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please email me if my attention is required, Abd is hiding under a rock is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Misplaced Pages soon.

Alternatively, I may not be back at all, more than occasionally, I have no crystal ball, and real life beckons invitingly.

>Notice to IP and newly-registered editors

IP and newly registered editors: due to vandalism, this page is sometimes semiprotected, which may prevent you from leaving a message here. If you cannot edit this page, please leave me messages at User talk:Abd/IP.

WELCOME TO Abd TALK

WARNING: Reading the screeds, tomes, or rants of Abd has been known to cause serious damage to mental health. One editor, a long-time Wikipedian, in spite of warnings from a real-life organization dedicated to protecting the planet from the likes of Abd, actually read Abd's comments and thought he understood them.

After reading, his behavior became erratic. He proposed WP:PRX and insisted on promoting it. Continuing after he was unblocked, and in spite of his extensive experience, with many thousands of edits,he created a hoax article and actually made a joke in mainspace. When he was unblocked from that, he created a non-notable article on Easter Bunny Hotline, and was finally considered banned. What had really happened? His brain had turned to Dog vomit slime mold (see illustration).

Caution is advised.

Wikibreak

I've decided that I prefer editing papers for peer-reviewed journals to editing Misplaced Pages, which feels like slogging through thick mud, while dodging mud and worse slung by others, and I believe I prefer writing them to either of these, and I prefer actually doing the research to writing about it, all in a hierarchy of importance and fun. For those interested in what I've been up to, see Status of cold fusion (2010), convenience copy of this paper in Naturwissenschaften at lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf. I'm credited just before the bibliography.

My personal work and research, though, other than writing and studying the field of cold fusion, is reflected in my on-line store, where I'm selling materials for the attempted replication of certain recent and important experiments, published in Naturwissenschaften by the SPAWAR group, on the finding of very low levels of neutron radiation from cold fusion cells. I'm designing kits, but before kits are sold, I'll need to test them!

I'll be periodically making suggestions for the cold fusion article here, but serious work on that article is impossible under the hostile and anti-collaborative environment that prevails there at this time. --Abd (talk) 18:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

General sanction imposed - topic ban reimposed for 1 year on Cold Fusion articles and related pages

Pursuant to the ANI and Meta discussions, I find that you have re-engaged in the prior disruptive behavior that caused Arbcom to issue the sanction a little over a year ago.

I am enacting a general sanction as authorized by Arbcom:

Abd is topic banned for 1 additional year from today's date from Cold Fusion articles, talk pages, and related pages, interpreted broadly, under the General sanction remedy in the Abd-WmC case.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:32, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Also note, the Arbcom stated appeals process for general sanctions specified here is:

The issuing administrator.

The applicable noticeboard (either WP:AE or WP:AN where the discussion started, I think as a reasonable exception to their stated policy given the particulars here).

Arbcom itself.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:38, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'll start with you, GWH. Do you prefer your Talk page or mine? I'll assume here. I'm in no rush; as I'd announced, I stopped editing except for that AN report -- where I still have a brief note to post.

But my first questions: my behavior at meta, the posting of a single delisting request for a site that was found to have been abusively blacklisted here by ArbComm, and that blacklisting there was mentioned, though ArbComm could not address it, having no authority over meta, is somehow part of a justification for this ban on Misplaced Pages? You are aware, I assume, that your remit as an administrator here does not reach to meta, right?

You are banning under general sanctions, but you have not specified the behavior for which I am being banned. I would agree that there was problematic behavior at Cold fusion, seriously problematic, but I wasn't part of it, or, more accurately, recently, after I returned, I was the target of some of it. There is no comparison. Do you believe that I (1) was adequately warned as to my behavior being considered by a neutral admin as problematic? and that (2) I then continued it after warning? What, specifically, is the problem behavior that was a violation of discretionary sanctions, as specified in the ArbComm decision? I don't think I should have to guess. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 00:21, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I have no authority over Meta, true. That was not included because we have any authority over it here. It was included as evidence of the behavior which is problematic. I would be happy to clarify that somewhere else, if you like. Your totality of edits there and here formed a pattern which convinced me (and from the AN thread, many others if not everyone else) that you are returning to the problematic editing which got you topic banned by Arbcom. Had you been indicating such elsewhere (in the meta thread only, say) but not engaged in anything here at all, there would be no cause for a case here, but you did in fact return to the problematic behavior on enwiki.

