Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:30, 8 January 2009

This user is a member of the Misplaced Pages Ultra Secret Inner Inner Cabal, a cabal so secret that not only am I not allowed to know who the other members are, I am not even allowed to know if there are any other members, and if I ever did find out that anyone else was a member I would have to kill them immediately. You can contact WUSIIC on #wikipedia-ultra-secret-inner-inner-cabal on Freenode. As a courtesy you are requested to kill yourself afterwards.

JzG is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Misplaced Pages after a few days.

My crap Stuff and nonsense This user is an administrator on the English Misplaced Pages. (verify) This user has a userpage on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. 15,000+ This user has made over 15,000 contributions to Misplaced Pages Smert' spamionem! This user is a member of WikiProject Spam. BEng This user has a Bachelor of Engineering degree. Reading January 2025 8 Wednesday 4:29 pm UTC Were this admin to act in a foolish, trollish, or dickish way, he is open to being slapped with a large trout.

I check in most evenings, and occasionally some days during the day. I am on UK time (I can see Greenwich Royal Observatory from my office). If you post a reply at 8pm EST and get no reply by 10pm, it's likely because I'm asleep. My wiki interests at the moment are limited. I still handle some OTRS tickets.

Dispute resolution, Bible style - and actually an excellent model on Misplaced Pages as well.

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

— Matthew 18:15

Please do not try to provoke me to anger, it's not difficult to do, so it's not in the least bit clever, and experience indicates that some at least who deliberately make my life more miserable than it needs to be, have been banned and stayed that way. Make an effort to assume good faith and let's see if we can't get along. Guy (Help!) 22:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

• Please see User:JzG/Harassment links.

the internets is populated by eggshells armed with hammers

• Bored? Looking for something to do? Try User:Eagle 101/problem BLPs.
• Really bored? Visit my website: http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
• User talk:Raul654/Civil POV pushing - extremely interesting debate on what I feel is one of the worst problems on Misplaced Pages right now.

Note to self

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Istria&diff=192329190&oldid=189359747

<3

Celarnor has given you a kitten! Kittens promote Wikilove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Share the WikiLove and civility with everyone and keep up the excellent editing! Send kittens to others by adding {{subst:Joy message}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Cycling events

Argh - just realised you are a cycling fan anyway so removed this mini-rant ;-)

WP:ANI

Following your note her, can you remind him to stop things such as . -- User:Docu

Wikibreak

I'm taking a few days off, I have some things that a re filling my time and Misplaced Pages is (as always) an irresistable distraction. Guy

Again on Cold Fusion

Hi JzG, sorry to bother you again, but it seems we have a little problem on it.wiki. BTW of the blacklisted site, there's an user that states there's also useful material, freely released by scientists who wrote about Cold Fusion, and asked for those documents to be whitelisted. Now the question is: have en.wiki either blacklisted the whole site or left some deeplinks to some given documents in white list (In other words: what do we lose in terms of knowledge if we blacklist that site)? Thanks again for your attention. Sergio † BC™ (Write me!) 18:35, 5 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blackcat it (talk • contribs)

• Some of it is not freely released, and much of it is heavily editorialised. It fails our reliable sourcing guidelines, and I would bet even money that it it is Jed Rothwell (the site owner) who is arguing for it. Guy (Help!) 13:22, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Guy, that's an inappropriate comment, it's irrelevant who raised the issue. The use of a total advocacy site as a place to view released documents that were themselves from a reliable source is an appropriate use, provided the link is specific, i.e., just picks up the document and not the framing that may be placed by the site owner. (A more general pointing to a page that contains the document or a link to it might be proper, but is definitely more questionable.) The site might contain a *lot* of material that is inappropriate and unusable, but that should not prevent usage of what is appropriate. The needs of the project and of the readers should be paramount, and being able to read original articles serves both. Further, when the topic is the controversy, sometimes reference to advocacy sites is relevant, under some conditions, as a source that an attributed claim from a notable source was made. These are decisions, ultimately, to be made by consensus. --Abd (talk) 15:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

