Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:14, 8 February 2012

Welcome to my talk page!

• Please use the Reply button to reply to a message, or add topic (+) to start a new section.
• If I have left a message on your talk page, please DO NOT post a reply here, instead, reply there.
  • Mention me using the "Mention a user" button in the Reply box or type out {{ping|Six words}}.
  • I will have your talk page on watch and will note when you have replied.
• If you prefer to manually edit the page to post:
  • Use an accurate and appropriate heading.
  • Indent your comment by using an appropriate number of colons ':'.
  • Sign your post with four tildes (~~~~) at the end.

My Talk Archives

Link

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present.

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (companies)

Remember that RFCs are part of Dispute Resolution and at times may take place in a heated environment. Please take a look at the relevant RFC page before responding and be sure that you are willing and able to enter that environment and contribute to making the discussion a calm and productive one focussed on the content issue at hand. See also Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment#Suggestions for responding.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (companies). Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! However, please note that your input will carry no greater weight than anyone else's: remember that an RFC aims to reach a reasoned consensus position, and is not a vote. In support of that, your contribution should focus on thoughtful evaluation of the issues and available evidence, and provide further relevant evidence if possible.

You have received this notice because your name is on Misplaced Pages:Feedback request service. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from that page. RFC bot (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Tool apprenticeship

Remember that RFCs are part of Dispute Resolution and at times may take place in a heated environment. Please take a look at the relevant RFC page before responding and be sure that you are willing and able to enter that environment and contribute to making the discussion a calm and productive one focussed on the content issue at hand. See also Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment#Suggestions for responding.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Tool apprenticeship. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! However, please note that your input will carry no greater weight than anyone else's: remember that an RFC aims to reach a reasoned consensus position, and is not a vote. In support of that, your contribution should focus on thoughtful evaluation of the issues and available evidence, and provide further relevant evidence if possible.

You have received this notice because your name is on Misplaced Pages:Feedback request service. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from that page. RFC bot (talk) 03:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:President of Croatia

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:President of Croatia. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Misplaced Pages:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 04:15, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Marchmont Observatory

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Marchmont Observatory. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Misplaced Pages:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 05:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Please discuss before revert

Please , explain where my changes are not compatible with the sources already in use. --OBenfey (talk) 21:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

From the discussion at talk it is crystal clear that you don't have consensus for your change. While it would be wrong to revert a change that has gained consensus at the talk page, it's quite OK to revert edits that are against consensus. --Six words (talk) 21:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry

Hi, I am just writing to aplogise getting your very valuable comment (under the stupidly named Homeopathy and the Laws of Physic thread) sort of 'blocked'. I just wrote to noformation apologising to him as well and suggesting that your contribution was in fact very much on topic and relevant. Further comments by me under that thread would have confirmed that. You are of course quite right that it doesn’t matter whether Avogadro was a chemist or a physicist. My intended mischief backfired, big time. Sorry. Sleuth21 Sleuth21 (talk) 22:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No worries, the thread is just closed and collapsed, everyone can still read it if they want to. This is usually done to discourage further answers to an off-topic thread. (It is "off-topic" because it's not about improving our article which is, after all, what talk pages are for - see WP:TALK).
FWIW, I think you misunderstand the "prevailing opinion" of homeopathy Misplaced Pages editors have - there's no doubt homeopathy works as placebo treatment, and that placebos can help people improve. It could be so easy to write a great article about how homeopathy came to be, what Hahnemann thought at that time and how our understanding of disease and the human body has changed since then - if only there was a consensus on this between mainstream science and homeopaths. Unfortunately instead of accepting that while their theories gave them some good strategies (hygiene and healthy diet for example) other things (miasms, law of similars, law of infinitesimals) are wrong in hindsight (a parallel to that would be the phlogiston-theory 17th century chemists developed - it did offer an explanation to some phenomena they observed and even allowed them to make some predictions - as we now know it was wrong, anyway) and trying to remove those from their practice, they are sure if science doesn't show the homeopathic principles are right then science must be broken. Then there's the problem that most non-scientists aren't good at interpreting "the language of science". A trial that is inconclusive isn't a "positive" trial, and "more research is needed" is often nothing but a set phrase. Most of the longterm Wikipedians (if not all) know this, so why is it so hard to write a better article? I think it's mostly due to three types of single purpose editors that haunt the homeopathy article and talk page.
Type one is someone (or knows someone) who was helped by homeopathy, and to them calling it placebo, regression to the mean, sounds utterly wrong and like an attempt to "bad-mouth" this treatment (after all most people still think placebo effect means "you weren't really ill in the first place" - which is, of course - untrue).
Type two are "true-believer" practitioners, who have spent both time and money on learning those (you have to admit it - wacky) theories and have seen people improve - they, too, mostly think that placebo="nothing was wrong with them", so they can't accept that their "art" is called a placebo therapy.
Type three are "hardcore sceptics" (they are very few and seldomly try to edit the article, but they do exist) who think that since homeopathy is obviously a placebo treatment and practitioners don't admit this it must be a scam, IOW that practitioners knowingly "rip off" their customers.
There are other factors hindering the improvement of our article, too, (even if everyone accepted that it's a placebo treatment, there'd still be controversy whether it's okay for a physician to prescribe a placebo treatment - in my eyes that is pretty much the only controversy over homeopathy that exists in mainstream science, and then there's the question of what happens if patients find out that they've been treated with a placebo - will they still be able to trust their physician?), but they are minor in my eyes. What really prevents us from improving the article is that every single sentence has to be referenced to three to five references because otherwise someone (be it SPA Type 1, 2 or 3) will make sure there'll be twenty pages of talk page discussion over it. --Six words (talk) 16:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I really appreciate your detailed comments but dis agree with some of your points. Your typology of editors who prevent our article to be improved is interesting but incomplete. There is for instance the anti-homeopathy obsessive who thinks saying anything positive about homeopathy constitutes a homeopathy apologia. They are truly misguided and I find them disturbing and destructive. That’s why I started my own sandbox where I test out ideas without being shot down by this type (or living in fear of same) Sleuth21 (talk) 23:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

An afterthought if I may (17th Jan. was a bit hectic with the WP blackout looming...): If, as you say

'What really prevents us from improving the article is that every single sentence has to be referenced to three to five references because otherwise someone (be it SPA Type 1, 2 or 3) will make sure there'll be twenty pages of talk page discussion over it'

is true (and of course it is) then the complexity and ref. overkill of the lede is a WP-generated artefact and has nothing to do with the complexity of the subject per se. We have to stop it, I think. Shall we join forces? Or is this question in violation of WP rule 354a, para3, sentence 17: ‘Do not canvas’? :-) BTW: Koennen wir das auch auf deutsch machen? I hab' da so meine Vermutungen..Sleuth21 (talk) 08:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Natürlich können wir uns auf meiner Benutzerseite auch auf deutsch unterhalten!
Der Homöopathie-Artikel ist leider ein sehr schwieriger "Einstieg" in die Misplaced Pages, und grundsätzlich werden neue Wikipedianer (bezogen auf den "edit count", weniger auf das Registrierungsdatum) von vielen dort sehr kritisch beobachtet. Es gibt einiges was mir an der Einleitung nicht gefällt (z.B. auch die - meiner Meinung, ich bin kein Muttersprachler - total verkorkste Formulierung "in which practitioners claim to treat patients"), aber so gut wie jede Änderung braucht tatsächlich eine ellenlange Diskussion, und meistens kommt trotzdem nichts zustande.
Bei Belegen sollte immer lieber auf Qualität als auf Quantität geachtet werden, die Praxis, Belege "anzuhäufen" ist aber (leider) bei vielen hart umkämpften Artikeln gang und gäbe (s. Waterboarding, Muhammad, MMR vaccine controversy, Aspartame controversy, Scientology, Creationism usw.), und um so eine einmal eingebürgerte Praxis zu ändern wäre ein starker Konsens nötig - schon beim Homöopathie-Artikel mit 764 (meist stillen) Beobachtern ein schwieriges Unterfangen, Misplaced Pages-weit unmöglich. Und auch wenn ich es selbst nicht gut finde, ich kann die Beweggründe verstehen: hat die Einleitung eines "kontroversen" Artikels keine Belege, werden bald wöchentlich {{cn}} Bausteine eingefügt oder ganze Abschnitte ohne Diskussion gelöscht, weil "unbelegt". Ist nur eine Quelle angegeben wird mit Sicherheit irgendjemand behaupten, das sei nur "cherry picking", und die zitierte Quelle sei die einzige, die diese Aussage mache. Um solche Diskussionen zu vermeiden (die meistens daraus entstehen, dass der neue Wikipedianer/Anon vorher versucht hat selbst etwas in den Artikel einzufügen und mit einer dieser Begründungen - nicht belegt oder "cherry picking" - zurückgesetzt wurde) wird dann schon die Einleitung mit Belegen zugepflastert. Der große Vorteil von Misplaced Pages kann auch einer ihrer größten Nachteile sein: jeder darf mitarbeiten, wodurch manchmal Kompromisse entstehen, mit denen niemand wirklich zufrieden ist. Das ist ein bekanntes Problem, für das ich aber keine Lösung sehe. --Six words (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Stop deleting my links

