Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:47, 7 July 2006

Are you the same Iantresman...

... who created the Heliospheric circuit gif? I would like to use that in an duplication of the Electric Universe model you have worked on. I find it relevant to my studies as I search for interdisciplinary relations with other plasma phenomenon. Please let me know if you would mind. TTLightningRod 21:39, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

• Sure, no problem. --Iantresman 19:17, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
• Posted to my talk page by mistake. Alphax  01:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

List of publications in physics

Hi Iantresman,

Thanks for your contribution to the List of publications in physics. Please note Science pearls project that this list is part of.

The list should be a list of specific publications and not a list of journals, however important they are. Can you note such publications in plasma physics?

We can create a sub list of publications in plasma physics and add your contribution as further reading. What do you think of such solution? I have no proper knowledge in physics (and plasma physics) so I’d like to know whether it is suitable.

Thanks, APH 08:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

My fault, now updated. --Iantresman 09:36, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I saw that. Great. Are the entries in the list correct? Are some important topics missing? Should some entries be removed? Would you agree to adopt the physics list? APH 06:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Birkeland terrella

Hey, Ian,

Nice work tracking down the terrella-in-action picture for Birkeland current. I've seen photos of the thing shut down, but never operating. Very nice! zowie 18:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey

Check the Energy Arc image page. :)PiccoloNamek 14:54, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration

To answer your question at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration#Procedure_advice: You should copy the template, and paste it below, changing the "Template" of the name of the user, and filling in the appliable fields. You can notify the person either before or after, but note that you are not asking for their cooperation. They need to know so that they can respond to your accusations, if the arbitration committee accepts, it is regardless of whether they want to or not. After arbitration is accepted, a set of subpages will be created, one of which is the evidence page, where you can present your evidence for the arbitrators to analyze. There isn't a template for notification, all you have to do is say you are requesting arbitrationamd say that they need to make a statement, and give them the link. I can help you wih this if you want. Though I'm afraid that you might not understand the gravity of ArbCom. It is a last resort. Why don't you tell me what the conflict is about before you make an arbitration request? Dmcdevit·t 23:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Notification of POV-pusher & libeler conspiracy

This notification is being sent to FT2, Iantresman, Harald88, and Wetman, as these 4 people have responded in support of my proposition to include the wikipedia policy 'POV selective fact suppression'.

I made a note on the page wikipedia_talk:Neutral point of view that both the users Saxifrage and Dominick stalked me to said page, and that Dominick only started stalking me because Todfox notified him that I called him on his POV-pushing behavior on my user page. On my user page (user:NPOVenforcer), I have listed many people that have either pushed a POV and/or have used libel instead of fair argument, so as to warn innocent wikipedians of who to look out for. Saxifrage and Dominick both saw the list of trouble users, which included themselves as well as Todfox (aka 'Kit') due to their past offenses. Saxifrage and Dominick are thus conspiring to trying to suppress the POV selective fact suppression policy so as to give themselves free reign to make as many selective fact suppressions as they want. Also, Todfox is conspiring with Dominick to libel my informative list as an 'enemy list' via their RFC on my user page at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/NPOVenforcer (libel violates the wikipedia civilty policy, by the way), so as to try to get rid of the informative list and give them free reign to violate as many wikipedia policies as they want. On said libelous RFC, Dominick actually committed the criminal offense of trying to frame me of threatening his person, so as to try to put me in prison under false pretenses. I hope you find such behavior apalling as I do. It is for that reason that I am creating an RFA against Dominick to permanently ban his IP for his criminal offense against me. I hope that you come to support it. Why should you help save me from Dominick's offenses? -Because I am fighting to support the NPOV nature of wikipedia articles, so what benefits me benefits you through my actions, because you also support the NPOV policy. Besides, Dominick may victimize one of you next. Have you heard the saying "We will all hang together or we will all hang separately"? NPOVenforcer 05:49, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Dispute resolution

I notice several have criticized you for not taking your dispute with Joshuaschroeder thru channels first. But I haven't noticed anyone explain those channels, by explicitly offering you a link to Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution.

This statement should not be construed as support or opposition to your cosmology, as I am not a professional scientist. Art LaPella 20:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm quite saddened by this whole thing

Kudos for contacting Peratt, it's an interesting development. Nice to see others with an open-minded approach. Jon 06:19, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Elerner RfC

I have added a request for comment on Eric Lerner's editing, at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Elerner. You may want to look at it if you have a spare moment, since your views are probably quite different from mine. –Joke137 00:47, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Learn something about redshift and come back

As it is, you are getting all your information from very biased sources and are doing searches in very round-about ways. You need to get a handle on the basics of redshift before you can make an argument to insert your POV into the article. As it is, you haven't demonstrated even a cursory understanding of the subject. Please read up on it and get back to me.

