editor, beyond noting objection if needed. That objection need not be explained, and often should not. "I'd object to that, but if anyone else supports it, we can discuss it," is civil and sufficient." I suggest that you strike out "should" in "editors should not" and replace it with "need" (i.e. "need not"), and possibly also strike out "and often should not", possibly replacing it with something softer such as "and often it's a good idea not to" or "and often it saves time not to". I think this would better capture what you mean if I understand correctly from your later comment, "This is not proposed as a rule to be enforced, not a "requirement," but a suggestion,...". Regards, ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:22, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think the proposal needs further explaining. How does it fit in with BRD? Are you suggesting that if someone does a bold edit, someone else can revert it with no explanation, and it can't be reinstated until a second person supports it? (Actually, I think that's more-or-less how things work on articles with the {{controversial}} template, in my experience.) Anyway, if that's what you're suggesting, you could make that clear. I think there's the seed of a good idea there, but it needs to be explained and perhaps tweaked a bit. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I'll make it so. I'm on my i-phone. Later. --Abd (talk) 23:59, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a discussion you may be interested in at Wikipedia talk:Edit filter#Edit warring enforcement. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to comment on the latest meat puppet accusation by Raul. I know you are pressed for time right now.

On a separate topic what do you make of the circumstances surrounding this edit by SS. Am I reading that wrong or does that show him restoring the page to his preferred version AFTER the page was protected? The timestamp indicates that he may have been editing simultaneously with Cbrown but I would have thought that since the page protection occurred first that upon submission SS would have been asked to confirm that he actually wanted to override a protected page. Obviously I have no way to know if that is how the tools work, or not. I am pretty sure that as a normal user if the page had been protected while I was in the middle of the edit that it would not have let me save my changes. The permissions may be such that admins can just save over protected content without a warning. --GoRight (talk) 05:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so but I'll test it on the beyondpolitics.org wiki, which is a MediaWiki installation. --Abd (talk) 06:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, here is what I saw. I opened up an edit window for a sandbox. I set up an edit to the page. I opened up another window and protected the page. Then I save the edit. It took, no warning. If I then try to edit the page, I get a warning that it's a protected page, it's just a notice at the top. No, there is no confirmation notice that I can see. It's always possible that there is some configuration option set differently, or that I missed something. But editors are allowed to edit protected pages and apparently they don't get a special warning, just a message that the page is protected when they load it for edit. --Abd (talk) 07:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Admins get a pink background to the edit window when they try to edit a fully protected page and there is a link to the protection log in a pink box over the edit window. That obviously doesn't show if the edit window is opened before the protection is applied. For a semi protected page there is just the pink warning box over the top of a white edit window. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, given all this the WP:AGF position seems to be that it was unintentional, so that is what I shall assume.  :) Thanks for your inputs. --GoRight (talk) 17:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

One of the things that the cabal does that makes it a cabal instead of a mere faction is to consistently interpret every action through a lens that seeks to find what is wrong with it. WP:ABF It's obvious that you, myself, and Coppertwig are functioning, to some degree, as a faction with mutual support. But, hopefully, we don't share that extreme fault-finding trait, at least not collectively!

Some of the editors I've named as "cabal" do also AGF, at least some of the time. They are not all alike, they do not always "sign on" to the negative actions. Indeed, the extent to which they are different is used to deny the existence of the cabal, but that denial is based on an extreme interpretation of "cabal." All it means in the current RfAr is a group of editors who, with sufficient frequency for it to be a matter of concern, act together in ways that frustrate policy. An obvious example would be tag-team reversion. What one editor cannot legitimately do, remains questionable when done by a collection of editors. It's obvious that if the action is deliberately coordinated, it's meat puppetry and prohibited. But even without deliberate coordination, the effect is the same. Hence if our concern is the project, we must take notice of it.

Again, it will be assume that the goal of identifying the cabal would be to ban it. That is not at all the case; quite the opposite, actually. Banning cabals is their business, though they tend to do it one editor at a time, they do it because of the kind of general agreement that, when exercised with power and disregard for our process, we call "cabal." They'd like to ban all the "pov-pushers," which basically means people who push a POV different from their own. And that is very, very dangerous to the neutrality of the project, as I pointed out in User:Abd/Majority POV-pushing, it's actually more pernicious than minority POV-pushing, because it's more difficult to detect and address. To the majority of those involved in a local decision, it seems like just plain good sense! However, when the issue is addressed on a broad scale, among the most experienced editors, the basic values of the project, including neutrality, generally prevail. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The Quick and the Undead

I know you're involved in a much larger dispute, but thanks for all your input on mine over the last day and a half. Much appreciated!

(You were right on all the largest points.)

162.6.97.3 (talk) 22:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

And thanks for signing it! That is soooo much better. --Abd (talk) 22:36, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Let's just see if the world can bear the new edit!  : )

162.6.97.3 (talk) 23:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure. I made the edit. See, whoever you are, it's not necessarily over. When you pull a fish out of the water, it might flop around for a while, but the fact that the source was already in the article for the claim that the husband was a computer programmer iced it so cleanly that I went ahead and made the edit. Given that there is only one editor who has been acting to remove this, except for the present husband once back in May, that editor would be practically committing wikisuicide to remove it. But people do that sometimes! So be patient, watch. There are some experienced editors involved now, who know how to deal with this crap. Usually. Wikipedia is not perfect, and it is damn inefficient, you can be sure about that, but, little by little, we go far.

I suggest registering an account. You'd gain some anonymity, actually, if you don't use your real name, but at the same time a shred of credibility. It's slightly harder to block a registered editor. While you are rummaging around with whatever interests you, you will see Stuff you can fix in a matter of seconds. And then you are making yourself useful here, and that can be seen, if you have been logged in. If all you do, as IP or as a registered editor, is work on one article pushing one particular point, you will be seen as disruptive, even if your point is 100% TRUE (tm). Even if you have all the reliable source in the world. Politics. That's Wikipedia, it's a human community, not a collection of robots. Even though there are quite a few 'bots active, the humans are still in charge. Good luck.--Abd (talk) 23:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

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

Hello Abd. I've just done a word count for your evidence and it currently stands at over 1500 words, more than the 1000 word maximum limit. Please cut your evidence down to the 1000 word maximum within 24 hours. You can use a subpage in your userspace if to collate evidence if you wish and link to it from the main evidence page. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 17:52, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I certainly would not intend to leave it how it is, even without restrictions. I've started using references to history to hold hypertext, it's slightly safer than user space, since I've had user space evidence presented to ArbComm be MfD'd, though that was a rejected case, that evidence may have been part of the reason why it was rejected.... In any case, it shall be done as requested. 1000 words should be plenty enough room, unless I need to start responding in detail to laundry lists of complaints; we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.. --Abd (talk) 20:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

In reference to your comment here, could you give a link to the arbitration case where WMC's block was discussed? --Enric Naval (talk) 10:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC) I tried to search the existing cases for "connolley" and WMC appears in a lot of cases, so you should point at the specific case. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