I see and acknowledge your assertion that you were not editing problematically on Cold fusion or related to that topic elsewhere, but I reject it. Whether your behavior is reasonable is, once administrators are called in (much less Arbcom) not your personal judgement to make. We have to review independently and assess the situation. Was there some general head-butting, including such directed towards you? Yes. Were you editing now in a completely innocent manner, a victim of prior biases and upset other users? No. You were participating, actively, and engaged in the problems.

Were you warned? Guy's AN filing constituted at least minimal warning; there were multiple warnings of one degree or another that followed in the AN discussion. No action was taken based on Guy's initial filing. We initiated open discussion and asked you about the situation.

You responded in 3 problematic ways:

1. Continued combative editing on Talk: Cold fusion . By themselves, not necessarily actionable. As part of an overall picture of you continuing problematic behavior that caused Guy's initial report, however, a component.

2. Your behavior on meta taken in totality. By itself, not necessarily actionable. As part of an overall picture, however, a component.

3. Your behavior on the AN thread itself. You were offered numerous opportunities to defuse the situation or take a clean approach that didn't lead to a confrontation, and chose to spurn all of them. Again, a component of an overall picture.

There was already an arbcom finding that your behavior on this topic was, in the past, unacceptable. You assert that it was inapplicable here, or flawed in some way. However, again, you don't get to judge that. Arbcom and uninvolved administrators get to judge that, based on the situation and history and discussions about future intent.

You are asserting that you were behaving differently. Again, you don't get to judge that; we do, and there's a clear consensus that your behavior was the same as previously got you topic banned and blocked for months.

There's a policy section covering that: Misplaced Pages:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, part of the Disruptive Editing guideline. I find it unfortunate that you have for some years persisted in this despite all efforts by the community, admins, and Arbcom to get the message through. Please believe me now: What you've been doing is wrong, brings you into disrepute, and does no good for the encyclopedia or our goal of providing good information to people. You need to stop now, hence the topic ban. You really needed to stop 16 months ago.

The past is past. You were given a reasonably clean slate to work with when the Arbcom restrictions expired this summer. What you chose to do dirtied it again. If you think this is an appropriate way to edit Misplaced Pages, perhaps it's better if you do leave now. I am hopeful that you can find some other topic(s) which you can remain positive and contribute to, hence the topic ban and not a block. But you pretty much wrapped your life around this here.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:11, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The meat

Thanks for the specifics.

• Continued combative editing on Talk: Cold fusion

*. This was a very straight discussion of a revert. Very clear that I wasn't going to revert him. If nobody else responded positively to what I wrote, this would be over. I fail to see what is improper at all about this edit. The issues have been discussed to death elsewhere; below, I'll give a fresh example of what's been going on. You are aware, I assume, that ScienceApologist was banned from all fringe articles previously, including Cold fusion? This was a moderate response.

• I'm getting a bit touchy , but have you seen what ScienceApologist was writing over the last few days. As you say, this wasn't anything "necessarily actionable." Believe me, he's been doing actionable stuff. That revert of his is part of an actionable pattern, one actually damaging the project. My argument on Talk:Cold fusion simply is no comparison. Over the previous few days, I'd been reaching out to ScienceApologist, inviting his participation, trying to engage with him. He'd been responding as if I were the enemy. Which, to him, apparently, I am. I'm not going to give you all the diffs because he's not the topic here, I am. But I'm telling you the context.

• What's wrong with this? It's a bit long, but it was a new topic, I'd never encountered before. I'd thought that links to sister WMF wikis were encouraged, I was flabbergasted to see this reverted as if Wikiversity were my private playground. I'd been inviting ScienceApologist and other editors to help out there, build learning resources on cold fusion. GWH, I think you are straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. I truly don't see those edits as "combative." They were discussion, reasoned argument. This is what you want to stop? You think this is what ArbComm sanctioned me for?

• Your behavior on meta taken in totality. By itself, not necessarily actionable. As part of an overall picture, however, a component.