• It's not inappropriate at all. Have you any idea how many times Jed Rothwell's promotion of his fringe views and site has had to be dealt with? Guy (Help!) 09:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I do not know I if I really want to get involved with this issue, but it seems to me that enforcing "reliable sourcing guidelines" is a missuse of the SPAM blacklisting process. At a minimum it creates the impression that blacklisting is used to enforce a POV, or win edit wars. I hinted at the problem earlier on User:Jehochman's talk page: Misuse of spam filter to enforce POV. I did not complain to you directly, as I did not think you were a party in this debate. Anyway, this is what I said earlier:

In these two edits User JzG (talk · contribs) removed vital references from the article on Martin Fleischmann. The first was the removal of the URL-line in an well formed {{Citation}} template, the referred file being a PDF copy of a peer-reviewed paper in Physics Letters A, available on-line at a cold fusion related repository lenr-canr.org. The second was the complete removal of the reference to the original press real, on-line at newenergytimes.com. I tried to restore the link and reference, but was prevented by the spam filter. I do not know what is happening here, but I find it very fishy.

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 13:56, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Vital references? I don't think so. Not when they are published on the hack website of a fringe group. Anything truly vital will be published in, and citable from, a reliable source rather than something like lenr-canr, which has been relentlessly spammed and promoted by the site owner to the point that he is now de facto banned. Guy (Help!) 15:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Am I to understand from your comment, that you are personally involved in this editing dispute? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 15:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if routine process for challenging spam filter inclusion has been followed yet. If the sites were added by Guy, then, of course, requesting that he reverse this would be an early step. Above, there is implied such a request. It looks like Guy denied it. Okay, next step. --Abd (talk) 15:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Just driving by, but there are many cases where crappy sites are listed in the spam blacklist and in the XlinkxRevertBot lists just for being crappy unreliable sites, even though they are not "spammed" per se. It isn't an abuse of process, it's just a poorly named list.—Kww(talk) 16:22, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for your attention JzG, are you going to include lenr-canr.org in meta.wikimedia's spam list too? Sergio † BC™ (Write me!) 18:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I've now formally requested JzG remove the site, which he added unilaterally, from the blacklist. That doesn't resolve the question and wouldn't be an acceptance by him that the site may be used, but it undoes his usage of administrative tools to support his own views (one must be an admin to edit the spam blacklist). Hopefully, he will do this, and then we can focus on content.... --Abd (talk) 19:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I generally would propose additions at WP:WPSPAM and let one of the regulars there add it. Jehochman 20:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The linking to lenr-canr.org certainly fits the profile at WP:WPSPAM. Is there any admin that would have done anything different?LeadSongDog (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

No, any admin would have done the same. Jed Rothwell was actively spamming his site as part of his ongoing campaign of disruption and POV-pushing, I did exactly what I would do (and have done) in any number of similar cases. Handling linkspam is one of my most consistent long-term activities on Misplaced Pages, and I am also a meta admin for the same reason. In the case of Fleischmann, he has over 14,000 hits on Google Scholar, it is unlikely to the point of implausibility tat any genuinely vital content would be surceable solely from a site so heavily spammed by its owner, and so heavily skewed towards advocacy of a fringe POV. On WP:BLP articles in particular we should take good care to use only reputable sources; lenr-canr is not one. One of Rothwell's links to it as the "citation" for the DoE review of cold fusion turned out to be a heavily editorialised version. As a source it is untrustworthy, but that is not the reason for the blacklisting, that is due to Rothwell's long-term spamming and disruption. Abd should note that all actions, editorial, administrative or otherwise, are unilateral, that is the whole point of having an account - the actions one takes are associated with one's account, end of. The addition was listed for review on the blacklist talk page at the time, but we do not sit around waiting for vandals to vandalise a bit more while we wait for someone to wander by and express an opinion. Guy (Help!) 22:59, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Your point is clear Guy, but I wonder whether you are going to add the site to wikimedia's blacklist. Sergio † BC™ (Write me!) 22:07, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

JzG's multiple roles

From your comment above and your similar comment at Talk:Martin Fleischmann, I can see that you (User:JzG) are involved in this issue in at least three different roles:

1. You are actively involved in a content dispute that is the focus of two resent arbitration cases: You offer your expert opinion on the 2004 DoE cold fusion review, you call your content opponents "Rothwell and his friends" and accuse them of advocating a fringe POV.
2. As a "spam expert" you offer your opinion on "long-term spamming and disruption" that you claim is happening here.
3. As a mediawiki administrator one of your "most consistent long-term activities on Misplaced Pages" has been "handling linkspam".