And, topic apart, in your response to my evidence "Enric had cited sources where the source did not support the text cited. I'm not here to prove that this is true, but Enric doesn't deny the claim, he is, here, denying the bare possibility that such behavior could get him banned" (emphasis added). I didn't think it was necessary to explicitely deny the claim. I thought that anyone reading it would inmediately see that it was wrong. For all it's worth, I deny it right here: I haven't cited sources where they didn't support the text cited. You think that the sources don't support the text, and you even completely dismissed the sources, but you did it using only your own personal OR. There were several instances of that, but I specially remember the long OR-filled disputes about Padley here and here. After you were banned the matter arised again and it was quickly dispatched here, and an improvement was made to the article with no disruption. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Enric, one of the first things I'd suggest you learn about seeking consensus would be to develop your ability to try on ideas for size, to see things as others see them and see if they, at least, make sense from that point of view. I stated that I wasn't going to try to prove the claim about sources. But could you at least understand and accept that it appeared so to me? Now, if it became necessary to prove this, and suppose that I succeeded, you could, indeed, be in hot water, especially if it were shown that you were reckless in your disregard. That's the only point here, you were claiming that it was preposterous that your right to edit might be restricted. You might review the AC case for PHG. Highly active, excellent editor, many truly beautiful articles created. Banned from his favorite topic because it was alleged that he had fabricated a source. In fact, reviewing this case, I found that he probably made one of a number of possible interpretations of that source, and the real problem was likely incivility and stubborn insistence, something I tried to work with him on.

I fail to see the connection between Padley and the later branching ratio discussion and, indeed, with the claim about sources, which was a very general one. If necessary, we could go over all that, and if you want to go over it with a resolution, we should do so with a mediator. If it's about content, it could be the present mediation, if it's about behavior, we should find a mediator for that purpose. It might all be moot, we'll see what happens with the RfAr.

Little example above. "Anyone reading it would immediately see that it was wrong." How could they see that if there were no specific examples alleged? No, this is your own opinion projected onto "anyone." You know your own history, and you believe that you have never done this. That does not mean that you have never done it, your belief and intention is mistaken for the reality of your result. --Abd (talk) 16:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

On the "quickly dispatched" discussion recently, I know the literature much better than anyone participating in that discussion except possibly for Shanahan, and Shanahan is highly selective about what he presents. EdChem took out something which is clearly established in the literature, and it's discussed, I believe I could show, in secondary source. Neutrons and tritium were detected, early on. The Fleishmann reports were artifact, an error. However, one of the arguments at the time was that the levels of neutrons reported by Fleischmann were too low to explain the excess heat, given accepted branching ratios. This is really well-known; later work, with much more care and much more highly sensitive equipment, and massive shielding precautions underground, showed low levels of neutrons, close to background, but considered statistically significant. However, this had very little effect on the acceptance of cold fusion, because the levels were too low to explain the heat. Sure, that may not have been, at that point, specifically sourced, and that's what should have been requested at the time, and it would have been easily resolved then, I assume. As it was, my text was accepted because it was really not controversial. This was not the same issue as had been raised in the Padley flap.

Coppertwig is learning about cold fusion, and so may not be aware that tritium was detected and reported by many research groups, peer-review published. Again, the levels were too low, so this was actually considered negative to the idea of cold fusion, i.e., contradictory, which is odd, because detection of tritium, if properly done, would be conclusive as to nuclear reactions, but everyone was focusing on theory and there was an implicit theory that there was one very unusual reaction, nuclear, which would then produce neutrons or tritium. In hindsight, it's obviously an error. If there is an unknown fusion reaction (such as 4D ->Be8 fusion), it would then produce hot reaction products which would be expected to produce low levels of reactions with standard branching ratio products. And that is what the SPAWAR group has published. Secondary reactions. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, you present interesting questions, but I'll have to repeat my original question: could you give me the link to the case where Arbcom "reviewed one block in detail and found that WMC had violated recusal policy and had edit warred."[3]? Or at least tell me the name of the case, or the name of the blocked editor, so I can try to find it?

And, if you can't recall any detail from the case, then please say so. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Makes me wonder, Enric, have you read the evidence I provided and followed the links? Because it's there: RfAr/Georgre-William M. Connolley. As to edit warring, perhaps I'll provide evidence, certainly he has participated in edit wars, and that may have been a part of the old case that resulted in sanctions (2006?) for a while. As to edit warring, during this case, he hit 4RR on the Workshop page, I believe, he edit warred at Talk:Hipocrite. Perhaps you should also read the definition of edit warring, if you have any doubt about this. --Abd (talk) 22:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I had seen that case, but I thought that it wasn't the correct one because I couldn't find anywhere in the case where Arbcom said anything about WMC violating recusal policy or edit warring. They do say that he extended a block inapropiatedly, looking at here it doesn't look like they considered it a grievous violation of policy or something. (Also, your sentence implied that the case had a decision or a proposed decision saying that had WMC edit warred, not that he had edit-warred in this case. Could you correct your statement in the workshop page?) --Enric Naval (talk) 01:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure, however, what the decision found was that he had "wheel-warred," not "edit warred." It's in the actual decision, "reapplied his block after it was reversed." It's FoF 1. For an admin to block an editor for incivility directed at the administrator is a violation of recusal policy. "Grievous violation"? Violation is enough, Enric. --Abd (talk) 03:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent work

You took the time to look into the dispute (here) at the Rebecca Quick article, (e.g. as seen in your message here), with a broader understanding of the underlying issues and a deeper investigation than (apparently) any of the rest of us who responded. And now there's consensus, in what had been an ongoing edit war. Good work! And reminiscent of other situations you've helped resolve. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

As I wrote, it's amazing how stupid the whole thing was. I think I know what happened. KMF had an agenda, we can speculate, but the effect of it was that KMF was going to find whatever reason could be asserted to justify taking it out, supporting the new husband who had done that previously. I looked at the history, helped by the sources the IP had asserted, this is a WP dispute that got some minor media attention.

What really iced it was discovering that the fact that was allegedly unsourced was covered by the NY Times source already being used. We didn't need to make the more complex judgments about quality of sources. The IP editor had, in fact, made the text conform to what was clearly established in multiple sources, but didn't have the skill to point it out, nor to handle the tendentious objection from KMF. KMF bears some watching, this is an editor who appears to be serving an external agenda, and who has developed a little manipulative skill, knowing what arguments might fly with a typical WP admin, who doesn't have the time to investigate deeply. It took a few hours to do that! (In the end, though, it took a moment to simply read the sources for what was already there. Quick lives in New Jersey? Really? KMF would have read the source, would have known that the former husband was mentioned, that the text KMF was taking out was true and sourced, but was acting based on a knowledge of what arguments might succeed with our typical distracted administrator, in order to erase that disliked fact. It started before any issues were raised about sources.

Yeah, there is a human aspect to all this, which I addressed, as you know. Real people are involved, who have real and understandable feelings (on both sides of this one, by the way). Thanks for your comment. --Abd (talk) 13:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

KMF bears watching? Apparently!! [4] By the way, WMC's indef block of 162.6.97.3 was apparently just a mistake: apparently he intended to change block settings to allow account creation, and accidentally put it to indef in the process. [5] ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:46, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Notice regarding the editing of Cold fusion and its talk page.

