Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:19, 11 November 2006

I'm fairly busy in the Real World at the moment. Expect delays here... or not. But it's my excuse anyway...

You are welcome to leave messages here. I will reply here (rather than on, say, your user page). Conversely, if I've left a message on your talk page, I'm watching it, so please reply there.

If your messages are rude, wandering or repetitive I will likely edit them. If you want to leave such a message, put it on your talk page and leave me a note here & I'll go take a look.

In general, I prefer to conduct my discussions in public. If you have a question for me, put it here (or on the article talk, or...) rather than via email. If I've blocked you for 3RR this applies particularly strongly: your arguments for unblock, unless for some odd reason particularly sensitive, should be made in public, on your talk page. See-also WMC:3RR.

In the dim and distant past were... /The archives. As of about 2006/06, I don't archive, just remove. Thats cos I realised I never looked in the archives.

Atmospheric circulation pic

Thanks for the pic you added to this article. It's very interesting, and I am intrigued by some of the anomalies it shows. Denni☯ 01:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Denni. Thanks! All part of my very very slow atmospheric dynamics project... more to come... slowly... William M. Connolley 22:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC).

RRS John Biscoe

I've justed created a stub for this article and found you'd already done the same for her successor, the James Clark Ross. Great!  Do you have (access to) a Commons/Wikipedia-compliant photo of the Biscoe that could be used? Apologies in advance if my search failed to turn one up.
Best wishes, David Kernow 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't; I'll ask around a bit William M. Connolley 17:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. If no joy, or too much hassle, I'm hopeful one or other of the Antarctica websites with photos might give permission or adopt a Commons/Wikipedia-friendly licence. David Kernow 22:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Trend Estimation with Auto-Correlated Data

William: This article you started is a great topic! I am just wondering if you have detailed information to add to the section about auto-correlated data. I am facing this problem now, and am trying to get information from papers and textbooks. --Roland 21:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah well, IMHO what to do with auto-correlated data is an ongoing research topic. Top tip: divide the ndof by something like (1+ac1) (or is it ac1^2...) if the autocorr isn't too extreme. There is some formula like (1+ac1^2+ac2^2+...) if its strongly auto-correlated... but... its a bit of a mess, I think. Err, thats why I never expanded that bit. The von Zstorch and Zwiers book covers it, somewhat. William M. Connolley 22:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I added a link to autoregressive moving average models JQ 23:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Linda Hall editor

User:204.56.7.1 has been blocked four times in the last month for 3RR (once by you). He is now performing wholsale reversions without comment (see at Radio ) This user as you probably know, has a long history of refusing to collaborate. He ignored my talk page request. Any suggestions? --Blainster 20:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My feeling is that 204. is Reddi. Reddi is limited to 1R per week. Establishing the connection past doubt is difficult; but the edit patterns are very similar. You could post a WP:RFCU. Or you could just list 204. on the 3RR page together with the note of Reddis arbcomm parole and see if that does any good. Or maybe I'll just block it... shall I? Oh go on, yes I will... William M. Connolley 21:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My Reddimeter displays 8.5 on a scale from 0 to 10: Selection of topics. likes patents, likes templates. Only the tireless lamenting on article talk pages is missing. --Pjacobi 21:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Reddi apparently back

... with another sockpuppet KarlBunker 19:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there no stopping him? I've blocked that one; if he persists, will semi it William M. Connolley 19:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

And to think

..I knew you when. Why didn't you mention this?

• KNOW IT ALL - Can Misplaced Pages conquer expertise? KillerChihuahua 16:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear. I did my best with them :-( William M. Connolley 17:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:AN3

• The few times that I've dabbled in WP:ANI/3RR, I've tried to be fair, but I universally get hit with a barrage of malcontents on my talk page and others that send me threatening e-mails. I don't know why you continue to take care of this for us, but thank you for doing so, as I know that I wouldn't be able to last more than a day at it. Many thanks -- Samir धर्म 14:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you :-) William M. Connolley 16:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Thermohaline article

I think the "quite the reverse" phrasing is weasel. Can we change it to "other studies find the opposite." and cite it? Abe Froman 20:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Because you were a red person I rolled you back - perhaps a bit impolite. However - I don't think its a weasel phrase. I'll copy the discussion onto the page talk... William M. Connolley 21:36, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The Templeton Foundation

The Templeton Foundation used to provide grants for ID conferences and courses. According to The New York Times, Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, later asked ID proponents to submit proposals for actual research. "They never came in," said Harper, and that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned. "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said. The Templeton Foundation has since rejected the Discovery Institute's entreaties for more funding, Harper states. "They're political - that for us is problematic," and that while Discovery has "always claimed to be focused on the science," "what I see is much more focused on public policy, on public persuasion, on educational advocacy and so forth."

I'd think that while individual members/beneficiaries of the Foundation's largess may embrace ID, the the Foundation itself is trying to distance itself from the ID movement, but keeping in mind that the Discovery Institute, the hub of the ID movement, actively tries to cultivate ambiguity around its own motives, actions and members with the aim of portraying ID as more substantial and more widely accepted than it actually is, as the Dover Trial ruling shows (it's worth reading). FeloniousMonk 21:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Thats interesting and useful William M. Connolley 21:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment on your comment :)

"A couple of people have said things like “Pseudoscience” is a word rarely used by scientists in the peer reviewed literature - a weird strawman." I am one who repeated that, but I think you've missed the context and the point made. The problem is that if we press for high objective standards of sources (as I do), then it seems to me we have to apply this standard consistently in an article. For example, we try to exclude the reporting of say anecdotal claims of efficacy of a treatment even when published in peer-reviewed journals when the journal is of low objective status. We set thresholds for sources and thresholds of notability for opinion. We shouldn't relax these just when it suits us. It may be that sometimes nothing much has been said. My point really is that well, perhaps better say nothing then; let the case for the irrelevance of something be made by its obscurity. The accusation of dual standards is damaging and I don't think we should risk being guilty of it.Gleng 07:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, OK, maybe I see your point. What I was trying to say was the fact that no-one has condemned most of the junk as pseudoscience in a scientific journal is irrelevant, because of course they don't: its not fit meat for a reputable journal. What would count is it being ignored. But then you need to say "is ignored" which is hard to prove William M. Connolley 10:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh I see the dilemna for sure, and of course you're right, it's ignored because it's irrelevant or not taken seriously, and I'd be very pleased to see some agreed objective way of reporting that; people can take what they will from the fact that it's not mentioned in the peer reviewed literature for instance. Gleng 21:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Stubs and categories

Thought you might like to know that there is a discussion over whether articles that have a regular category assigned via their stub category, also must have regular categories explicitly included in the article is currently being discussed at Misplaced Pages talk:Categorization#stubs and categories. Grouse 18:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

THanks for the thought but no; I care very little for categories :-) William M. Connolley 19:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks! - I have a habit of talking in abbreviations that I make up myself, without bothering to explain.. something I should really stop doing iah (in all honesty) --Irishpunktom\ 20:09, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

3RR

William, my current dial-up access does not allow me to collect diffs and submit a formal report, but I would like to let you know that 3RR has been violated here. We should not encourage such mind-boggling revert warring, should we? Regards, Ghirla 12:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems to have been through protection since then William M. Connolley 15:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)