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Revision as of 09:42, 2 March 2010

Re: Quantum mind/body problem

Hi. In this edit you removed the only category on Quantum mind/body problem. Articles should belong to at least one category. Could you either add Category:Philosophy of physics back in, or find a more appropriate category? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 10:51, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 09:03, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed your previous edit, which didn't take. Viriditas (talk) 09:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Day NYC

You are invited to celebrate Misplaced Pages Day and the 9th anniversary (!) of the founding of the site at Misplaced Pages Day NYC on Sunday January 24, 2010 at New York University; sign up for Misplaced Pages Day NYC here. Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends!
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 00:57, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Likebox! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 10 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:

1. Steven Frautschi - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Invite

Thank you for your recent contribution to a few logic articles. Have you considered joining the Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Logic? It is an effort to coordinate the work of Wikipedians who are knowledgeable about logic in an effort to improve the general quality and range of Misplaced Pages articles on logic topics. We at the project invite your participation and correspondence. Be well.

Greg Bard (talk) 07:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Pati-Salam model

Hi Ron, I finally tracked down a copy of the original Pati-Salam paper, Lepton number as the fourth "color". I'm puzzled by a few things (actually a lot of things). They say that B-L is preserved (although they define L as -L, so they call it B+L), but at the end of the paper they also say that the proton decays into three neutrinos and a pion:

p

→

3 ν

+

π

But this seems to violate B-L. Do they mean 2 anti-neutrinos and a neutrino, in addition to the pion?

The paper is quite hard to read (e.g. they unaccountably switch the order of the muon and muon neutrino in their multiplets, which necessitates the insertion of a Pauli matrix into some of their gauge field matrices to straighten things out), but perhaps it will make more sense to you! --Michael C. Price 11:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question--- I only glanced at the paper years ago, and I never bothered to work it out. I'll try to read it and get back to you.Likebox (talk) 11:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

That would be great. I've also posted a query at the physics notice board. --Michael C. Price 11:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Here a relevant link: Proton decay, annihilation or fusion? by Wu, Dan-Di; Li, Tie-Zhong , Zeitschrift für Physik C Particles and Fields, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp.321-323 preview Fusion of all three quarks is the only decay mechanism mediated by the Higgs particle, not the gauge bosons, in the Pati-Salam model --Michael C. Price 15:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Modification of Brews' sanctions

Hi Likebox:

Thanks for your initiation of the action amending my sanctions. You conducted this matter with exemplary clarity and politeness.

Unfortunately, reason has not prevailed, and no attempt was made by arbitrators even to appear to consider the many sensible suggestions proffered, nor recent evidence of good behavior, nor past evidence of useful contributions.

Instead, a meaningless knee jerk "me too" support for the status quo was adopted, providing another example that such proceedings are incapable of bringing administrators to make substantial assessment, notwithstanding the opinion of many editors and the prospective welfare of WP. Brews ohare (talk) 01:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

One must always remember--- when there is dispute, the easiest path is to do nothing. Political decisions hardly ever come with a detailed rationale, and you shouldn't expect it. It's silly for a person who has to make a decision to reveal their thinking too much, since it will always rub somebody the wrong way. This is why politicians and scientists are two separate classes of people. Scientists reveal their thoughts, politicians hide them.

On this point, I might have made some mistakes in handling this--- I probably shouldn't have revisited the original evidence, it could be interpreted as insulting to ArbCom. I didn't see it that way, because although most of the evidence was bad, the block was implemented based on the one peice of reasonable evidence, which was too-long talk page discussions.

Block and Ban policy should be clearer, so people do not have to live in fear. I am not optimistic that this is possible in the political environment here, which was never a bowl of cherries. I don't know what forward path to take.Likebox (talk) 02:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Likebox: The case was well managed, and thank you. As for the political necessity to keep the wraps on thought processes behind decisions, I can say only that support for the politicians stems from a belief in their good intentions and good judgment. Neither of these beliefs has advanced so far during this hearing. Brews ohare (talk) 14:39, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd add to these observations that failure of administration to maintain a voluntary allegiance of editors could lead to balkanization of WP. There is evidence that such rebellion is happening in some instances as a reaction to unintelligent leadership. Brews ohare (talk) 19:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