As soon as I post a link to a piece of music dedicated to Anneliese, you come along and delete it. Stop it. TheManInTheDarkness (talk) 23:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has rules for selecting external links - I've already linked to them in my edit summaries, but I don't mind doing it again: WP:EL. Links to Amazon aren't considered “valuable information” but rather advertising and therefore aren't allowed (if Misplaced Pages allowed them, pretty soon every song/album/film that has an article on Misplaced Pages would have hundreds of external links to webshops selling copies). I can't prevent you from posting this inappropriate external link, but I certainly won't stop deleting it. --Six words (talk) 23:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

That aspartame 'study'

Wow, just wow.... As a researcher that works with animals it makes me wonder what ethics panel this 'experiment' went though. As well, the lack of any sense of experimental design, statistical analyses, operational definitions etc is plain ol' bizarre. I think I have an example for a class though, so something good has come of it..... Dbrodbeck (talk) 22:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's something. It's also a good example of the Dunning-Kruger-effect, the “citizen scientist” thinks she has debunked previous (industry sponsored) studies “by exposing the flaws in their experimental designs”. There's an interview on the internet (with J. Mercola) in which she says that doing the study ‘wasn't very hard’ and that she herself diagnosed the tumors/‘did the pathology’.

It's hard to imagine (though not impossible) that none of the animals in the “control group” had any kind of visible lumps - while I myself never had any pet rats, several friends and relatives had, and most of these animals eventually had to be put down because of tumors, enormous abscesses or paralysed hind legs (all diagnosed and treated by vets). I honestly don't think that someone who has never had rats before can care for 108 animals properly (I'm not even sure an experienced pet owner could handle such a number of them) and I'm afraid (or rather: judging from what she said in this interview I'm pretty sure) not a single one of these animals was ever taken to the vet or received any kind of treatment for the many “effects” that the “citizen scientist” observed, including skin rashes and eye infections. --Six words (talk) 10:35, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, and how were they sacrificed? I could go on. Man... This is horrible. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Copyrights

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Copyrights. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Misplaced Pages:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 06:15, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

MMS

You have twice changed back the wiki that I edited on the Miracle Mineral Supplement, which I edited because it was biased and not fully informative. You have cited "Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)" and the use of terms "silver bullet", "bane" and "duly" as the reason for reverting back to the original biased wiki.

Please inform me as to why those terms are inappropriate for this wiki, and advice me as to what better action I can take to provide better links. The MMS page needs to be change to contain unbiased and accurate information, which is does not in it's currently reverted state.

Or please change the information so that it reflects unbiased information and education for those seeking it. Otherwise, I will just keep changing it back until we are both flagged for violation, which is no fun. I would much rather work with you, which I wish you would have done with me by letting me know what errors I placed. Clearly I am not a seasoned wikipedia user, though I am trying to my best to do this right and I would appreciate help rather than defiance, as I am sure you would like to see properly edited wiki's.

Thanks.