• You are judging my Misplaced Pages privileges by my legitimate behavior on meta. I can defend that argument there. This is the first time I went back after the denial of delisting at the beginning of 2009. It had always been my plan to get whitelistings at en.wikipedia, which I'd done -- in spite of incredible flak -- and a showing of actual usage, first. Which I had also done. While I was banned, though, it slid back, with what amounted to long-term POV-pushing, contrary to deliberated, carefully considered consensus. There was a single link added to Martin Fleischmann. JzG revert warred to keep it out. That's, I think, the one time I ever took him to AN/I. The matter was considered on the article Talk page, with extreme throughness, rather silly for one convenience link, but I'd hoped that it would set a precedent. It attracted attention, there was participation by admins. And the conclusion was to reject the copyvio argument, and about all the others. That was a confirmation of the whitelist administrative finding. Yet, numerous times, one of the same set of editors would show up to take it out. It just happened today, and another editor I've not interacted with reverted it back. Those reverts back in have been done by administrators. But while I was banned, one of the cold fusion editors had removed it, and I hadn't noticed it, and just put it back a day or two ago. Because consensus had been established, I didn't think this a COI violation.... In any case, this is a tough problem at meta, and the meta admin who decided that original blacklisting turned out to be quite a problem. Have you seen the argument for the original blacklisting? It was a complete mess. Blacklist admins have a strong tendency to never lift a blacklisting, I worked on this for some time. And Beetstra really dislikes interference, he argued strongly against what became the finding in RfAr/Abd and JzG. We have admins who don't accept ArbComm precedents and findings, they have discovered that they can generally ignore them and nothing happens. Are you aware that RfAr/Abd and JzG decided that the blacklist is not to be used for content control? That ArbComm noted the meta blacklisting, and that am, there, simply asking meta to undo what was blatantly a blacklisting based on arguments of "fringe," and other irrelevancies, and not on spamming, the purpose of the blacklist? Are you aware that the evidence in these things tends to get long, often? Jed Rothwell had been accused of spamming, and I examined all the edits of the possible relevant accounts, and there was no spamming at all. The whole thing was bogus, and this has wasted a great deal of editor time.

• Your behavior on the AN thread itself. You were offered numerous opportunities to defuse the situation or take a clean approach that didn't lead to a confrontation, and chose to spurn all of them. Again, a component of an overall picture.

• Can you point to an "opportunity to defuse the situation"? Jehochman, very familiar with this situation with JzG, tried, but what he offered me was essentially a voluntary version of what you are enforcing as a sanction. Was there something I missed?

• Spurn? So I'm banned because I pointed out that the ban request was abusive? What was I being asked to do, except Go Away? Not Away from JzG, it was he who dragged me to AN. Was he having a problem with my editing? He wasn't participating, he's not been a contributor to Cold fusion, he's just popped in now and then to assert his POV and go away. No article writing, no suggestions for text, just taking out something He Doesn't Like. He doesn't care about sources.

I don't see cause for a ban there, GWH. But I'm going to guess one:

• If I get so many editors upset, I must be doing something wrong.

• I'm just going to point to one counter-argument. ArbComm is just finishing up a major case, involving the same people, roughly, that I was flagellated for calling a "cabal" in RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley. There, they were called a "faction" or something like that. The meaning was exactly the same. What factional affiliation does is to present an appearance of local consensus. There is a reason why "we don't vote!" It's because we have no mechanisms for avoiding this kind of assembly. I offended the faction, first by assisting with RfC/GoRight. That put me on their radar, I'd exposed the tag-team reversion involved, the attacks on new editors with the "wrong POV," etc. (Which has finally come to the attention of ArbComm.) Then, with JzG, I'd clearly become a real hazard, and they made a point looking for reasons for me to be restricted. These are the same editors, GWH. I have a reputation for resolving disputes elsewhere, but because of the activities of this faction, they poured into the second RfAr, I was restricted from doing the very thing that I did best: rescuing editors about to go under, ready to be banned for revert warring or incivility, mediating the dispute, and turning editors who were fighting each other into cooperating friends. And it would stick.

• This is what you are now assisting by your precipitous decision, GWH. Look carefully. The future of the wiki may be at stake. It is not about me. It is more about what you do, here and in other situations, and what many like you do and have done in the past.

• I'm not arguing for myself, I don't need -- at all -- to be editing Misplaced Pages, it is, in fact, a nuisance. I'm arguing for the future of the wiki. It really doesn't matter what happens to me, I'm just one editor. But these people have abused many, many editors, they have caused enormous disruption. Whether this is addressed now, or later, or never, isn't really my problem, except I do intend to follow due process on this. Starting with you. What do you think? --|Abd (talk) 02:44, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the "cabal" - I'm not involved in the climate change arbcom case or editing the articles. I am aware of the arbcom case. I don't see any overlap between the issues here - the articles, the editors on them - and that case that's currently active. JzG isn't a party to the climate change case. He didn't present evidence. He didn't make a non-party comment in the RfAR step. I don't see anything from him in the Proposed Decision or talk pages.