What should, and should not be included in WP

As a general matter, the use of WP:SYN in evaluating inclusion of material in WP is not always appropriate. WP:SYN refers, IMO, to combining sourced statements to produce a new and unsourced result. In contrast, the filling in of steps in a mathematical argument between sourced premises and sourced conclusions arrives at sourced conclusions. One may query whether the intervening steps were correctly filled in, but that is a matter of logic, and can be verified by checking the logic, with no need for sources. Such fill-in of steps is not WP:OR, even if the steps are not reproduced in any source exactly as done in the WP article. No-one is misled about the originating propositions or the final conclusions, because they are sourced. No-one need worry about the intervening steps: they can be checked by logic or mathematical manipulations. Brews ohare (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is Count Iblis's WP:ESCA. It is important for people to understand this. It doesn't come up in history articles, or in geology articles--- but it comes up in theoretical physics.Likebox (talk) 18:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Balkanization of WP

Hi Likebox:

Your proposal to make a "technical physics cabal", devoted to writing scientific content, and making sure that it is not deleted by uncomprehending editors is a proposal to begin formal balkanization of WP. I don't think that is a good proposal in the long run because other "cabal"s will form, and the battles simply escalate to battles between formal tribes in place of battles between editors.

A preferable approach (IMO of course) would be to implement a formal discussion protocol that could be directly enforced by administrators, even if they had no clue about the content of the discussion. The objective of the protocol is to enforce real discussion of sources and positions, and to squelch debate tactics that aim at a "win-above-all" mentality, with dirty tricks and strategy maneuvers aimed at triumph, not interchange to develop understanding and clarification. WP:ESCA can be viewed in that light, as can my minority views essay Brews ohare (talk) 19:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

This is not a theoretical problem anymore--- it is an immediate practical problem. Technical content has been deleted. Any policy proposals are not necessary nor are they productive--- policy will not change. Interpretation of policy must preserve the hard work of previous editors from deletion.Likebox (talk) 19:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

My own experience is that change of policy is almost impossible, in part because the entrenched frame of mind makes it difficult for others to even read a proposal and understand it, never mind respond to it. So instead of discussion of a proposal, one has discussion of an imagined proposal.

Nonetheless, an attempt to implement a discussion protocol may provide the long-term solution.

You may feel a more immediate expedient approach is to establish a cabal, but others can do the same. You will end up with the "fifth grade" cabal that wants all articles readable by fifth graders, and the "no-symbol-soup" cabal that wants no mathematics, and the "no-bloat" cabal that wants all articles to be 500 words or less, and so forth. Brews ohare (talk) 19:23, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

In terms of infraparticle, I believe you can restore the material you wish by insisting upon the correct interpretation of WP:OR and WP:SYN. If what you are doing doesn't violate guidelines, it cannot be rejected. Brews ohare (talk) 19:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Brews, anything can be rejected if enough people want to.Likebox (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations

It looks like you were successful in getting the explanation in the article on infraparticles restored. You see that you could do it even while sticking to 1 RR. I would say that sticking to 1 RR can help in such cases because it makes adminstrative action prompted by your opponents unlikely. Instead of focussing on Headbomb and Finell, consider the many invisible editors and Admins who did not intervene on the behalf of Finell/Headbomb. Count Iblis (talk) 01:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

They didn't intervene in the other direction either.Likebox (talk) 01:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Cheer up

The battle of Experts vs. Philistines has been going on for some time at Misplaced Pages. Those Who Rule at Misplaced Pages do not particularly care about accuracy of content, so much as they care that the game continue with the same World of Warcraft-like parameters, so that new players may be drawn into the Great Game. See Lord of the Flies for more.

The Germans, being German, have instituted flagged revisions in which every article has a public version and a draft version, and only editors with long experience (6 months and 500 edits at least) can promote the draft (which everybody works on) to the public copy that IP users see. That helps a lot, though endlessly delated here at en.wiki, because it would prevent a lot of the troll/whackamole/SillyMeTheExpert fun. Meanwhile, technical stuff killed by the Philistines often finds a second home on Answers.com and other GFDL scraper sites. For example, the infraparticle article on NationMaster.com: . These sites make sure that what Misplaced Pages creates, it cannot truly kill.