In order to avoid disruption, I voluntarily continued a ban against editing CF and its talk page, beyond the expiration of the community ban that had been closed by Heimstern. I asked Heimstern about the expiration of the one-month ban, as he had set the length, as a courtesy; he did not suggest that it continued, but he did not wish to be a part of the controversy and I fully respect and understand that. I now withdraw that voluntary ban extension. I have no intention of making any disruptive edits, and will exercise caution about unnecessary violation of the sensibilities of other editors; I will limit my Talk page discussion to that necessary to explain edits. No more walls of text, at least not there! I will, if needed, use user pages for detailed discussions, proposals, and other such. --Abd (talk) 22:41, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I've blocked you for 24h for violation of the ban, and reverted your edit. If you want to edit there, you need to get someone other than yourself to overturn the ban. You could, for example, ask for an injunction at the Arbcomm case - that would be a fairly obvious remedy. Or you could have asked me. But instead you chose to test the limits; well, now you know William M. Connolley (talk) 08:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Can someone provide the link to the original ban and Adb's selfban? — Rlevse • Talk • 13:54, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

As onlooking admin, this is the message left by William M. Connolley regarding this: diff. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Heimstern's review of the ban (I believe that was while the ANI-thred was active), is before that (I link the discussion permanently; it is still on the talkpage of Heimstern). Abd there says: "If I edit the article or its Talk page, I can be blocked, by any administrator desiring to enforce the ban, with no warning" (perm. link). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Slightly adapted my second post. I don't see anything after that, but may be mistaken, until the (unilateral?) decision by Abd that he unbanned himself (first post in this thread), yesterday evening. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, I'm disappointed in you. Sure, I said that. That was with reference to the community ban based on the closure by Heimsterm, who set the ban at one month. That expired almost a month ago. I had then said that I was voluntarily extending the ban to avoid disruption. However, WMC claimed that his original, unilateral ban was still in place, and continued to claim that. I did not violate the community ban -- except for that misunderstanding about self-reverted edits, a matter which is under active consideration before ArbComm. The edit last night was the first edit that violated, not the community ban, but WMC's invalid unilateral ban, and the edit itself was not disruptive, and it was brief. Before that, I placed notice in the RfAr (on talk:Workshop) and here on my Talk page. Yes, just as my continuation of abstinence was unilateral, so too was my notice of withdrawal of that and my edit last night.

I have claimed on RfAr that an administrative ban, not based on a discussion and a consensus of uninvolved editors (and not an ArbComm ban) does not create any right to block on the basis of edits that would not otherwise be blockable. The block tool is not to be used to punish.

In this case, WMC declared the ban not based on any stated edit, though later there were hints that the basis was walls of text. To block me for a non-wall of text edit (and not disruptive in any other way, except for "violating the ban") is simply punitive, not preventative, and, in this case, blatantly defiant of recusal policy. Can anyone claim that WMC is "not involved in a dispute with me"? --Abd (talk) 15:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I am sorry if you read it that way, Rlevse was asking for banning discussion links, those are, to my best knowledge, the two last threads for that (I am now thinking that you may have responded to the thread initiated by WMC, I should have linked that whole section, my mistake). I did not mean to take any side in this, it was merely linking the discussions as requested. I am not, and will not, take any side in the WMC-Abd-dispute, I do however comment (in the ongoing ArbCom) on how I perceive your reading of policy and guideline (where I also here do not agree with all that you say, and do not agree with your reading of (parts of) policies and guidelines). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me put it as (hopefully) good advice, all this drama would not have been necessary, Abd, if you would have also notified WMC, as he suggested in his 'ban' post. To me, that is even completely separate from the point if you agree with the ban, if it is a ban, if the ban is appropriate or whatever. I mean, I am there not even using a policy or guideline to oppose the ban or to discuss my way out of it (what to some may read as wikilaywer). Its just not necessary then. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

P.S., I did not see the post on the workshop, so you did say more about it (my apologies), though also that I would not see as the optimal venue either (just as your own talkpage). I hope this also explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, I think you should take responsibility for how what you posted above would look, taken out of its original context. As to notifying WMC, he had just, in that discussion, claimed the right to block me, ongoing. I had notified him before and he simply denied it. He has a strong tendency to respond dismissively to whatever I post to his Talk, including friendly comments, so .... I thought of notifying him on his Talk, but, this time, the "promise" wasn't made to him, as far as I recall, so withdrawal of it wasn't necessarily due to him. I didn't owe him anything. I did assume that he would read my notice on the RfAr talk page, though. --Abd (talk) 16:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Responsibility? Well, I did link the diffs, and I do not believe that there was any immediate decision made on that. I don't see any reason to take responsibility for anything, Abd. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

WMC claims to have imposed a ban on his own authority; that's much of what the arb case is about. See for example Ban reviewed, an earlier thread on this talk page. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

WMC's original announcement that he was imposing a ban was here. See also A Basic Chronology of Relevant Events in GoRight's evidence. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Unblocked. (Prepares for cries of wheel warring and requests for me to be added to the case). Viridae^Talk 14:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Here is where Heimstern, the admin who closed the community discussion reviewing the ban, confirms that it was for one month. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

As WMC is involved up to his ears in this, I don't consider the WMC "ban" as very weighty. Heimstern's ban was for a month and he's not what I'd call involved. Abd banned himself and as far as I am concerned can unban himself. Therefore, I consider the block by WMC invalid and as for Viridae, I do not consider the unblock as wheel warring. You all may want to see my post on WMC's talk page. Thanks to all for the info. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Rlevse. WMC also deleted Abd's article talk page comment: [6]. Abd's post to the article talk page is an informative, on-topic and non-disruptive contribution in reply to a question from another editor. I think Abd's comment should be restored to the article talk page. Who would like to have the honours? ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. Viridae^Talk 14:51, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

@Viridae. (replied here to keep the discussion in one place) Abd was suggesting the same sources that he has been pumping up endelessly in that talk page, after multiple editors told him why they were of very low or of unknown quality, and all the problems that the sources had. That is not a helpful edit to help that IP, that's a continuation of the same promotional campaign that he has been carrying out for months. Since you haven't been involved in Talk:Cold fusion, you were probably not aware of these circumstances that make Abd's edit a pure continuation of part of the behaviour that got him banned (aka, not listening to consensus that he disagress with, in this case the consensus about the sources). And I'm not even going into how he ignored other better-quality mainstream sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I want to make this very clear, this is about the sources: he promoted again the damned chinese paper which is of very low quality, written by an author with no notability of his own, published in a relatively new journal with no impact factor. And the sourcebook is a compilation of conference papers, and it seems that those don't get the same peer-review process as "normal" books from Oxford university press. The arguments are more complicated, but those are the core issues. He has been proclamating those sources as the end-all of all sources in the matter, throwing WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE throught the window. Those sources were discussed before and bringing them up again is not helpful. If Abd is going to keep insisting with the same low-quality sources still after being banned and in the middle of an arb case about the matter then it's frigging crystal clear that he is Not Getting It and his input is no longer welcome at that page. Talk pages are not to make advocacy-like promotion of bad sources to anyone passing by (not even good sources!!!), they are to write that articles. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Mmm I know you don't Rlevse - history tells me that WMC won't see it that same way though. Viridae^Talk 14:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict with above) Thanks, Viridae. Pleased to meet you. I must be getting old, I wasn't aware that you had joined the Abd Cabal, I really do need to keep better records. In any case, make yourself at home. I doubt that, under the circumstances, you are any danger of troutslapping. I'm assuming that the block by WMC was so bad that, unbidden, you magically appeared. I didn't even put up an unblock template; I'm not sure that I would have. (But don't repeat your unblock if WMC insists by reblocking, or another admin jumps in, not that I think you would. Let them wheel-war if they want, it will only speed things up.) I just got up, I don't know if there has been discussion of this on AN/I yet. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