Thanks,

--ScienceApologist 23:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Outside statements

Yes, I do believe that they are allowed. Raul654 is the real expert on this matters, though. Warmest regards --Neutrality 16:10, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Intermixed RFAR statements

I was about to remove them myself, but now that you've responded, I'm not sure what to do. Jayjg 00:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Mediation request

Hi Iantresman,

I noticed your request on the WP:RFM page. First, apologies that no one had gotten to it yet (we're rather short-handed). Second, mediators aren't decision makers, so I don't think that declaring consensus need or ought to be done by a mediator. It looks anyway as if a consensus has been agreed upon. I'm removing the request, let me know if you have any questions. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 21:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Cold Fusion RfC

Hello,

There's currently a controversy at Cold fusion that I would appreciate it if you could look at. The article is about to fail a Featrued Article Removal Candidate vote. There are at least 3 fairly different versions in play: one based on the original Featured Article dating back to 2004-08-20 and tossing out all edits between now and then ("FA version"), one which was the current version up until that ("current version"), and a proposed new draft written originally by Edmund Storms (a retired Los Alamos scientist) and edited by me ("Storms version"). At the moment the article is being rather agressively edited by a few people who support the version from a year ago, and if this stands, a lot of good material will be lost. Frankly, I can't entirely support any of the versions; the article just needs more work and more different perspectives. Hence this invitation. I hope you can help.

I'm posting this to you because I've seen you on various physics-related pages, and/or because you've worked on the Cold fusion page before. Thank you for your time.

ObsidianOrder 06:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Self references

I think it's a pretty clear case of Misplaced Pages:Avoid self-references. It's intention is clear; don't have such links in Misplaced Pages articles. enochlau (talk) 16:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Re:Birkeland currents discovered

Two points:

1) This is the first time direct evidence for magnetic fields around a molecular cloud have been observed. The Zeeman splitting is very difficult to measure. 2) There is no indication that the field is generated by Birkeland currents.

--ScienceApologist 06:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

This is still the first time magnetic fields have been directly observed around (not in) a molecular cloud. You have a poor definition of Birkeland currents. Maxwell's equations predict a current density for every magnetic field with circulation. That isn't the definition of a Birkeland current which is a current circuit associated with a magnetosphere that interacts with a plasma such as in the aurora. A simple current density associated with the curl of the magnetic field doesn't necessarily indicate a Birkeland circuit since there are a lot of ways to get a current density on large scales. --ScienceApologist 15:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Please refer to me by my username on talkpages

Such courtesy would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! --ScienceApologist 00:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for following my request. Such courtesy does not go unnoticed. I'd give you a barnstar, but I can't find one that's appropiate. --ScienceApologist 20:43, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

tired light

You asked me about what's happening on Tired light mediation; now it's starting to move, see Mediation Cabal: Tired Light Harald88 13:57, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

PS your last message messed up Harald88 08:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

whtws a tired light? E-Series 18:29, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Mediation: Electric Universe Concept

I'm sorry for the late reply, you submitted this case. Is this case still in need of mediation? --Fasten 15:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Electric Universe Concept, NPOV clarification

I have replied to the mediation request. If you would like further assistance, please let me know, otherwise I will consider the case closed in aweek or so. Cheers,

Sam Spade 13:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Please see Misplaced Pages:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-02-11_Electric_Universe_Concept,_NPOV_clarification#Wraping_up, where your attentions have been requested. Cheers, Sam Spade 17:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi guys, Voice of All, who froze the plasma cosmology page, say that we can edit it if we reach a consensus, which specifically does not have to include Joshua, if the rest of us agree. So I suggest that we agree on Tommysun's last version, with the exception of the definition of plasma. Can I try again here on that: "Plasma is a state of matter where electrons and ions can move freely, and carry currents."? What do the rest think?Elerner 01:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Re:Redshift email

Hehe check your diffs more carefully: . I wasn't the one who added the section; I merely slapped the {{verify}} tag on. enochlau (talk) 10:45, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed yes. Nevertheless, perhaps you'd keep an eye on the proceedings anyway. --Iantresman 11:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Invitation