Meanwhile, if you're really interested in the dynamics and problems of Misplaced Pages, and would like to discuss it in a way which cannot be done here, there are Misplaced Pages criticism sites on the web. You know their names, and if you don't, there's Google. See you around. SBHarris 03:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

ANI thread

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The discussion is about the topic your deceptive sourcing of infraparticle. Thank you.

Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Blocked

You have been blocked from editing Misplaced Pages for a period of 24 hours as a result of your disruptive edits. You are free to make constructive edits after the block has expired, but please note that disruptive editing and deliberate misinformation will not be tolerated. If you want to be unblocked, please post an {{unblock}} notice below, giving a rationale as to why you should be unblocked. The usual stipulations regarding unblocking apply. -- See the discussion on WP:AN/I for background -- The Anome (talk) 01:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I've suggested at WP:AN/I that this should be taken to arbitration. You might want to do this after your block expires. -- The Anome (talk) 01:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

{{unblock|# I did not deceptively source infraparticle--- all my sources are correct, and I ask everyone to check them and see for themselves.

1. The reason I said this was "smoke and mirrors" is because the editors who were challenging the material demanded sources for all the obvious points. They were not sufficiently versed on the subject to ask for sources on the controversial stuff. Nevertheless, I correctly gave the two Buchholz references for the controversial parts of the derivation, and I am ready to defend those sources as sources for the article, should need arise.
2. The expression "smoke and mirrors" means that all the other sources were for trivial things that were challenged by the editors, which are in the sources, but so what, they aren't controversial. I was not making any "point", nor was I deceiving anyone. I was making a good faith effort to source an article. Why am I even blocked?
3. I did not even get a chance to make a comment on the AN/I, I was just summarily blocked, after misinterpreting my comment on Wales' page. Did anyone bother to check the sourcing I gave for the article? I repeat: I stand by every single one of those sources. They all answer the questions that the editors asked regarding each statement with a "citation needed" tag. It's not my fault that editors asked all the wrong questions.
4. What edit warring? What disruptive edits? The AN/I business was about deceptive sourcing. I don't understand this block. I stuck religiously to 1RR, although in the case of Finell and Headbomb, I let myself go to 2RR. Headbomb has also frivolously accused me of IP-socking to conclude I was edit warring.
5. It is not a good idea to bring these types of accusations frivolously. I am upset that headbomb did so. He followed the sourcing, and should know that it was correctly done.}}

Your request to be unblocked has been granted for the following reason(s): After reading the AN/I discussion and reviewing your edits, I've unblocked you. I hope you can see why your comments read -- on their face -- as a plain-language admission of disruptive editing, to a reader that has not first spent many hours first reading the back-history of this conflict. This is clearly a long-running and fractious conflict: please take it to an RfC instead of battling this out in article pages and Jimbo's talk page: it's what the RfC process exists for. Request handled by: The Anome (talk) Unblocking administrator: Please check for active autoblocks on this user after accepting the unblock request.

If I may point out to the reviewing admin, I do not think that this block is justified. I'm not convinced that the administrator who did the blocking is equipped to decide that there was "disruptive editing and deliberate misinformation" provided by this user. He is essentially "talking down" to those who do not understand. While this is rude and possibly uncivil, the administrator should not have blocked on the rationale provided. ScienceApologist (talk) 10:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Note: I've raised one issue of concern about this block here. Input by insiders to the debate to clarify this point would be appreciated. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks scienceapologist. I hope that this can be seen as a frivolous block.Likebox (talk) 10:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello Fut. Perf.--- you are mostly right about the issues, except for one thing: I provided correct and appropriate sources in response to all the issues that were raised by tags and questions. The problem was, none of the tags or questions were in the controversial spots, both the questions and the resulting citations were completely tone-deaf to what was interesting or diputable about the content. The resulting sourcing was a joke, but only because the discussions were not at the appropriate level.

The sourcing I provided was good faith for the level of the questions. It was just what the editors who were asking questions needed in order to follow the language of the article. But it was at far too low a level. It's as if I saw Einstein's equations: R_uv + 1/2 G_uv R = T_uv, and somebody asked "what does '+' mean?" I can give a reference for "addition", then somebody could ask "what does 1/2 mean?" and I can give a reference for simple fractions. The resulting sourcing would be at too low a level for the article, it would be a joke. This is what was happening at infraparticle. I just pointed that out on Wales' page, without realizing that most people couldn't read the sources and would imagine I was pulling some sort of "fast one" here. Of course I wasn't. I have never inserted inappropriate citations anywhere.