WMC, I only test limits when I believe that doing so is less disruptive than more complex bureaucratic process, such as you suggested. Yes, I could have asked for an injunction, if I thought being blocked was a serious harm to me, or that there was some necessity beyond the ordinary worth troubling ArbComm about. It is for some editors, not for me, and I suppose it might be for some editing, but not last night's edit. We returned to the original condition; I had declared your original ban void, and would have edited Cold fusion, eventually, if not for Enric's popping it to AN/I. You insisted on your right to maintain the ban in spite of reasonable claims of involvement, not with the article, the one revert to May 14 did not establish that, but in dispute with me. The RfAr has made the claim of dispute completely obvious and undeniable. Yet you continued on your course. It was not unexpected, and, I believe, it will be beneficial, causing the RfAr to become cleaner and to proceed more swiftly to a decision. Thanks. On Wikipedia Review, I've extensively commented how much I appreciate your frankness and willingness to act boldly and directly, but it's essential, for that to be not, in the long run, seriously damaging, that you recognize limits. You just ran into one that had big red blinking lights and warning signs all over it. As before, I've suggested that you may avoid losing your admin bit by showing ArbComm that you understand your error. Do it promptly and profusely, so that they can reasonably conclude that it won't happen again, with me or with anyone else. I'm not trying to humiliate you, I'm actually trying to save your adminship. You haven't believed me in the past, and you may not believe me now, but it's the truth.

Nobody else but you would have written that it looks like "I nailed my colors to the yard-arm." Frankly, I'd rather keep you around.

Short version: I was not testing my limits, but WMC's. Had my edit been disruptive, and the whole issue not already massively discussed, it could have been a WP:POINT violation. However, the IP editor had asked for information about sources, I had a ready answer, so I answered it. That was my reason for the edit. I ignored WMC's threats, and ignoring threats is commonly the most non-disruptive course.

Rlevse, et tu? Thanks. I'll look around. Once I know what I'm doing -- it takes time and discussion! -- I aim for minimum splash. So far, so good. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, while people are debating whether the ban was one month or indef on my talkpage, Heimstern's onemonth confirmation was clear to me, but I can see why people are confused. That being said, to Adb I say, do yourself a favor and don't post to the CF article or its talk til the case is over. — Rlevse • Talk • 15:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I'm reenacting your ban on Cold fusion and its talk page until I hear from Heimstern. — Rlevse • Talk • 15:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I will respect this, of course, it is clearly designed to avoid disruption. I assume I may request of you that it be lifted, but we will cross that bridge as we come to it. As to Heimstern, I assume you know I asked him about the ban expiration already? He had, in response to query (from editors who wanted it to be indef), explicitly set the ban at one month, but I did approach him to confirm it was no longer in effect, after the time had expired. He did not wish to be involved in the conflict -- very understandable! -- and essentially declined to respond, and, as can be seen from my complete conversation with him, I did not wish to lay any serious burden on him, he'd already done his job as closing administrator, which, by the way, explicitly respected my wish, in his comment at the end fo the ban discussion, to have a close by a neutral admin in order that WMC no longer be the supervising administrator for the ban. It was in expectation of that result that I requested speedy close. --Abd (talk) 16:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thanks, Rlevse. "People" is two highly involved editors I've identified in my evidence as "cabal." It's utterly unsurprising that Mathsci would present you with such a blatantly distorted history. As to the issue of involvement raised by Verbal, here is my opinion. You are not required to recuse from the ArbComm case because you take an action to maintain order during the case, that is part of the duties of an arbitrator. Verbal also raises a question, "if WMC complains about your action will you no longer be able to block him?" My opinion: not with respect to the same issue, you would, absent emergency, like WMC should have done if he considered my edit disruptive, go to a noticeboard, and an exception would be if his behavior was so damaging, with ongoing damage likely, that you would block anyway and immediately inform the community through a noticeboard. Recusal rules are, in essence, very simple, and the cabal has consistently tried to confuse them, this is one of the more serious aspects of the current RfAr.

By the way, autoblock seems to still be up. I will discuss the matter of continuing a voluntary ban on Cold fusion, pending the outcome of the case, later, but, briefly, I would prefer to edit, but with some clear restrictions that address the reasonable aspects to the complaints about me there. WMC declared the ban based on something, and the most obvious reason, in spite of his lack of specificity, is "walls of text." As I noted when stating I was ending the voluntary ban I will keep my Talk page discussion brief. I see that I didn't do what I said I'd do above, about limiting my discussion to that necessary to explain edits. I forgot about making brief informative comments in response to questions. That's what IAR does to you, and that's why we have IAR, because all the possible contingencies cannot be anticipated. There won't be any walls of text, I can guarantee that, because if I need to write much, I'll use a user page or link to my Sandbox history, or the like. No walls of text on Talk.

I don't want to have a big discussion on this, for the obvious reason: we don't have a big discussion to avoid having a big discussion. There are restrictions proposed by TS that are way too complicated, but, later, maybe I'll set up something that could be simple to decide. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Re autoblock: there are instructions at Template:Autoblock. See also Wikipedia:Autoblock. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 16:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I got the autoblock. Can you edit again, Abd? Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 16:15, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Nice to know that your eyes are on my Talk page. --Abd (talk) 21:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• To reiterate and ensure there are no misunderstandings. Do not edit Cold fusion or its talk page. This is in effect until the arb case has a final decision. If the final ruling in the case covers this particular issue, that of course will then take effect. If the final ruling does not cover this particular issue, the status of the CF ban is then left to the community. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks, Rlevse, it was clear, and I do not object. Under the circumstances, it's obvious, any edit I make to those pages will cause disruption, until the case is closed, and whose "fault" it is is actually irrelevant. If I decide that I do want to edit the pages pending, I would ask for permission from you, and not proceed without that permission. --Abd (talk) 22:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggest discussion is moved to case pages

Someone above said it would be better to keep all the discussion in one place. Can I suggest that the arbitration case pages are a better place to discuss what happened here? I've said so at Rlevse's talk page, and will go and so so at other user talk pages as well. Carcharoth (talk) 16:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, Carcharoth. It will be done from my end. Little by little, we go far. Some stuff became very visible here. --Abd (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