I do not think you should act in more than one of these roles at the same time.

As to the dispute itself: What I see happening here is an attempt by a group of Wikipedians to enforce a scientific point-of-view on fringe science and pseudoscience subjects. This is against Misplaced Pages's fundamental principle of neutral point-of-view. You call lenr-canr.org, or more precisely the peer-reviewed publications stored there, as "untrustworthy". I undertand this to mean that they are untrustworthy because they present a scientific point of view that differs from mainstream science. On Misplaced Pages POV does not equal unreliability. After all, we have plenty of articles on fiction, even religion! -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

• I am not "actively involved" in anything. All I ever did on that article was try to enforce NPOV. As the arbitration case clearly showed, I was absolutely right, Pcarbonn was trying to skew content to reflect a fringe POV. It is a shame I did not have more time to devote to preventing this at the time, it would have saved a titanic amount of wasted effort. The point of view that you describe as the "scientific point of view" is the neutral point of view, as per the arbitration case. Where a subject is scientific, we reflect the dominant view of the scientific community, which is generally pretty good at self-policing. Again, read the arbitration case: the fringe advocate Pcarbonn was banned, not the editors who tried to restore the article to compliance with policy. I am often guilty of heavy-handedness in dealing with such disputes, but I am not an involved party in the way you describe, because I was not active on the articles prior to the problem being flagged as needing admin intervention. There is no possible doubt that the advocates of links to that site were "Rothwell and his friends" - Rothwell signed most of his talk page posts as Jed Rothwell of LENR-CANR and Rothwell has made editorial comment in support of Pcarbonn, with whom he has co-authored a Knol which repeats the POV that we are now removing from the article following Pcarbonn's censure. Wikipeida was being abused by a small group of fringe advocates to promote a fringe POV, this is absolutely and unequivocally true. The site in question was a part of that, and was extensively promoted by its owner, and hosts material which does not demonstrate copyright compliance, and hosts material which has been shown to be outright falsified. We don't link to sites like that - aspecially as a source for heaven's sake! Guy (Help!) 09:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

"Enforcing NPOV" is making content decisions. The arbitration case isn't as clear as you seem to think. For example:

2) Some evidence has been presented of problematic editing by users including Pcarbonn and ScienceApologist (talk · contribs) on the Cold fusion article and related pages, including some edit warring and minor instances of incivility. However, the vast majority of the evidence presented related to questions (and disputes as to those questions) about the reliability of particular sources and the relative weight to be associated with various points of view, content questions which cannot be resolved by the Committee. Passed 8 to 0, 21:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The "advocates" of content are irrelevant when it comes to judging content. Content contributed by a banned editor can be used, if a not-blocked editor supports it -- and then it is subject to the same consensus process as all other content. When the scientific community is not very substantially united, where controversy exists within it, we cannot enforce a mere "majority view" against the minority. Cold fusion isn't clearly fringe; it's been widely rejected, but there continues to be serious research and qualified scientists who consider it worthy of further investigation, and recent publication. I'm not up on the recent activity in the field, I followed it closely almost twenty years ago; I was surprised, in fact, to find how much serious interest remains. When a matter is settled, you don't have one-third of a DOE review panel thinking further investigation is useful.

