User talk:JoshuaZ

Important I prefer to keep conversations in one place. So if you send put a talk message on my page, I will respond there. However, if I leave a talk message on your page, and you respond here, I will respond on your page for consistency.

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Next archiving will occur around October 20

Deucalionite

Hi, thanks for taking care of the Deucalionite case. He's always rather difficult to deal with, but yesterday was definitely one the more bizarre moments even by his standards. I'm not sure how serious one must take his ranting about his copyvios being part of a systematic breaching experiment. Most probably, those are just self-aggrandizing phantasies covering up for the much more trivial truth that he lacks the academic skills to summarize texts properly. He has in the meantime apologized to Diana ([1]) and what he says there sounds more realistic.

I do believe there are probably other problematic cases still around. I tidied up quite a bit back in June. One that's left is Panagiotis Danglis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (exact source unknown, probably close translation from an original Greek source somewhere.) He simply refuses to state his source. A similar case where he flatout refused to name his source was on Sclaveni (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), but in that case I finally deleted the questionable content. Since I started monitoring him in June, he has taken to avoiding exact verbatim copies and uses very slightly reworded paraphrases instead. Recently, he's been creating a large series of stubs on historical treaties (see list on his userpage). I don't know what his source is, most of the pages are unreferenced, I guess he's taken most of it from some commen print source. In a few cases, like here: Treaty of Westminster (1153) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), cf. [2], one can identify a web source, and again it's a very close paraphrase.

• Original: "This treaty allowed Stephen to remain King of England for life. It also stated that Stephen had adopted Henry Plantagenet as his heir. Stephen's second son, William, was to inherit all Stephen's baronial lands."
• Deucalionite: "The Treaty of Westminster [...] allowed Stephen to remain King of England for life. The agreement also stated that Stephen adopt Henry Plantagenet as his heir. Stephen's second son, William, would inherit all of Stephen's baronial territories.".

From his reaction yesterday, I can't exclude the possibility that he genuinely believes that by rewording in this way he has avoided copyvio. If you have the stomach, read our "discussions" from June here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:16, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The more I look into it again, the more I believe intervention will be necessary here. The guy creates problematic articles faster than anybody can clean them up. Just since yesterday, he has created three more treaty stubs: Treaty of Raalte, Treaty of Berwick (1639), Treaty of Bongaja. Two are again unreferenced (as most of the earlier ones), the third ostensibly has an external link to a scholarly paper, but that is evidently not the real source actually used by him. From what he said yesterday, we can take it he has absolutely no intention of ever completing these articles or adding the sources to them. As long as he refuses to do that, we must assume that most of them are in fact copyvios or something very close to it just like the Westminster one I mentioned above. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Creation-evolution controversy

You warned me about the 3RR rule. Please do not assume that 'the majority must be right', and please check the situation carefully. I think this warning is unbased (it would not be my 3rd revert), and I will give you a presentation of things, how I see them, of all edits since I entered the scene some days ago, in chronological order.