Even if I blindly accepted your allegations there - which I don't, and which Arbcom explicitly rejected in the Abd-WmC case a year ago - you aren't showing any connection between that and your current issues.

It appears - on quick inspection, there are a lot of editors over there - that there's really no substantiative editor overlap between this incident and that case at all. If you have specific names in mind, please point them out.

(side note - I appear to have left a RfAR step uninvolved comment urging Arbcom not to take the Climate case, feeling that it was blowing up a minor incident that got properly resolved. I don't think that constitutes a connection...)

Even if some organized group did exist, and assuming for the sake of argument it did, your editing here taken by itself and in local context for the articles would still be problematic. We don't rule out the possibility of baiting and "drawing people offsides", but you initiated the behavior that was under review.

Regarding the larger question of whether your edits are or were problematic...

I'm sorry. I can't say this more plainly: You are creating a problem with those edits.

I can see that you don't see that. I am not accusing you of doing it to deliberately disrupt or accusing you of lying. I think that you just don't see how disruptive you are, and clearly don't believe it.

Again: You are creating a problem with those edits.

If you still don't believe me, please feel free to appeal, to either AN or the Arbitration Enforcement boards, as noted above, and if that fails to Arbcom.

I predict you will, because it's clear you still don't believe you are creating a problem. I find that somewhat unfortunate; your engagement here on Misplaced Pages will likely continue to be frustrating and failure-filled if you keep going down this path. I am hoping that I will get through to you and that you can find another path forwards.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 19:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, George, again, I appreciate you taking the time to address this. The points:

• You've misunderstood the "cabal" issue. I have utterly no idea that you are involved with the cabal; rather, you are, by a judgment which I consider shallow, supporting a position of some editors involved with a faction. Before RfAr/Abd and JzG was filed, I had filed, with Durova, RfC/JzG 3, with basically open and shut evidence of use of tools. At that point, editors piled in to ignore the evidence and claim I should be banned. The margin was about 2:1 for "ban Abd" vs. "reprimand JzG." So this ended up at RfAr. And ArbComm reprimanded JzG. It also saw the disruption and assumed, as it did later, that I must be doing something wrong. But it didn't identify it specifically, it made two suggestions: escalate more rapidly, and it cautioned me about my "style," without being specific.
• Preceding all this and seemingly unrelated, I had assisted with RfC/GoRight, originally to prevent wikilawyered closure by GoRight, but then I read the RfC itself and was horrified. He was being railroaded. So I compiled evidence, and this appears to have avoided an immediate ban (except for a narrow one which he accepted). This was my first contact with the Global Warming faction. When RfAr/Abd and JzG was successful, a very active participant in that faction came after me at Cold fusion. He'd never shown any interest in cold fusion before, but he became a determined revert warrior, including Talk page disruption, so much that I abandoned editing there for a while. Eventually, he revert warred with other editors (and I'd made one edit), and gamed RfPP to get the article protected (the revert warrior claiming that I was revert warring!) into such a poor condition that even he, later, when there was polling, didn't support his own version. That was used as a pretext to ban me from Cold fusion. And to revert all the work that had been accomplished, by an admin under protection, who actually said that it would be provocartive. There was no immediate cause for my ban, the admin was asked and he cited WP:IAR.
• When this went to ArbComm, he lost his bit. But the same editors and friends poured in to, again, call for me to be banned. It is very easy under those conditions to assume that with so many editors against one, the one must be doing something wrong. Was I doing something wrong? Probably. But nobody else had been able to confront this faction, and while it just happened that they were confronted by someone else, the response is trivial, so far, compared to the long-term disruption involved. I'm not perfect.
• I'm not intervening in that case, this is just background for my own. With editors other than those involved in the "cabal," I normally get along well. I've welcomed participation by editors, and have supported editors, whose POV I strongly disagree with. (Such as GoRight, as an example.) I believe that to have a neutral project, we must have participation from all POVs. People who imagine themselves as neutral are almost certainly ignorant, more knowledgeable people -- especially experts -- almost always have a strong POV except in certain areas where they know that we don't know enough to come to a firm conclusion, so they don't.
• I am not creating a problem, you are correct that I haven't accepted this. The problem already existed. I uncovered it, and it's easy to blame it on me. If people were watching and checking, they'd get it immediately. There used to be more users who would do this!
• I have no preference as to what you decide. I simply urge you to consider it carefully, the principles here are important. If I created a problem by discussing the text of the article, providing sources, and providing overall analysis related to that, then, I'd say, this kind of problem is being created in many articles, and those with more knowledge than others are preferentially being banned, whenever that knowledge conflicts with some easy, popular impression. And, indeed, I've seen this happen many times, over the years. If it was just me, I wouldn't bother.
• The reason why I have no preference is that, on the one hand, if you drop the ban, I can then proceed and hope that the disruption doesn't follow me again. I assure you that I would proceed with caution. I have, in fact, always attempted to minimize disruption, even when I believe that I'm the harbinger of a coming consensus. I recognize when we aren't there yet, and I'm careful. But neither will I roll over and play dead and neglect the welfare of the project. I'd rather leave Misplaced Pages entirely than work here under conditions that require such a pretense and neglect. If you drop the ban, I might actually do nothing but make an occasional, rare suggestion.
• And, on the other hand, if you stay with the ban, I then may follow the fast track to ArbComm that has been provided with discretionary sanctions. I assume that I'd go first to Arbitration enforcement, related to two cases, the two in which I've been involved, the first because of JzG, a named party in that case who is repeating behavior involved in his sanction, and ignoring advice that was given to him by arbitrators, and the second because cold fusion is involved. There has been long-term disruptive editing at Cold fusion, it existed before I was aware of it, and it continued while I was banned. It's preposterous to blame the state of that article on me, I was hardly responsible for any of it. I'm under an MYOB ban, I could not have intervened in, say, the Climate Change case because of that. But I'm definitely an "originating party" here.
• Look, GWH, many people have given me advice based on the idea that I'd be motivated to preserve my right to edit. I'm not motivated. "Abd" means "servant," and I've been here, for whatever time, to serve this community, and if it doesn't want what I do -- what I do well -- that's fine with me, the world is vast and sticking around where I'm not wanted is not my habit. I've more or less concluded, already, that I'm not wanted, but I do know that there are exceptions, including perhaps some arbitrators (who will, unfortunately perhaps, recuse) and I know that when the opportunity has arisen that I'm actually heard, I'm confirmed. The question before ArbComm should be -- and has been -- the welfare of the wiki. I may well be personally better off if banned, which is why I'm singularly unimpressed by predictions that I'll be banned. Being banned would relieve me entirely of responsibility for Misplaced Pages and the community. --Abd (talk) 23:28, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• So, again, thanks for your consideration. --Abd (talk) 23:28, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