August 2009

About your comment in Talk:Cold fusion. Since you say above that your edits shouldn't have been reverted because they were not disruptive, it's obvious that you need to be reminded again about the same problem. Those sources have been examined before in the talk page and they were found to be of very low quality. You are aware of this because you participated in the discussions and I have reminded you of them when you decided to bring up again the same sources as if they had never been discussed before in the talk pages and being found full of flaws, and you have done this several times, every time refusing to acknowledge the problems. You have had more than enough warnings that you were bringing up low-quality sources and giving them undue weight respect other better-quality and/or more notable and/or more representative of mainstream ones. I warn you for making advocacy via promotion of bad sources that happen to be positive towards the topic. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I participated in some of those discussions and I was not convinced that the sources were not usable. Disagreements are to be worked out by discussion and consensus, not by warning users not to repeat ideas you disagree with. Essentially, the argument as I understand it was that a book from what would normally be considered a respectable publisher could not be used as a source for describing fringe theories because the ideas presented in the source were fringe theories. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You understood it wrong. I posted at the workshop's talk page explaining further why the sources were bad. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

There was no consensus on those sources, Enric. This has been the problem all along. A few editors agree on something, they claim it's consensus. Your argument is strange because, if you read the post you diff'd, I didn't even name the alleged weak sources, rather, I pointed to the old discussions in the archive. The question was asked about reviews of the topic. Given that this is science, with ongoing publication, a review twenty years ago isn't the same as a recent one. In any case, we now have, thanks to your argument here, during the case, a very clear example of what I faced at Cold fusion, which makes discussion much easier.

What is the rejected source that I advocated or promoted, and how did I advocate it? I mentioned two sources directly: The ACS Sourcebook and Kalman. Kalman had already been brought up and I think my comment about it is solid and standard RS. That leaves the Sourcebook. What about this source makes it not RS? Be specific. It's published by a cooperation between the largest scientific society in the world, the American Chemical Society, and Oxford University Press. You have a problem with this source?

I did not "say above that [my] edits shouldn't have been reverted," I didn't address the revert at all, others did that, to my recollection, and, in fact, I may be proposing that I be either self-reverted or revertible on sight by any editor offended. We'll see.

Note to others: The edit I made can be considered more or less typical of what I'd do in the absence of a ban. It was a simple, short answer to a question and, in fact, it referred to the old discussions where the alleged consensus for rejection was formed, instead of actually naming the sources. In other words, my "advocacy via promotion of bad sources," was simply pointing to the old discussions so the IP could judge for himself or herself.

Enric, I've previously requested you not post to my Talk page. While, when this case is closed, it is possible that we can again work together, I'd suggest that now is not the time to debate content with me. After all, I'm banned from the article and talk now, by Rlevse. (Thanks, Rlevse, I approve and accept, especially now that it looks like this case may be headed for speedy resolution.) --Abd (talk) 21:04, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Rebecca Quick and KeltieMartinFan

Warning copied from User talk:KeltieMartinFan

August 2009 You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Rebecca Quick. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. You appear to be engaged in long-term edit warring. 3RR is not an entitlement, repeated reversion, removing basically the same content, repeating the same arguments,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] is prohibited without consensus. Discuss changes in Talk. Do not use reversion to control the article. Abd (talk) 21:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I find it rather questionable how...

A. you consider my one single revert a violation of the 3RR.

B. you did not place the exact same red flag on my opposer of this so-called "edit war" and your partner in crime on this matter, Elen of the Roads. That is completely one-sided and hypocritcal on your part. Which now makes me question the type of editor you are.

I know what the 3RR states. What I did was in not a 3RR violation. On top of that, I dealt with people like 162.6.97.3 who had been keen on their ways here no matter how absurd they are. People like them tried to intimidate me, and it never works because in the end, the truth eventually comes out. I've been around long enough to know what to do and what not to do. Don't think for a moment you're talking to an amateur. KeltieMartinFan (talk) 12:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

No, I consider the whole sequence a violation of the rule against edit warring. If you read the policy and the notice, 3RR is a bright line, a point at which even edits justifiable by guidelines can result in a block. The notice was explicit and clear and with diffs.

Your "opposer" was an editor with one edit in the sequence, not many. I didn't see a warning as necessary.

You were not accused of violating 3RR. You were warned about edit warring, that your behavior, if continued, could result in a block. And that is, quite simply, true, and if you continue, I predict that you will be blocked. We'll see if it comes to that. While I might take a small role, not that I'm not an admin. I'm not personally threatening you, it says "warning" and that is exactly what it is. Ignore it if you prefer, but you will not be able to claim you were not warned.

What was "absurd" about the IP editor's behavior? It wasn't proper -- that IP also edit warred -- but it certainly was not absurd, it was merely unsophisticated.

In short, Keltie, you are correct. Truth comes out, and it is coming out, and you should be aware that you are visible. It's possible to pass unnoticed for a long time here. That's over. --Abd (talk) 15:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I think giving a warning to KeltieMartinFan at this time was excessive. The most recent revert removed only a reference, did not change the text, and left one of two references present to support the statement. The other reverts were all July 20 or earlier: some time ago. Removing the reference only, once, was not a bald revert and may have been a step towards arriving at consensus on the references. It may be that your edit to the article was overly hasty after all, since KeltieMartinFan had not yet replied to my question about what KMF thought was the best reference, so discussion had not been finished.

KeltieMartinFan, I think what Abd meant was that reverts can be considered editwarring even if they don't surpass 3RR, and that your removal of the reference repeated your removal of the same reference earlier. I don't agree with Abd that that would be considered editwarring at that point, although we all need to be careful not to escalate to the point where it would be considered editwarring. It's also possible that Abd simply made a mistake and didn't notice that when you removed the reference you didn't also remove the statement about the marriage.

Everyone, giving that reverts related to this material on this article has received (minor) media attention, I think we need to be especially careful to avoid repeated reverts.

I think we're arriving at consensus on the article, anyway. Let's try to also get along with each other. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 12:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Coppertwig, the warning was necessary. Did you look at those diffs? Have you looked at the long-term behavior of this editor? I disagree: this editor has attempted, long term, at this article, to remove all reference to the previous husband, often with no variation at all in argument, and the argument simply got a little more sophisticated. In any case, an administrator I am not; the warning was issued so that administrative decision, later, could be asserted if needed. If Keltie is not edit warring now, fine. Yes, I was aware that this time the mention of the marriage was not removed. However, the reference leads to more information about that marriage, specifically the name of the husband. It's simply a variation. It is very odd that there was no prior warning like this, back when there was very clear, repeated edit warring hitting 3RR. The IP was also edit warring, and it was the two of them back and forth many times.