• [3] This was my first change during the last days. It was a merger discussed long ago, in fact so long, that it has already been moved to the archive. One comment was given, one user approved the change. I think I have waited long enough to implement it now.
• [4] I reverted a change to a section I once wrote (long ago), since the change introduced several inaccuracies. I further wrote in detail an extensive comment on the discussion page and an explanation of the inaccuracies.
• [5] In a completely unspecified fashion, User:Mikkerpikker reverts both edits as "rv pov". What does he mean?
• [6] I could only guess what he means, so I undid his change.
• [7] Because I am not going to go into an edit war, I am immediately editing the version, giving a shot to nothing about what he considers (how can I know from "rv pov" and no follow-up on the discussion page?) as POV. It cannot be the "Intelligent Design or Theistic Evolution" thing since it was cleared on the talk page before I joined with the first edit above (and some time ago, I wrote to the organization and they say, no, it's not a mistake, it's intended to use the former term where the latter term would normally be used). I assumed reverting the merger was a mistake, and was not supposed to be included in "rv pov". So it can only be the claim that it is biased. I removed this claim with the edit. This is a unique version not present before. Note that I give extensive edit comments as I go on.
• [8] User:Roland Deschain reverts my change, claiming "rv: three editors have objected to your change. Make your case in talk". Not only is this version unique and has not even been touched by any other editor, I also did give my arguments on talk. In fact, these arguments, as mentioned above, plus a minor fix by myself, are the two most recent edits on talk, and are still the only edits on the discussion page since September 10. Note he again reverted all changes.
• [9] Since the revert seems to be based simply on false assumptions, I undid it. From current sitation, this is my first revert, since the edited version was unique.
• [10] User:Kasreyn claims "Incorrect. In being reverted, your change has been rejected by four different editors now. Please open a discussion of your intended changes on the talk page." again I was only reverted once, and this one revert was "because the other three editors objected" although the version was unique. Ah, and did I already mention that I "open[ed] a discussion of [my] intended changes on the talk page" already yesterday, and did not receive to date a follow up? So if he is saying "Incorrect" he is either mislead by trusting the comment of User:Roland Deschain, thinking a majority is against this version, or he has simply not checked the facts carefully.
• Then I received your warning.

To show good faith, I am not going to revert once more. I hope you can give me advice on what to do. Nobody replies on the talk page and I am being threatened to be blocked if I revert once more, even though it would only be the second revert in my opinion. --Rtc 17:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

My RFA

Thank you, JoshuaZ, for voting on my RFA, which passed 95 to 1. Now that I have the mop, I hope I can live up to the standard, and be a good administrator. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. —this is messedrocker (talk) 21:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment moved from talk page

(This is the only editing I made to your profile. Write me and tell me exactly what you think is wrong with the photo. I have an indgo coloured aura. THe photo belongs there. email redacted) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mycats (talk • contribs) .

Indigo children

I have reverted the IP socks (twice) and semi-protected the page. Vsmith 02:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Howdy, thanks for the input on the Talk:Indigo children page. My thinking is the chap will be happy if he can put his picture on some page. I found a few more refs on the topic he was talking about and wrote up a stub (it is in my sandbox at present, User:TeaDrinker/Sandbox. You seem to have some experience dealing with pseudoscience articles, do you think this might be enough to take the heat off in the Indigo children article, and do you think it might create new problems? Thoughts or ideas? Thanks, --TeaDrinker 04:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

GFDL?

Dylan Avery was an almost straight text mirror, aside from redundant material (IE explaining what Loose Change is) followed by a redirect. Korey Rowe and Jason Bermas received similar treatments, but sans redirects as I did not want to interrupt their AfD process. As for the GFDL, I am uncertain what aspects of it would apply or limit us here. All content merged was original Wikipedia editor content to my knowledge.--Rosicrucian 19:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes but under the GFDL we need to keep records of what was contributed by whom (that is why we normally merge and then make a redirect). Quoting from WP:MM "Merging should always leave a redirect or, in some cases, a disambiguation page in place. This is often needed to allow proper attribution through the edit history for the page the merged text came from. Even if it seems rather pointless or obscure, leave it in place. Superfluous redirects do not harm anything, and are sometimes helpful. Other websites may have made links to the old page title, so we will want to redirect incoming visitors to the merged page. We do not want people accidentally creating a new page under the old title, not knowing that the merged page exists. Redirects also show up in search results, helping people who might be looking under the "wrong" title to find the page that they are looking for." JoshuaZ 19:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd support a redirect in the case of the remaining two, but as I said I was uncertain and didn't want to disrupt the AfD.--Rosicrucian 19:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Move America Forward Page

JoshuaZ: Tell you what, instead of threatening me with Wikipedia ordinance violations, how about I let you and FeloniousMonk decide how Move America Forward will be portrayed on your website. I learned long ago that I have no ability to get verifiable information posted if one or more editor/administrator does not agree with the organization or issue involved.

I posted a fair accounting of MAF that included FeloniousMonks criticisms of the group, but also put in the legitimate good work the organization has done. You've made it clear you don't want me to have the ability to have that side of the story told.