Sure, you became involved through a request for admin intervention, but you did this by making content decisions, deciding what was NPOV and what was not, and enforcing them. At that point you lost your neutrality. You make many charges against lenr-canr.org, and many irrelevant charges against Pcarbonn, but have presented very little evidence about the web site itself. I'm not asking for a tome, but: "material which has been shown to be outright falisifed," for example. I've seen vague charges of this elsewhere. An example? The promotion is irrelevant to the needs of the project. "Promoting" a site -- i.e., mentioning it or suggesting its use -- on a Talk page isn't contrary to our policy at all, if the site is reasonably relevant. --Abd (talk) 17:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Look at that RFAR. Pcarbonn came along to reshape a Misplaced Pages article to better reflect his POV. Some Wikipedians tried to resist him, in ways that were more or less appropriate, but failed. When the arbitrators reviewed the case they found that Pcarbonn's editing was biased and agenda-driven - it was characterised by abuse of sources including sources hosted at lenr-canr. Jed Rothwell is worse than Pcarbonn, a lot worse, but was not listed as a party because his involvement is essentially restricted to trolling the talk page. Guy (Help!) 18:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Please remove lenr-canr.org from the spam blacklist

JzG, please remove lenr-canr.org, added by you December 18, 2008, to the local spam blacklist. This is a library of papers and the decision to link to an individual paper, as citations, which you have made impossible by the blacklisting, is one which should be made individually, citation by citation. On the face of it, lenr-canr, as a library of papers, would be a source which we should allow as an external link; however, this is a separate matter. Your use of your administrative tools, in this case, may have been improper, you are clearly involved.

It's much simpler if you remove the site than if we go through more complex processes involving other editors. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 19:43, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

• No. It ios not a reliable source, it is polemical and worthless to Misplaced Pages, and it has been prolifically spammed by its owner. An absolutely open and shut case of WP:SPAM. Guy (Help!) 22:53, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The response doesn't seem to match what I see, nor does it address the issues I've raised. Instead of what may be useless argument, you seem very convinced of your position, I gather that you are refusing to remove the listing, and consider your use of administrative tools to be appropriate, even though you may be involved.

This was an attempt to resolve a dispute by direct communication between parties. One more question, though: would you consent to the removal of the listing by another administrator, should one make that decision? I'm looking, Guy, for the simplest and least disruptive means of resolving this. --Abd (talk) 23:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

No, because the only rationale you have given refers to one link on one article (which might or might not justify whitelisting of that one link); the site has been spammed by its owner, and abused in sundry other ways. We use the blacklist to control link abuse, we use the whitelist to enable carefully selected links from sites whihc have been abused, where consensus is that such links are of significant value. Guy (Help!) 09:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

And consensus to add that site to the blacklist was achieved.... exactly when and where? It seems like a unilateral decision on your own part, without discussion. *Dan T.* (talk) 13:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I haven't seen a good objection to its presence on the blacklist yet. Are you denying that it's an unreliable site hosted by a fringe-theory advocate? Or are you saying that using unreliable sites hosted by fringe-theory advocates as references is a good thing?—Kww(talk) 14:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

One should, I suppose, apply ideological litmus tests to the webmasters of any site before allowing it to be linked? But my objection here is less to the specifics of that site or its owner than to the concept that adding things to the blacklist can be done unilaterally without discussion by one admin, while removing them or making exceptions to them requires consensus. That's a tilted playing field, and opens up the possibility of systemic bias. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:33, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Take it to RSN. If you can get people to agree it's a reliable source, JzG won't have a leg to stand on. Adding things to the spam blocklist is one of those powers that a Mediawiki admin has, and he used it. Overturning an admin action always requires a consensus that the action was improper. This isn't particularly different. It is also a case where his action was so clearly correct that you don't really stand a chance of getting it overturned, but that isn't a fault in the process, that's because of the nature of the site and the disruptive behaviour of the site owner.—Kww(talk) 14:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

If it was the New York Times and it was spammed by the webmaster we would still likely blacklist it. I don't think we really need any more forum shopping on this, we're only one step away from Dan resurrecting his BADSITES crusade as it is. Guy (Help!) 17:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