Keltie, I am not talking to an amateur. I think it quite likely, indeed, that I'm talking to a professional. A conflict of interest professional. Are you employed by NBC? You are correct that removal of the reference alone was not a bald revert. However, it was a partial reversion, and bald with respect to the reference itself. The reference is usable, and consensus should be established on this before there is any more edit warring. I limit myself to 1RR, generally, and I will support emerging consensus with that, pending, sometimes. What, precisely, is the "truth" that should come out here? You have been removing what appears to be solid, reference to the former marriage. You first, until it became unsustainable, removed all reference. Now you appear to want to remove the link that would allow a reader to easily find the name of the former husband.

what truth will come out? What I see is you removing what is apparently true, and you have not asserted anything positive. So that claim appears to be deceptive, intended to present yourself as fighting for truth, when you are not asserting any truth at all, only opinion and judgment, i.e., that this is "gossip" or "poorly sourced." You are doing the opposite of fighting for truth, you are trying to cover it up. This doesn't apply to Bilby, for example, who appears to be simply looking for the strongest sources. It certainly doesn't apply to Coppertwig. It also doesn't apply to the IP editor, who may also have a conflict of interest, for sure, but who was, indeed, pushing for "truth," and simply didn't know how to source it properly. --Abd (talk) 15:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help this weekend (considering all your other Wikipedia activity)!

162.6.97.3 (talk) 13:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Workshop page

I hope you don't mind. I'm replacing some collapse boxes of your comments on the workshop page with diff links instead. This is because a user said on workshop talk that they were having trouble loading the page into their browser. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

mmm.... not sure. Diff links are not as accessible. Maybe. Also what is in collapse is editable, diffs aren't (And neither are links to history, as I used in my primary evidence.) Diffs are much less readable, and the use of bolding disappears, for example. If a summary is left behind, it might be okay. Care to do any summarizing? I'm not sure how far we should go to satisfy bugs in browsers -- or in MediaWiki (?). The page is huge, and it might not load anyway. I'll look when I have time. --Abd (talk) 19:00, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm writing some summaries. I put in a link to one here; the summaries are at User:Coppertwig/Sandbox3. I'm using page history links and don't expect to leave them displayed there permanently. Feel free to move them; perhaps I should have created a page in your userspace. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 18:30, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I put links from the workshop page to these summaries. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Note Crohnie's messages on my talk page about continuing browser problems. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:26, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Funny

This comment: " okay, to make this even, desysop me too, okay?" made me laugh. thanks. Ikip (talk) 19:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Glad to hear it. That was the idea. I'm hoping that the cabal members can also laugh. They certainly laugh a lot when they watch someone they've blocked squirming and fuming! There was an actual point there. I don't have a special privilege to remove. Removing WMC's sysop bit makes us equal. If he and I misbehaved equally, for purposes of argument, then our resulting condition might appropriately be the same. We expect administrators to behave in an exemplary fashion; but WMC was already admonished by admins during the RfAr, and he ignored it, as usual. We'll see what happens. Those proposals, I don't know if they have preliminary consensus and NYBrad is an outlier, or if Bainer is more out on a limb. I could still see some sanctions, perhaps, as to myself, but if the mentor option is seriously flying, probably not. Cool, eh? I've always wanted a mentor.

I had other more complex proposals to make, such as "banned from Cold fusion and only allowed to edit Talk:Cold fusion with self-reverted edits. It totally addresses almost every complaint made, so it would theoretically enjoy complete consensus, right?

Wrong. Because the cabal's problem is that I express my views and the products of my research into sources, at all. The problem with my patented Wall-o-Text is a smokescreen, easily handled in other ways, and with my cooperation. And it had basically stopped, it was nothing like before. (There is a real problem with long text, but it takes much more work to address it than many realize.)

But it would confront those arguments, and, I assume, neutral editors would back it, if they were inclined to back a ban at all. --Abd (talk) 20:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Personal Attack Removed

Abd, I am sorry that your page was vandalized to include a personal attack. I have removed the attack & cannot even imagine why someone would have to bring ethnic opinions (accurate or not) onto Wikipedia. Freedomlinux (talk) 15:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This refers to what is restored below. This has been added repeatedly for a long time, so, this once, I'm putting it back and responding. I appreciate your effort, and, normally, I'd leave it there. The IP is probably a block editor who believes that I was responsible for that. Since I have no power to ban or block, it's a serious error, and if the editor is upset about the ban, the editor should address the actual cause. This is not actually an ethnic opinion, below, it is simply an angry editor saying what he imagines would upset me. It doesn't work, I'm not upset, I'm grateful, and I'll now get to think of this every time this editor tries it again, if he does. Carry on. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Requesting clerk action

If you would like clerk attention on a matter, it's usually better to contact one of us directly or leave a note at WP:AC/CN. Edit summaries and bold print are not guaranteed to attract our attention; most of the clerks are probably not watchlisting case pages, and if I'm not online I can very easily miss notes such as that. I have removed the comment in question, and will be speaking to Skinwalker.

He does, however, make a good point. If you do not want your conduct called into question, it may be advisable to avoid WR for the remainder of the case. Your posts there have been called into question already during this case. While your conduct there is not actionable here, poor behavior there is not likely to help you either. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Noted. This wasn't an example of poor behavior, though. The metaphor I used is an expression of how easy something was. And it was easy, editing that page accomplished what a megabyte of text might not have accomplished, a clear demonstration of the problem to the community and ArbComm, and it cut through all the factional affiliations. We should not disrupt wikipedia to make a point, for sure. but what I see as the effect is not disruption, but clarity. Suddenly, on one crucial point, a point which is the foundation of the entire case, everyone, including editors who had been tendentiously arguing that I was the entire problem, is roughly in agreement. So I looked bad. It may have been worth it, I'm just one editor, I'm not an administrator, and Wikipedia will not fall if I can't edit. An abusive administrator can do tremendous damage, and it can be very difficult to address. My purpose in filing the case was not to "punish" WMC, but to make it very clear that failure to recuse when involved is serious, and must stop. I did not do this to preserve my own right to edit the project or any particular article. Indeed, if that were all, I'd simply have started editing Cold fusion after the community ban expired, I would not have allowed the massive disruption of this RfAr, which was reasonably expected, just for such a trivial purpose. If I were blocked, I'd have followed ordinary unblock procedure, and, if necessary, a discussion at AN/I that I didn't request early close on. --Abd (talk) 03:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I will severely restrict my posting to Wikipedia Review for the remainder of this case, quite simply, because you have requested it and suggested it. Nicely, in fact. Thanks.

Muslim scum

User:abd is Muslim Scum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.68.200.252 (talk) 15:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Usually these comments are promptly deleted, but this has been repeated over and over, and perhaps it's time to allow the banned editor to say it. And to respond. If this gets out of hand, it can all be deleted, no harm.

Yes. I am Muslim scum. That is, I'm definitely scum, and I seek to be "muslim" scum, which means scum that abandons attachment, accepts Reality, and serves ("Abd" means "servant" or "lover"). "Scum" is the allegation of Satan, voiced through those who buy it, about humanity in general, i.e., that we are worthless. Literally, life itself is a scum on the surface of the earth. But what a beautiful, wonderful, scum, in which there is great possibility for mischief and harm (as the angels complain in the Qur'an), but something else that justifies it all (as God replies.)