But when the challenging editors are confused about trivialities, you have to source those trivialities. It is sincere and in good faith to do so. I was never rude or uncivil to any party at any point. I just asked them to learn the subject before deleting it--- which is the least we can expect from editors.Likebox (talk) 10:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I find it somewhat funny that you try to illustrate your point by using general relativity. No matter, though. I tried to illustrate the same point using Abraham Lincoln at AN/I. In general, my advice is to simply source what those who do not understand what you've written want you to source and just move on. I understand how frustrating this is, but it's sorta the name of the game here. I had to do this when I wrote optics. Can you believe someone actually wanted a source for "In general it is possible to describe an observed wave field as the sum of a completely incoherent part (no correlations) and a completely polarized part." Fortunately, the user who didn't believe that statement didn't make me source it to anything more than a standard optics text and dropped the argument after a few back-and-forths. ScienceApologist (talk) 11:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk page edits: a minor stylistic nitpick

When you edit a talk page, be it a user's talk page or an article's talk page, and you are adding an entire new section please _DON'T_ just click the 'edit' link on the prior section and add your new sechead. This shows up in the page history as if your contents were added to the prior section, which they are not. Depending on your skin you should have a 'new section' link at the top in the edit bar; please use *this link* to add a new section to a talk page. Thanks. 71.139.6.157 (talk) 04:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads up--- I never got the hang of that. I will do so in the future.Likebox (talk) 04:31, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Some unsolicited advice

Likebox, you are very much hurting your own cause by flailing about all over wikipedia yelling about your problem. Attacking other editors or the abstract "WikiEstablishment" will only alienate other editors and make them less likely to take your point seriously. In the future you will see that you will achieve a lot more if you keep a calm and level head. Instead of running of to various fora spouting righteous indignation, you might want to try to keep a more neutral tone, even if you think other people are being idiots.

Other people being idiots is shit that will happen on wikipedia and is very frustrating. But the way of dealing with idiots is not telling them that they are idiots, but slowly easing them into the idea that you think that they are maybe making a mistake. This prevents a lot of entrenched shouting matches.

In the case of infraparticle the best course of action would have been to just improve the article by giving sources for the most of the claims made, reducing unnecessary use of jargon, and improving the prose by rephrasing in a less expository style. (I wikipedia article should not be written in a style trying to convince the reader of a point, but should instead report on the established facts of a point and leave the convincing to its sources.) TimothyRias (talk) 15:43, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Good advice. And just improving the style and reducing the jargon, without altering content, would reduce the calls for sources. --Michael C. Price 17:21, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

I sent a message to David Tombe here, but it's really to you all. Thank you for your support, not because I give a rip about being punished by a bunch of bottom-feeding wannabe politicians, but because you all see and recognize something that was totally wrong and against the spirit of Misplaced Pages, and you rose up and stated such long before I even thought about it. Trusilver 18:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Headbomb/Finell

his enforcement action had to do with my own actions, not Brews'. I was trying to save the technical text at infraparticle from deletion by these two editors, who edit physics together, but whose literacy in this subject is minimal. Headbomb and Finell asked for sources at a very elementary level for a very advanced topic, and they got them, these sources were essentially a joke: they had no relevance to the advanced parts of the text. I was sourcing elementary background material, instead of infraparticles, because of the level of the editors' questions.

I explained this to people, and Headbomb decided that he could ban me for deceptively sourcing the article. Since he read some of the sources and knew that these were in no way deceptive, this type of activity is in extreme bad faith. I was blocked for three months at one point, until the blocking administrator reversed himself twice, unblocking me completely. The bad faith continued with a long sequence of frivolous accusations of Brews and Tombe, myself and whoever else he could pull a case together for. The only thing that stuck was the accusation against Brews, because even a stopped watch is right twice a day. But this type of behavior must end here.Likebox (talk) 09:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I will only feel comfortable adding material to the encyclopedia on the day that Brews ohare and David Tombe are editing here again, without fear of further sanctions.Likebox (talk) 00:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)