"Spammed" implies mass insertion of irrelevant or clearly inappropriate content. A few examples doesn't establish it. The blacklist is not to be used to control content; it's a time-saver for clearly inappropriate links. lenr-canr.org isn't nearly so clearly inappropriate. Frankly, it looks like site dedicated to collecting information about cold fusion, which is a highly controversial topic, not a settled one. You have made shotgun charges, Guy, without specifics. Maybe the specifics exist somewhere; lenr-canr.org should be discussed before being blacklisted. But it looks like it wasn't, not in one place, and not with any clear resolution. One thing, though, is clear, you would be one who could present evidence and arguments, but you would not be the appropriate admin to determine consensus and close the decision. You have become involved, you have taken a controversial position and are strongly advocating it. Read the Cold Fusion arbitration; I don't find a community consensus obvious there, there were editors I highly respect who were very much opposed to sanctions against Pcarbonn. ArbComm decided to topic ban him, but the reasoning behind that is far from clear: the most obvious reason would be, though, that he apparently had an agenda. That establishes nothing about the topic.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 12:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Forum shopping? JzG, I've been trying to resolve this with the minimum possible fuss. I came to you first, once I realized the problem. You have been, I'd say, intransigent. Where would you suggest I go next, if I'm not satisfied? Is it forum shopping if I come to you, then to the specific place where the error I allege involves? Where would the next step in WP:DR take us? You are the experienced admin, I the relative newbie. In the absence of better advice, I'd say, an administrative noticeboard might be next. The issue I have raised isn't exactly whether or not lenr-canr.org should be blacklisted, it is whether or not you, with what is obviously a very strong POV regarding it, should have been the one to, on your own, blacklist it, which involves a use of your tools. There is also an issue about lenr-canr, was it "spammed" or wasn't it, but that is actually a separate issue.

I will, however, respond on one point. lenr-canr.org cannot be used as a source itself, probably. It isn't a peer-reviewed publication, it isn't a reliable source, and that has nothing to do with it being fringe. It's a private web site that archives material on a topic; you allege that this archive is biased, perhaps it is, or perhaps it isn't. (It's an archive of documents relating to cold fusion, which is a serious research topic and which remains so; however, it will, by its nature, contain many controversial documents.) However, much of the material archived is material that was independently published, material that is RS, due to its original publication or nature. It's the original publications that are RS. For anyone who wants to reference, here, one of these articles, it is conveniently available at lenr-canr.org, which facilitates reader verification. It may or may not be available elsewhere, often not, in my experience. The source in the article where I know the context was actually a paper by Fleischmann, not lenr-canr.org, which merely hosts a copy of the paper.

JzG, you are making content decisions, unilaterally, and enforcing them by the use of your tools. That's contrary to policy. Please fix it, please make this objection moot. I look here to see if you have responded, but otherwise I'm done here.--Abd (talk) 05:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

• No, I am not making content decisions. I blacklisted a site which was spammed by its webmaster, which contained material in violation of copyright, and which had been abused to misrepresent sources. That is all in a day's work - exactly the kinds of reasons we have a blacklist, in fact. We do not link to copies of sources on some random website just because they are there, we have to be sure that the material is not violating copyright. In this case numerous papers were from mainstream journals that do not (and believe me I have had this conversation with Reed-Elsevier, my former neighbours Taylor and Francis, Springer verlag and numerous other publishers) permit copies of their journal articles to be hosted by other websites even if the authors want to do so. The author is not even usually permitted to host them on his own site, unless special permission is gained at time of submission. This is all unambiguous stuff; WP:SPAM, WP:C and WP:RS all being violated, so the technical features were used to fix the abuse. Guy (Help!) 08:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

"Day's work?" If I look at the blacklist, I see many totally obvious listings. Basically, listing on the blacklist is not supposed to be controversial, it should enjoy consensus, otherwise it creates more wikidrama that is justified by the time saved. How many "spammed" insertions of the site were made? I'll research it if necessary, but it seems like a lot of work for what should be obvious: you crossed the line with the use of your tools here. You were involved, you'd made content decisions, you did not merely enforce editorial behavior policies, and your obligation was to refrain from the use of your tools. In inserting lenr-canr on the blacklist, you used your privileged access to automatically enforce and preserve your own editorial decisions.