we finished here?

GWH, as you might know, it takes two or more to make a conflict. If you look at the behavior of one side only, you can come to very incorrect conclusions as to the cause. I saw this well over twenty years ago with on-line communities. Even though, for the first time, the entire record of some dispute was available, people would not look back, they would look only at what was in front of them, and if they saw someone behaving "disruptively," they assumed this person was the cause. Now, that's easy enough to understand. What wasn't so easy was that when someone else would intervene and point out that the "disruptive" behavior was rooted in, say, abuse from their friend, they would not look back. The new person was now also "disruptive."

The "cabal" stuff was not at all the core of my response. However, addressing it, the connections between the editors would not necessarily be obvious. For example, during the period when I was under attack at Cold fusion, ScienceApologist was under ban, and ultimately was blocked for a few months. So, just looking at cold fusion now and then, you wouldn't seen ScienceApologist showing up during that period. Hipocrite, however, was the "agent" of the cabal, and very much a close cooperator with ScienceApologist. (The "cabal" is informal, but agency happens anyway.) Hipocrite is involved with the Climate Change arbitration, and may be sanctioned in that.) ArbComm, during my case, was mixed. Most arbitrators made claims that I'd not shown any evidence for illegitimate collaboration; however, I had not claimed illegitimate collaboration. The term "cabal" was first used on Misplaced Pages by Jimbo Wales, to refer to the "administrative cabal." All I was claiming was that there was a kind of mutual involvement, and that caution should therefore be exercised in assuming that an editor or administrator was "uninvolved."

That I was banned from cold fusion originally by a particular administrator was not a coincidence. And it has very, very much to do with Climate Change. But I don't expect you to review all that, it takes a huge amount of evidence to show these kinds of connections, and, I know, you only have so much time. Instead, I've been urging you to look at what I did. You still have not specified exactly what it was that I did that was disruptive.