So, it's the weekend, I'm done watching FeloniousMonk stonewall me. I'm not going to fret over things I can't change but will find another more constructive way to address the bias displayed. Thanks for your time and have a nice weekend.

David Loren Cunningham

The David Loren Cunningham is going to need some watching. A new user has decided that a yahoo.com column is not an acceptable source. More strangely, he posted uncited press releases that deny things not claimed. Arbusto 22:28, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Chebyshev function

Joshua, do you know anything about the Chebyshev theta function? We discussed odd perfect numbers about a year ago by email, so I figured this would be your field. I left some questions on Talk:Chebyshev function#Asymptotics—if you have any sources I can look up I'd appreciate that, and doubly if you actually know some asymptotic estimates. In any case the article could use this information once it's found, so it's not 'just' a personal quest.

Ireland & Rossen has the (trival) bound $\vartheta (x)\leq \pi (x)\log x$ (p. 25) but doesn't mention the problem further as far as I can see.

In any case, thanks for your time. CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Mccready is issued a 30 day community probation related to Pseudoscience articles

Hello

Based on the comments left on AN/I, I issued a 30 day topic ban to Mccready. (see Community probation log [11]) Discussion on talk pages is encouraged. Admins can enforce the ban if needed. Crosspost from AN:

Based on this discussion on AN/I [12] and the numerous comments on Mccready's talk page, Mccready (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is issued a 30 day ban from editing all articles related to the Pseudoscience. Mccready is encouraged to discuss his ideas on the talk pages of these articles. The the suggested sanction for disregarding the article ban is a 24 hour block with the block time adjusted up or down according to Mccready's response. Admins are encouraged to monitor the ongoing effectiveness of this article topic ban and make appropriate adjustments if needed. FloNight 23:26, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Further discussion about the ban or request for enforcement can be made at AN/I or AN. FloNight 01:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Creation-evolution review

I was just agreeing that, like most ID related articles on Wikipedia, one can see a clear implied meaning of "There is no challenge to Evolution, and ID'ers are all liars" throughout much of the articles, generally through extensive negative referencing. I don't agree that there isn't a a challenge, because academically motivated or not it sort of exists anyway, but I don't see how it would make IDer's annoyed for me to say that, i'm just saying that's how most Wiki articles on the subject tend to be written. Homestarmy 01:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Well, don't all the creationism related articles mention ID in some fashion anyway, they always seem written to attack both of them every time the article can do it :/. Homestarmy 15:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/PHDrillSergeant 3

I have answered the questions to the best of my ability. I appreciate that you have taken the time to ask me these for clarification, for I suppose it is true that I was a bit vague. Thank you. ~ Porphyric Hemophiliac § 20:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Arthur Ellis illegal ban

Thanks. I suppose this is a bit of a test re: exemption to the 3RR on a bio for a living person.64.230.114.80 22:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

James Kennedy

Heh, first Scienceapologist adds that thing, then you say something to me, I guess more people than I thought have Kennedy on their watchlist :) . Just out of curiosity though, I haven't really acquainted myself with WP:BIO much because it's a new policy, would that unsourced sentence of qualified as a problem? Homestarmy 02:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Wal*Mart

Thanks for adding the link to the article to the movie, I knew we had the article, but I wasn't going to cry if we didn't link to it from the main wal*mart article. In all honesty I think all those anti-wal*mart groups should only be linked from the criticism article, as they really don't have anything to do with the main article. EnsRedShirt 04:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that is the case. A complete removal of all such links may be creating POV fork issues and since the Walmart article in particular has an extensive history of whitewashing as long as we are reasonably within policy I'd lean towards erring on the side of including more critical links rather than fewer. JoshuaZ 04:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Which is why I wouldn't do anything like that before we reached an agreement, but I felt that a link directly to the movie's site was un-needed and hence why I was bold and removed it. ;) (But I think that overall the NPOV is better served by linking to them from the criticism article, and not the main one.. But that could just be me.) Again thank you for putting the link to the movie's wikipedia article. EnsRedShirt 04:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey while we are on the subject, some one just put the criticism article up for deletion. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Criticism_of_Wal-MartEnsRedShirt 04:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