The Mediation Cabal

You are a disputant in a case listed under Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases. We invite you to be a mediator in a different case. Please read How do I get a mediator assigned to my case? for more information.
~~~~

--Fasten 12:40, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Ion: Citing sources

It is great that you improved the article, but you reference numbers without citing a source that verifies them. If you have sources, please cite them, or otherwise try to find sources that qualify your information (provided that none refute it). The page Misplaced Pages:Citing sources might help.—Kbolino

3RR at Plasma cosmology

Please be aware of our three-revert rule, which you appear to have violated at Plasma cosmology. Further reverts during this time period (or any four reverts in a 24-hour period) will result in a block from editing. (ESkog) 18:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

While I haven't technically violated 3RR, Ian definitely has. --ScienceApologist 18:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

No Undue Weight

• What we can't infer from this quote, is whether an item is of sufficient importance for including in another article

I could not interpret this sentence, but it maybe because english is not my mother toungue. I suspect it means that the quote is only about the absolute significance of a theory or view, not about its significance relative to an article. I agree with that. Note that the prominent adherent sentence, as I understand it, can only be used to exclude or include a theory or view from a given article. It is about the relative significance of a view or theory. It cannot be used to exclude a view or theory from Misplaced Pages because tiny minority views without prominent adherents may have their own separate article. Therefore, though it contains important ingredients that could be integrated in the No Undue weight section, the quote, which is about absolute significance, is not directly related to the no prominent sentence, which is about relative significance. I am not against that we include it in the No Undue Weight section, but I would like to see where it will fit and how it should relate to the remainder of the section. -Lumière 16:11, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I should add that it is not because I ask how we can fit the quote in the current No Undue weight section that I am against your main points. -Lumière 03:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

We should ask ScienceApologist some challenging examples of article that he/she edited and where consensus worked well for him/her. The goal is to figure out more concretely what a "succesful consensus" means for him/her, under what kind of mechanism it is achieved and on what kind of topics this mechanism, whatever it is, is currently being applied. I would not challenge him/her with examples where it does not work because this would not be as much informative. -Lumière 19:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The motivation for the above request is to understand why some editors depend so much on consensus in opposition to a clear policy. I looked a little bit on the history of ScienceApologist, but there was nothing obvious. I suspect that I would have found something if I had searched more. However, I found something for FelloniousMonk (FM). The key point is his comment "rv. See talk. Consensus is cite is not required and..." Note how "consensus" is being used to conclude that a source is not needed, which is against policy. If you look, you will see that FM is trying to include a paragraph that is building a case for the evolution theory without providing a citation for this viewpoint. The paragraph and the associated viewpoint is presented as if it was the truth, which is against NPOV unless this truth is attributed to a source (and a citation is provided.) Here is an exemple of a statement in this paragraph that, in accordance with FelloniousMonk's consensus, did not need a source:

"Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity provides a good discussion of the "triumph" of the mechanistic view in biochemistry."

If the statement would have been something like

"Jacques Monod in Chance and Necessity says that the mechanistic view in biochemistry has triumphed."

there would have been no need for a citation because it only reports Monod's view in his book and the book is easily found in the Jacques Monod article. However, the statement that is pushed by FM implies that the triumph of the mechanistic view is a fact. This triumph is not presented as Monod's view, but as an independent fact that is discussed by Monod. This is against NPOV unless this view (that the triumph is a fact) is attributed and a reputable source exists. The entire paragraph is like that. -Lumière 01:52, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

In your discussion with Saxifrage, consider this:

"My suggestion is that your problem with the policy as written (as opposed to Iantresman's problem, which is not the same as yours and it is disingenuous of you to appropriate Iantresman's question for your own ends) stems from an inability to take the rules of thumb as examples of how to apply the policy and extrapolate from them to a specific situation. Your unending crusade to set down every conceivable condition in explicit words is misguided to say the least. Doing so would only feed the wikilawyers and provide no new guidance to those who have a firm grasp of the policy already." Saxifrage 04:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The emphasis is mine. We should ask Saxifrage who are these people who have a firm grasp of the policy! We should ask him how we can distinguish these people from those people that do not understand it. Also. we should ask him if there is an explanation to the fact that these people find that the policy is perfect the way it is, even though it is not clear. Finally, we should ask him if he likes the fact that an unclear policy prevents POV pushers to push their viewpoint. However, don't mention to him the exceptions: those POV pushers that mysteriously master this unclear policy have no problem. -Lumière 01:26, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Broken links

