Dlawyer

About Me

I'm a very old man who recently was disabled by a stroke. I have many interests. BS Engineering UCLA 1957, MS Engineering UCLA 1965. But I've also an academic background in Operations Research, Economics, Transportation, and Russian. I'm currently retired. My website: davylawyer.appspot.com There you'll also find many articles that I've written on topics that I was interested in: transportation (especially railroads) and the history of the Universalist religion (although I'm not a member of this religion), etc. I'm not sure if I should try to transfer the info on my website to Wikipedia. My website once ranked in the top 1% of websites and I didn't have to be concerned about deletions (some insidious) like sometimes happens on Wikipedia. But my website original website closed down when LA Freenet closed and all the links to it (over 1000) became broken and due to yhe loss of links to it, the site ratings be Google, etc. plummeted to an extreme low. Almost no one reads what I wrote there. My site needs a lot of work as there is new data to be added, broken links I haven't fixed yet, etc., etc, but since it now has such a bad rating (wrongfully) I don't feel like fixing it.David S. Lawyer 19:35, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Most of my contributions to Wikipedia prior to late 2012 (when I registered) were anonymous. I was compelled to register then since some of the IP addresses my ISP used were blocked.

Topics I've contributed to prior to registering: Russian and Soviet Railways (There are 4 different articles now on this topic and I think they need to be better coordinated) Rolling Resistance, and a minor contribution to an energy-efficiency in transportation article. But one of my contributions, which I think was very significant since it showed that Japanese claims for energy-efficiency of high-speed rail were grossly exaggerated, has been wrongfully removed. Also, my contributions on "pulse and drag" Energy-efficient driving were also removed but I managed to restore them.

Also, a few times in Wikipedia, I pointed out that the energy-efficiency of rail passenger transport was little better than that the automobile. These also got deleted and I was too busy with other things to fight it. But someone should. The government is heavily subsidizing passenger rail transport and there is a strong vested interest of many to retain this subsidy, even if it means misrepresenting energy-efficiency. Even the Dept. of Transportation misrepresents it by failing to take into account the losses of about 70% in generating electricity for railroads. So we have a large number of public agencies (and their employees) which have a vested interest in misrepresenting the situation. I also found that this same phenomena of misrepresentation by vested interests also happens in Europe and Japan. But I'm not the only person that realizes this (others have said so on the Internet) so perhaps someday the situation will become more open and truthful. David S. Lawyer 06:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm continuing to improve my reading knowledge of Russian and have made out about 10,000 flash cards but have forgotten about half of them, partly due to poor memory in old age. But the ones I've forgotten I can relearn easier than most new words. I spend some time surfing the Runut (Internet in Russian) and am interested in the history of the Soviet Union, a topic on which I think no satisfactory book has been written. One could make use of the large amount of personal reports (found on the Runet)by people in Russia who once lived in the Soviet Union.David S. Lawyer 06:42, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello Dlawyer. All or some of your addition(s) to Free and open-source software has had to be removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa (talk) 20:12, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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October 2022

Please refrain from using talk pages such as Talk:Incest for general discussion of the topic or other unrelated topics. They are for discussion related to improving the article in specific ways, based on reliable sources and the project policies and guidelines; they are not for use as a forum or chat room. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. See the talk page guidelines for more information. Thank you. Acroterion (talk) 10:24, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to use talk pages for inappropriate discussion, as you did at Talk:Incest taboo, you may be blocked from editing. Acroterion (talk) 22:06, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

If you're going to make a case for a change to the article,please do so from sources, not from a free-ranging philosophical analysis. Acroterion (talk) 22:08, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

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