Thanks for providing the opportunity to say this, IP. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, your comment reminds me of this song: "Ode to Soil" ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:57, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions in arbcom

1. Delete or rename the cabal section. Just to show the double standard of Mat and Raul, change your section name to "mutual trolling society" or "small tag team"
2. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley/Evidence#The_immediate_sequence you need edit diffs. Ikip (talk) 19:16, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

As to the second point, the diffs and links are in the reference, I think, but I'll check. --Abd (talk) 19:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

"Cabal" is a critical word, a hinge point, and we must face the phenomenon that creates cabals. The problem is not the cabal editors, it is the structure, which creates and enables cabals to function in a negative way (or we would not call them cabals, for the positive function is simply normal human cooperation.) Cabals are exclusive, and it is relatively normal to be exclusive, but if we want NPOV, it's essential that we rise above that. I've added a piece to your evidence page on prior involvement, it's on the attached talk page, you may copy the neutrally-stated stuff to the user page if you like, but I also referred to that talk comment in my evidence section. It shows the cabal in naked clarity, with WMC referring to it as "we." A seemingly innocuous comment, showing that all "we" have to do is wait, the meddlers (I was pretty clearly one of those "meddlers:) will go away. He was right. I did. Others keep coming. The context was edit warring by the cabal, wheel-warring by WMC against Jennavecia who had protected Global warming in response to RfPP, and a block of an opposing editor by Raul654 during that edit war. Sure, Logicus was edit warring. Cabals, through tag team reversion, encourage edit warring from minority position editors, and usually the cabal can dispose of these editors quickly, but more established editors who have been driven away before by the sheer uselessness of trying to oppose a cabal, sometimes are watching the article, so they come in to support and, presto! more serious edit warring. WMC tells Jennavecia that the article is fine, it's being handled by administrators who watch it. Indeed. WMC, Raul654, Stephan Schulz, and sometimes others. They take very good care of that article. Meddling by administrators "who do not understand the situation" is very unwelcome. In other words, if you are not involved, do not dare to intervene.

A set of administrators regularly watching an article and supporting one side of various edit wars, not to mention participating in them, can be very effective and very difficult to confront, admins who get desysopped are usually those who acted alone.

Good luck. --Abd (talk) 14:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

How do you spell relief?

Apology to the Committee. Thanks, folks, for all your support. The case is not over, but my participation in it largely is, for reasons explained in the apology. I will answer questions from arbitrators that are asked here or by email, and I will try to answer questions from others, but, please be patient, I will be very busy with RL over the next weeks, trying desperately to make up for all the time poured into this case.

You spell relief R E C U S A L. Letting someone else make decisions, providing advice on request but not trying to control. --Abd (talk) 14:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

You might also be relieved to know that you're not the only one facing the "wall of text" accusation: [14] ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:52, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I want to report a trademark violation! [15].  :) --GoRight (talk) 05:28, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley/Workshop#Diff_subsequent_to_apology_that_is_of_concern

Your apology and yout noticeboard post appear incongruous and a bit worrying to me. If you find the time, I would appreciate you somehow allaying my concerns posted at the link above. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 11:12, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I probably should have ignored this, Fritzpoll, I spent over two hours writing a response, and would have spent more cutting it down, and I really couldn't afford the two hours. I'm saddened by much of your comment in the case. I don't "seek out" administrators to hound. I saw JzG's clear actions-while-involved and asked him to reconsider, and, in fact, I expected he would, silly me. I was then told that if I wanted to do anything about it, by another who had tried in the past, I should be prepared to "eat worms." Okay, I don't like the taste of worms, but, whatever, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. That was a simple case, because it began when I was completely uninvolved. The "worms," in fact, didn't appear till later.

This time the admin sought me out. I didn't go after WMC, he came after me. He wasn't neutral, from the start. He was uninvolved in the specific content, but very much involved in an overall content position re Fringe science, and he clearly saw me as a fringe POV-pusher, and as disruptive, he'd expressed before that I was headed for a ban, and it wasn't a friendly warning. I was "meddling" in global warming, I was one of those "sticking his oars in" that he wrote about. He was, as he often does, intervening on behalf of a preferred side. He usually has more excuse, he didn't give a reason for his ban. No clear justification for the ban was given in the ban discussion at AN/I, one of the signs of cabal involvement is a agreement with a ban without evidence. You don't need evidence to take a cabal position, that's a standard characteristic. Compilation and review of evidence takes time, but taking sides takes hardly any time at all. Now, please, don't ask me more questions; rather, ask an arbitrator to ask, I've promised to respond to arbitrators, but not to everyone else. Or ask me by email. I might not respond quickly. --Abd (talk) 14:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say you have sought admins out to hound, and nor have I said that you ever have, but was genuinely concerned by the apparent incongruity, which did seem to suggest that you were going to somehow pursue this further. I'm sorry that you are saddened by my comment in the case, although given that my emphasis has been on the need to document bans for the purposes of transparency and review/enforcement, and has emphatically not been on either you or WMC I don't see why you would be unhappy. My only comment on the parties revolved around the most recent block, which I condemned. So your sadness has simply been brought about by what appears to be a lack of clarity on your part, and a misunderstanding on mine. As you are so fond of saying, Abd, noone has to read what I write, or respond - that's exactly why I didn't post the comment to your talkpage. Fritzpoll (talk) 15:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Look, I was saddened, that's a fact. Responsibility for that? That would take a whole big discussion, wouldn't it? I read your good intentions in this comment, and I trust that. My position on bans is really close to that of Rlevse. Admins can't actually ban, i.e., set up a strict enforcement, all edits are blockable, ban, except under some narrow circumstances which *do* apply to the ban Rlevse issued after my edit, but not when WMC originally banned me, nor after the expiration of the community ban (which did set up such a general right). Administrators can, perhaps, say "ban," meaning, "I consider your editing disruptive, and I warn you to stop," but this doesn't create a right to block for a nondisruptive edit. It's a strong warning. Repetition of a specific disruptive behavior that was a stated basis for the ban, yes. For example, "You make long posts that dominate the Talk page." Okay, then the editor makes a one-character correction. Not a violation of the arguably legitimate intention of the ban, but something else. But a post that the editor thinks is not long, but the admin does, yes, there is a basis for block there. It's about being clear. And about not giving administrators excessive authority to control content. He shouldn't have enforced the ban during the RfAr in any case, even if his ban were legitimate. And he probably shouldn't have blocked for violation of the community ban; a neutral admin would have been quite unlikely to be exercised about that edit. He was, because he saw it as a personal defiance, which it wasn't. Later. --Abd (talk) 17:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I would suggest that you don't spend energy on your talk page, and move all concerns to the talk page of the arbcom. Ikip (talk) 17:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

As 'Quick' As That

Been sitting blocked for a while, and also recognize you're in the midst of much more that's important to you. But wanted to answer some of your previous posts regarding a certain edit-war.