The copyright issue is a separate one. Misplaced Pages should not become involved in or take positions on what may be a dispute between a publisher and an author. We don't know the content of the contract between the publisher and the author, and we are not competent to judge that. As far as I know, the project isn't in any danger of copyright violation by linking to a violating site, in any case. Has this matter (i.e., linking to an author's allegedly permitted copy of an article, in alleged violation of a contract with the publisher) been discussed and settled? Using lenr-canr is only a convenience to our readers, though, since they can find it independently, once they have the citation; I'd assume lenr-canr articles are googleable. Still, often I'm looking for a copy of a paper and I can miss a free copy somewhere, or it can take me a long time to find it. --Abd (talk) 17:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

No it's not. Sites have been blacklisted simply because of copyright problems. The site meets at least two blacklist criteria (spamming and copyvios) and fails at least two inclusion criteria (unreliability and falsification). I cannot imagine why we are still even having this conversation. Guy (Help!) 17:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I've been active on the article for a while. The lenr-canr site certainly hosts a great deal of material that only the most naive could believe is free of copyvio. Even if technically legal (and IANAL) it is simply wrong to link to these as references: we cannot trust that they are accurate renditions of the papers as the journals put them out. It also hosts a useful comprehensive bibliographic database on the topic as www.lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm (its index) which is obviously fair use by definition. If we whitelisted the bibliography while blacklisting the archive of papers at lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ could we not address both problems? LeadSongDog (talk) 18:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, though, if I were to offer you a resource list for a study of remote viewing and the guide was hosted on the site of one of the groups selling remote viewing, would you consider that appropriate? I wouldn't. I would not trust them to offer a full and unbiased selection. I would not offer a similar guide hosted by James Randi either, of course. Polemical, or advocacy, sites are not good sources for overview material of that nature, especially where (as with this site) there is a history of falsification, to say nothing of the site owner's promotional activity. But if the particular link that started this little teapot tempest is genuinely unique, reliable, appropriate and has consensus for inclusion as a source ins a biographical article where only properly reliable sources should be used, then I will whitelist it. I don't think is passes muster, but nobody seems to be terribly keen on discussing the merits of that link as a source, preferring to focus on reasons why we should allow links simply because "the wrong admin" blacklisted it. Guy (Help!) 19:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I hear your frustration, but blacklisting the Library of Congress for exhibiting an American-centric POV might be somewhat counterproductive too. The best collections available should still be used in conjunction with other resources to avoid selection bias, particularly on controversial topics. We don't have to (and should not) accept just one.LeadSongDog (talk) 22:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at the site on Abd's request/. I do not consider it a pirate site, and I think most of the material on there has a good chance of being legitimate. Some of it certainly is, being PD_USGov. Much else is by various cold fusion advocates, who may well have given or obtained permission to post it there. In a case like this, I think the appropriate course is not to blacklist the site, but to watch carefully individual items.

Asa general rule, most places where journal articles are secondarily posted are at least authentic genuine copies--I have not encountered one so far that is not, so I am not concerned with that part of things. Excerpts are another matter, of course. The most frequently encountered situation is where a scientists posts copies of his papers, --for soe of which he will have permission, from the publisher, for others not--there's a good deal of evidence that faculty tend to ignore this detail--but in the last few years, almost all the major publishers have dealt with it by giving blanket permission. the more problematic case is where a faculty member posts other people's papers on a course site--in general publishers , except open access publishers, do not give such permission unless the site is restricted to those in the course. But this site is typical of a third category, where an advocacy site posts material supporting its position. Generally, the more sophisticated ones of this sort do now obtain permission, and also post a few papers of their opponents to give the appearance of objectivity. (That of course doesn't in the least mean the material is permissible for further copying, but just for linking.) I consider this site among those more sophisticated ones, which is why it should not be blacklisted.

and of course LeadSongDog is right that in each case we should find the best and freest source available. DGG (talk) 22:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy

An article that you have been involved in editing, Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy. Thank you. Hfarmer (talk) 17:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this deletion nomination. I recommend avoiding engaging WhatamIdoing in debate as much as possible, as it will usually devolve into what a bad person I am within a few posts. That editor gets extremely worked up about this topic and can barely control herself, seeking to extort some sort of apology or otherwise punish me for some off-wiki trolling six years ago (which apparently worked better than I could have ever imagined at the time). While she's always good for a smile, she can be a bit of a time sink. Same with Hfarmer. Happy 2009! Jokestress (talk) 00:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

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