RFCU commentary

On Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Evrik, I'm rather interested. I do the clerk job there, but you have the mistaken impression that its the informal RFCU clerk's responsiblity "comment" on what may be requests without merit. It is not, and as far as I've seen, anyone can make limited commentary (limited in the sense that huge lengthy discussion not take place in a request) on one. Don't let such things stop you from making what you feel to be genuinely important commentary about the request. --Kevin_b_er 07:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. However, it seems useful to clarify when one is not acting in official capacity (especially since the reporting user seems to be somewhat new. On other boards such as AN and ANI prior to becoming an admin when I commented there users who were not very familiar with the system either a) developed the mistaken impression that I was an admin or b) in some cases accused me of "impersonating" an admin. I therefore find it prudent to clarify when I am not acting in any official capacity . JoshuaZ 13:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, but the beauty of it is that there is no official capacity to be had there, save for those with checkuser permission. Kevin_b_er 15:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Schools

Rather than try to address it point by point, I think I can give you a general feel for what's wrong with your essay - it's basically just a chronicle of how you feel about the issue. There's no real attempt to address the issue, but lots of Well, I wouldn't mind if small cities got deleted and the like. There are tons of articles on Wikipedia I don't give a flying fuck about but if they're verifiable and encyclopaedic, what's the rational for deletion (with notes like a)spam is not encyclopaedic and b) there are exceptions (i.e. POVFORKS))? A school article that's verifiable, encyclopaedic and otherwise not spam or the like doesn't violate any policies or guidelines. WilyD 21:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Would you feel better if I entitle it a rebuttal to Silensor's essay and ignored my feelings? That could easily be done. As to the claim that an article "verifiable, encyclopaedic and otherwise not spam or the like doesn't violate any policies or guidelines" that is to some extent precisely my issue- theese are not encyclopaedic by any reasonable defintion of the word. Thanks for the comment, I will attempt to tighten the essay up and make it not about my feelings and focus more on the logical problems with Silensor's essay. JoshuaZ 21:11, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

So what do you feel about the essay as it stands now? Also to make it clear, I'm not writing an essay arguing for the general deletion of schools, the essay is rebutting specific points in Silensor's essay not arguing for a general deletionist policy. JoshuaZ 21:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to read it tommorow. WilyD 22:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll give it some more thought (I've been pretty busy today) but 3 and 8 really fail to distinguish between a stub and a directory entry asserting that a stub is almost by definition a directory entry without any real reasoning. The Cherry Valley, Arkansas argument is basically just Stubs are not directory entries in illustrational form. An article title on an encyclopaedicly viable topic with one or two facts (say, where the school is, when it was founded, who the principal is, what its motto is, whatever) is a stub, not a directory. A directory would be if we made a series of such things (presumbly sortable/searchable) such that it couldn't expand, maybe a table of whatever. They may sometimes look a little like this since regularised inspections result in certain information always being available so usually included, but it is a subtle (and important) difference.

Additionally, merge is very different from delete. It's essentially a keep vote but just a comment on the style of keeping. I will say that as a rule I generally hate merging and find it to have all the aesthetic style of a puddle of sick, but sayings Let's making elementary schools of Prince Edward County, Ontario a single article from Cherry Valley Public School, Prince Edward County, Ontario and Picton Elementary School, Prince Edward County, Ontario is essentially a keep vote with a formatting comment. If this isn't clear, they still want to keep all the content of the article on a merge (or most) but move around the title (and probly even keep the name as a redirect). WilyD 20:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

All the interest from the creationist pages

Perhaps. But it still leaves unanswered the question of why I drew all this interest from a few people on a few specific pages and what they were told before (e.g.) they went to the AFD on John McGinness. It also leaves unanswered the question of why, with all the completely unsupported assertions and gross violations of WK:NOR on Noble controversies, mine, which is documented ad nausem, drew such special attention. If you check the history, what little documentation is there, e.g., on Herman Carr, I provided.