So I believe there were some previous attempt to nudge you away from some assumptions. So here’s a push: As sure as Ms. Quick had a previous husband, is as SURE there is ABSOLUTELY NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST involving an IP editor who wanted to note previous marital information. NONE. Zero. Zilch. In particular, your IP geolocate efforts were wrong. (You did much well, grasshopper, but NOT on obvious, or ANY, conflict of interest.) : )

Next: I think an IP editor’s “skill” had little to play in the psychodrama. An edit warrior played a system that really works (initially) against lowly IP editors. (By the way, “skill” should always be defined at Wikipedia as fact-gathering and -offering, not as Wiki politics masquerading as “consensus.”)

Otherwise:

One, there is no Truth without Verifiability. (Or didn't you sit through all those seasons of The X-Files, too?)

Two, it pains me to offer any defense for a certain adversarial edit-warrior, but a clear reading of that person's user page doesn't suggest any reasonable conflict of interest. Instead, a careful examination of that individual's editing history will demonstrate a censoring nature. This individual likes to remove. Thinks he/she is a cop walking a beat, keeping the riff-raff out, dispensing Wiki-street justice on his/her values of right and wrong. Just look at how the edit-war began. A simple line was added, and struck, added and struck. The striker didn't take it to the talk page. Didn't raise immediate concerns about sourcing. Go back and read the striker's initial objections. Didn't care if it was a fact, only cared about a proper source when that served his/her deleting ways. Most of the war was never about sourcing. It was about fighting an edit-warrior trying to ignore the truth and assert his/her final-arbiter "taste."

Three, from all that occurred, being welcomed to register a Wikipedia account really conjures up Groucho's line about joining a club!  : )

Again, entertaining, diverting? Yes and yes. But fun? Not so much. Where's the joy to be found when the absence of four tildes can get one blocked? IP-editor access works (or should have worked) just fine. Of course, now there's a perceivable chance that a certain twice-married Public Figure, who is probably savvy about the internet, could infer she has some sort of Wiki-obsessor. (By the way: NO!) All for one minor edit of a simple fact.

Finally, thanks again for all your help and good luck in your case.

68.50.128.120 (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I was aware that certain suspicions I noted were just that, reasonable suspicions. One of the IPs was probably the former husband, one not. Maybe not, but it doesn't really matter. Most of what you have written, IP, is the same as what I concluded about the real problem. As to conflict of interest of the non-anonymous editor, that is also a suspicion based on a fairly extensive review of the edits. Not a proof. Additional evidence would be the timing and nature of the intervention at Quick. I observed, just as you have noted, that the initial removals weren't about sourcing and that the objections to sourcing were likely a smokescreen. I still think that general content opinions don't explain what happened there; that there was likely an axe to grind. Good luck.

I'm sure my case will turn out fine, though some aspects might look bad. I take the long view, I bit off a huge problem, and it's not one likely to be solved quickly, and if you win a few, you also lose a few, it's part of the heat in the kitchen. It might be noticed that I did not ask for anyone to be blocked or for desysopping as a remedy, though I have and do recommend that when an admin has violated policy, in general, that the bit be suspended until ArbComm has reason to be satisfied that the admin won't do it again. Simply, "well, we told him it was Bad," doesn't cut it. The admin, if the admin doesn't understand the basis for the policy, is quite likely to do it again with a different editor. Any admin has made vast contributions to the project, and that should always be recognized, and a path kept open to be able to not lose that store of experience, but we need to make sure that serious policy violations are addressed and stopped, and admin action while involved is always serious. That was not the case with your block; it might have been hasty or an error, perhaps, but not one due to involvement, as far as anything I've seen. That's why I did not raise it as an issue. --Abd (talk) 17:43, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Lowly IP editors don't appear to catch many breaks on Wikipedia, although it may be fair that a bunch of their contributions don't deserve any. The blocks involved with the 'Quick" matter were justifiable, mostly, based on Wiki-procedures. Not so much, of course, on the larger principles that were being asserted.

Not sure how it reflects on your own situation, but Mr. Connelley's 'Quick' actions leaves ample room to wonder: Wouldn't another administrator have handled it all better? 68.50.128.120 (talk) 18:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not. Look, he made a Quick judgment, which is all most administrators have time to do. He didn't have time to research sources, etc., he saw that you were an IP editor, edit warring. What you were doing wasn't proper, even though you had a good reason behind it. With a little more attention, he might have blocked the other editor as well, or at least warned. Absolutely, the system is stacked against IP editors if they edit war, even for a good cause. I don't see any way to change that anytime soon. We have roughly three million articles and a couple of hundred active administrators, I think. The saving grace is that it's a wiki, and mistakes can be fixed. Eventually, we will have, with BLPs, flagged revisions, which means that only certain privileged editors could approve changes to the "live" version of the article. Anyone can see, by choice, and edit the other versions, or a working version, I'm not sure of implementation details, but this will put much less stress on the matter, and procedure would be much clearer. As I wrote, you were properly blocked, but the system also did work. You asked for help, and you got it. That exactly what you should have done, instead of edit warring, in the first place. But who to ask? Making that plain and clear would be part of what I want to do. My thinking is about the system, and individual articles are mostly, for me, just examples. There is an exception now, Cold fusion, where I've now done a lot of research and see pretty clearly what direction the article needs to move in. It's really the same issue as with your article of interest. We should use reliable sources to determine fact and notability, not editor POV or unsupported opinion or synthesis. That exception doesn't change my overall focus. --Abd (talk) 19:51, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

IP, I've had to ask for semiprotection of this page because insistent vandalism started up again. I have a page which remains unprotected, User talk:Abd/IP. Because I don't get messages from edits to that page, it might take time for me to see them, but I do eventually reply. Sorry for any inconvenience. --Abd (talk) 02:11, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

RE: That was fast! Thanks.

No problem. I just happened to be around. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Scibaby Impacts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah! You got me started. Sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, was this the other Scibaby thread you were thinking of? [16] --GoRight (talk) 22:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

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

talkback

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[NEW] Ikip (talk) 03:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Please stop soapboxing at Talk:Blacklight Power

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

For reference, [17]I was quite surprised to see this. The "by the way," brief, was added because Cold fusion and hydrino theory have been confused in the past (they are connected in the way that I described, but the Blacklight process is not cold fusion, at all, Mills, in the past, went to great lengths to keep it separate, and he's right. Hydrinos might explain cold fusion, but not the reverse. It's not soapboxing, I have no promotional agenda there, but I did bring it up because there has been recent interest in Cold fusion and a big flap over my editing there. Is there a problem with keeping the distinction clear? Are no related comments allowed in Talk? --Abd (talk) 19:18, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I don't know if this will be required, but.....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Crohnie and "accusations"

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

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

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

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

It's posts like these that made me know to look for it at arbcom, the request is coming. [18] [19]I think these post says more about what people are saying about things here. Read it, it's long but I think this post says a lot to anyone who is listening (the second dif). When these issues have been brought up at the boards I think the community did a good job asking the right questions and being patient enough to hear everything prior to doing anything.links changed to permanent or archive--Abd (talk)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have you seen this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truce?

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

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

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

An edit

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

Article has regressed where

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

User:Abd/Open Source notability

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

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

good one

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

LOL!

Wiki, you've been on my mind

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

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

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