You have recently made some broken links at Misplaced Pages talk:Neutral point of view. For reference, internal links use double brackets, separate the "text" from the link with a pipe (|), and do not include http://en.wikipedia.org/ at the front. Conversely, external links use single brackets, separate the "text" from the link with a space, and are fully-qualified URLs. — Saxifrage ✎ 08:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

My Rfc

There is a Rfc on me. Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/-Lumière I am just an ordinary user that felt that a clearer policy will be useful when there are disputes. If I am left alone on this, I have no chance. -Lumière 18:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Moved from Talk:NPOV

I've restored Jimbo Wales' actual quotes, replacing the ambiguous paraphrase in the Undue weight section ... unless someone can verify his 2003 mailing list "comments" as they were written. Here is the correct, accurate, verifiable quotation:

--Iantresman 19:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why you think this is necessary. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:36, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

What either one of us might think, what is more important is a verifiable primary source. --Iantresman 19:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Policy pages aren't subject to the verifiability policy. If that's your only reason for making the change it should be reverted. Though I would say retaining the link to the original email is warranted. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Facts presented on ANY page are suject to verifiability, unless you can verify otherwise. Additionally, Jimbo Wales' may set policy, so again, his version of policy is law, and that too is verifiable. --Iantresman 19:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

A brief reading of the verifiability policy page would show that it applies only to articles.

Besides, Jimbo is not the supreme lawgiver. The only thing he has made "law" is that having a policy of writing from a neutral point of view is a must. Everything else he has said are contributions from a respected member of the community, as the policies are community-decided. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Please note that I have added another direct quote from Jimbo's post, directly address Undue weight, and the amount of space majority and minority views may have. --Iantresman 19:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk:NPOV

I can't do anything to exclude you, Ian, I can only make the request in the interests of harmony. I took a look at Slrubenstein's comment and what this dispute seems to be about is whether or not to paraphrase Jimbo's words about NPOV. I have to tell you that paraphrasing is completely acceptable on a policy page, because the words aren't being quoted or used because he said them. Rather, that is the wording of the NPOV policy, and Jimbo has also said something very close to it (really, almost identical). But this is wording that has existed on that page for a long time, and there is clearly no consensus to change it: in fact, you are the only one who seems to want to (and perhaps Lumiere, I don't know). Please re-consider your position in the interests of giving that page a break from Lumiere's disruption of it. SlimVirgin 00:55, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm taking a holiday

Sorry Ian, I can't be arsed making myself needlessly unwell trying to reason with senseless knuckle-dragging science graduate rationalism fanboys, I'm diverting my efforts elsewhere for a while. That said, are you aware of the Brynjolfsson redshift paper? Some interesting fits, and talks about Rayleigh and Raman scattering. Jon 01:06, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Style tips

Thank you for the work at del, nabla symbol, and other places. And just a few small suggestions. One is that it is good to use an edit summary say most of the time, and second is that one should use fewer capitals in section headings, so ==External links== rather than ==External Links==. These are tiny things, but are the house style, so I thought I would let you know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:44, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

"Archive Freedom"

Are we supposed to take this seriously as a source:--> http://archivefreedom.org/

Claims there is some kind of "blacklist" in physics preventing certain physicists from publishing work. This clearly shows a grave misunderstanding of the scientific method. Anyone is free to publish -- as long as it is science. Overturning a paradigm will earn you fame, and if true, a theory will stand up to critical peer review.

All the website shows is that certain pseudoscientists have a bizarre conspiracy theory of science, and instead of doing science, pseudoscientists scream like children about how they are being "censored"? — Dunc|☺ 19:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hi! Just wanted to let you know that User:Marskell had initiated an RfC on my behaviour at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Aquirata. You may wish to comment. Aquirata 13:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Iantresman, Thanks for your support! Your view pretty well sums up the way I look at discussing policy, too. Aquirata 01:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Please refrain...

... from editting Misplaced Pages to make a WP:POINT. Your last edits to redshift look very much like you are gaming the system. --ScienceApologist 13:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

wouldn't need to make a point if you edited article fairly --> That's some pretty shaky justification for your practices here. If you have a problem with my editting, there is a dispute resolution process you can appeal to. Please don't disrupt the encyclopedia itself. --ScienceApologist 13:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Voltage at Tower Bridge