Also note that I am pushing Weiss et all and the Bell Labs workers case for the Nobel, not McGinness'. The fact that we were temporally between them and the Nobel winners is just an illustration of how badly this thing was messed up. I have a thing about "citation amnesia" and science fraud, which I is why I defended Raymond Damadian and ruffled all thos feathers, for which I am still paying the price. While there is no cabal on wikipedia, there are certainly cliques, and I seem to have run into one. Pproctor 02:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

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Reply on meta

I have replied on my talk page. - Amgine 18:10, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

page protect

Thanks for the heads up on the correct place to ask. Desertsky85451 03:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Barry Gurary

You mentioned a couple of times in your edit summary abour BLP but that is for living people and he is dead.... --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 13:09, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I didn't notice that. Given the added content I'd still remove it as massively unsourced and not all NPOV. It is unacceptable to turn this article into a smear piece. JoshuaZ 13:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Creationism

The Portal, as it stands, reads very soberly, and I was not aware of the background, which you have communicated, so I just took it to be an examination of the idea the God created the world, as held by major religions — even if many people adjust this to also accommodate the scientific view. It's not really my field, although I am sympathetic to those who wish to provide information on such beliefs. I certainly agree with you that there are no grounds to put a joke template on it. I've put it on my watchlist. I wonder if people contributing to religious articles would participate if they knew of its existence. Tyrenius 18:22, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

RfA Thanks

Thank you very much for participating in my RFA, which closed successfully earlier this week with a result of (50/3/0). If you have any further questions or suggestions, feel free to write me. I hope I will live up to your trust. Michael 19:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Deucalionite, again

Hi, thanks for helping to keep an eye on Deucalionite. I notice he's persisting in creating new "treaty" stubs. Despite all requests, warnings, pleas and whatnot, he is apparently making a point of leaving them all without sources. Two or three more just today. As these are all on quite obscure topics they will be difficult to research and clean up for other people. I can imagine them lying around for ages in this state. Of course, he could just add the bibliographical references he's working from; he evidently has some and it would cost him half a minute to add them if he chose to. But he's apparently acting in wilful determination to make work more difficult for other users.

I don't know if you'd think more admin action on these grounds is necessary; as for myself, I have half a mind of bringing this to Arbcom if simple admin action isn't sufficient. I've now reached the point where I want an outright ban on him creating new articles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

He has claimed that he might react better to more polite requests. I'm going to try them for the next few days. If they don't work I am going to give him a long block. The step after that would be an indefinite with community approval. JoshuaZ 21:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Your question on my talk page

Good morning. Gastrich cybersquatted the name in order to draw traffic from the maleboge.org discussion group and to his own, just as he had done with talkorigin (without the "s") and theinfidelguy (by adding the "the"). His aim is to prevent web surfers from seeing what he does not want them to see, so if they type "maleboge.com" instead of ".org," they'll see his discussion group. Of course, that group does not allow rebuttal, only Gastrich posts to it (as "Fraud Buster"), and pretty much everything he's put on the group has been exposed elsewhere, far and wide, as deliberate fabrications. It's comical because Gastrich has been exposed as "Fraud Buster" and, as a result, perpetuates fraud every time he pretends to "expose" fraud whenever he posts. "Fraud Buster" is a sock. We've got evidence for all of this, of course. Reggie Finely (the Infidel Guy) obtained a trademark for the name, "Infidel Guy," and apparently initiated an action that forced Gastrich to offer to sell the hijacked domain back to him, and that deal went through. We have also obtained the trademark for "maleboge" and we'll be pursuing our options, because we have good evidence that the "maleboge.com" name was obtained in bad faith. WarriorScribe 02:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I was familiar with the talkorigin.org and the infidelguy incidents. I wasn't aware of this other example of it. Thanks for the clarification. JoshuaZ 02:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

De nada. WarriorScribe 02:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)