Sorry for the delay in replying; I was on vacation. Faraday tried an experiment at Waterloo Bridge (Tower Bridge did not exist is those days), but the current was too small to measure. (I guess the resistance over that distance was very high). I did the calculation about forty years ago in school and remember the answer as one volt. However I am now rusty on these things and have asked a friend to recheck my calculation. I will assume that the water is flowing at one metre per second and the river is 200 metres wide. In London the earth’s magnetic field is 55,000 nanotesla and the dip angle is 67 degrees (it is zero at the equator and 90 degrees at the magnetic poles). I will let you know the answer. You might also like to have a go. I then have to invoke one of Fleming's contortions to get the direction! JMcC 09:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Tired light

Sorry , i shouldn't have used the word badly in my edit summary. It's just 'alternative to redshifts' is confusing as you mean current, accepted redshift theories. my apologies. -- maxrspct in the mud 17:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Free plasma resource

They'll send you a free copy if you request it. Pretty good resource: --ScienceApologist 18:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I respect your oposition to my nomination

I also respect your explanation. Frankly, I never expected that you would support it.

As per my "perspective" I just have to say that I'm perfectly fine with NPOV as a concept, but I don't think that this is as accomodating a principle as you view it to be. In particualr, I think your intrepretation of NPOV is too insistent on the incorporation of minority opinions. I also find it problematic that your advocacy of ideas related to your father's catastrophism ideas clouds your judgement with respect to editing. You seem to think that your perspective uniquely represents neutral which means it is difficult to engage you in articles on subjects where you are trying to employ this "neutralizing" agenda. I often get the impression that you are here to reinvent certain well-defined scientific terms by overly referring to ideas on the fringe of science or pseudoscience to promote a perspective you see as "more balanced" but is, on the consideration of the majority, skewed towards undue accomodation. I was deeply, deeply troubled by your posting to Halton Arp's message board basically asking for your allies in these subjects to come into Misplaced Pages and affect consensus for the simple rationale that redshift should be defined as all the folks on that board see it rather than the way the majority of science textbooks treat it. Nevertheless, I have tried to assume good faith whenever possible, but I imagine we probably will just have to agree to disagree on many of these issues.

By the way, if you want to be an admin, I'll gladly support you. The only reason I want to be one is that some of the tools that you can use in combating vandalism (you know the sort: someone comes into a page and writes I WROTE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) save a considerable amount of time compared to the user tools we're given. --ScienceApologist 15:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ian, believe me, I have heard and understood your insinuations that I'm either a McCarthyist or a writer for Pravda as a means of criticizing me for going on witchhunts and censorship rampages. (Incidentally, if you haven't read Pravda recently, I encourage you to do so, it's always good for a laugh.) I just respectfully disagree. I take a different opinion of NPOV than you, specifically I think that there is considerable risk in presenting minority ideas as more important than they are if we were to take your idealizations of NPOV to their natural conclusions. What would happen if we adopted this kind of Ian-flavored NPOV policy would effectively be promoting an opinion based on accomodation rather than neutrality. As I've said, I see this as perhaps an intractable dispute, but I'm willing to discuss it. If you're ever in Chicago, USA, we'll have a drink and hash it out.

I also think you may be rewriting a bit of history yourself. After all, you did contact my employer inquiring about my positions at one time. I'm always curious as to what perspective people come from and how that influences their work both formally and informally. You have been alternatively very up-front about your advocacy of catastrophism and guarded about it. This coupled with your post to Arp's website has made me suspicious of some of your activities here at Misplaced Pages. In that post you articulated a position that seemed to allign well with what I was seeing in your editting practices. I get the impression that you are clamboring for certain subjects to have greater visibility in the sense that you think that these subjects are unfairly marginalized in the science press, the academic journals, in science text books, by the scientific community, etc. This makes sense to me coming from a catastrophist. It's a real social critique of Ivory-Towerism that I take inspiration from to be an educator. Of course, Misplaced Pages is not about educating, it's about "informing" so I avoid promotion in the article space. However, what seems to me to be an avoidance of promotion may appear to you to be the same old marginalization tactics. And the world keeps spinning.

Anyway, I find a lot of this to be incidental to the Administration request. I really don't anticipate that our dispute has anything to do with whether I have a set of tools or not. I would never, for example, block you for anything nor would I delete articles you created. We just have too much of a history and that kind of behavior would be inappropriately disruptive. Still, I recognize that you may want to object to my RfA which is your right. We have a history and trust is hard won while mistrust tends to stick around.

--ScienceApologist 17:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ultimately, Ian, I think our conflict comes down to the fundamental problem with Misplaced Pages: how do editors deal with the vague Misplaced Pages:Notability essay. You are an "inclusionist" and I am a "deletionist". Jason Scott explained the problem well in atalk. I think your background as a catastrophist (outside the mainstream viewpoint) makes you inclined to be an "inclusionist" while my background in academia (inside the mainstream) makes me inclined to be a "deletionist". --ScienceApologist 17:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)