I think you are making a common assumption. If an action is followed by disruption, the action was disruptive. That's even a reasonable assumption, but it does not necessarily reach to root causes. On your Talk page, I've pointed to a serious BLP problem on Stanley Pons. How did the text come to be that way? It's actually pretty obvious, once one knows the history of Cold fusion on Misplaced Pages, and how editors work. An editor has an idea about a topic, in this case, that Cold fusion is bogus, pathological science, fraud was involved, etc. So that's how they write the article! And then, of course, they have to, eventually, source what they write (and what they write came from how they'd interpreted what they had read in this or that place, or what they were told by a friend, etc.), so they search for confirmation. They find some words here and there which seem to confirm it, so they then cite those sources. That the sources, overall, don't at all confirm what they are writing completely escapes them. They only are looking for "verification" of what they wrote. They are not seeking to present a balanced view. They believe that their view is the truth, and isn't the truth "neutral"?

Those words should have set off alarm bells, they are accusing a living person of fraud and professional incompetence and ethical violations. It should take a high standard of evidence to allow that to stand. Yet, in fact, the language they used is synthetic. From the source saying that some accused Pons of unethical behavior, the editor has stated that the "scientific community" so concluded. The source doesn't say that. This came from the editor's personal opinion.

And once editors have committed themselves to that personal opinion, for some personalities, they won't consider anything else, and if you try to point out the sources to the contrary, you are "cherry-picking" and "POV-pushing." In fact, they are seeing themselves in a mirror.

If I hold up a mirror to someone, and they get angry at what they see, am I being disruptive?

To answer my own question, yes. Except that it's a kind of disruption that may be necessary. I had understood that as a COI editor, I should confine myself to discussion of proposed changes in Talk. That's what I did. And it is for that discussion that I've been banned by you. And this is why this must go to ArbComm for review. You have tossed WP:COI in the trash, and you have banned a POV, even though you imagine that you aren't doing that, you are, you believe, banning "disruptive behavior." But what was the disruptive behavior? It was asserting a POV, providing ample sources to support it, and seeking neutral text in the article.

I'll allow some time for response, and if there is none, I'll take this to the Committee, either through AE or directly. --Abd (talk) 12:45, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

supportive comment by IP user

• I am not creating a problem, you are correct that I haven't accepted this. The problem already existed. I uncovered it, and it's easy to blame it on me. If people were watching and checking, they'd get it immediately. There used to be more users who would do this!

Maybe those who read into the spectacle and know exactly what happened are also smart enough not to say anything.... oeps.... See how it is all your fault after all? (I'm joking) I wanted to say I like your wikiversity article. It could use some work but I'm not familiar enough with the topic to help. It does seem a much better place to describe the technology without all the pathological journalisms? 84.106.101.44 (talk) 01:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, having "students" would make it much better. I'm really an "advanced student," in a sense, there is lots of stuff I don't know and probably will never know ... but I know, usually, how to find out and I know who to ask.

The Wikiversity article is just a beginning, it's not well elaborated at all. I've been starting seminars on subtopics, Wikiversity is good for that. You really can explore a topic there. A psychology professor is having his students write an entire textbook. The book, when it's done and polished, will be moved to Wikibooks. I've started a stub at Wikibooks on Cold fusion, but I'm too busy to really write a book now. Wikiversity is a good place to develop a book, though, and policies there allow original research. Wikibooks has stricter standards. Wikibooks is supposed to be for textbooks, Wikiversity for instructional materials, and instructional materials can be biased. Universities don't have policies that say their professors can't express their opinions! And a seminar can be run by students, who help each other study a topic. Thanks for stopping by, whoever you are. Why not register an account at Wikiversity, if you don't already have one, and join us?

Yeah, Wikiversity is like a breath of fresh air after slogging through the muck on Misplaced Pages. --Abd (talk) 01:41, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I will definitely have a look around the versity. Not sure if I will make an account, I like IP editing, there are disadvantages having people profiling you and reading things in your comments that you didn't write. I'm most likely already on some specialist for writing on your talk page. With this IP it took me 2 edits for some one to run an IP lookup and mention my country on the article talk page. *laughs* I do have to admit my edit (revert) was some what of a joke as the proposed content violated about a dozen style guidelines. Still, it would be wonderful if trained experts would be allowed to write something about the topic in the article. For you it might be specially hilarious to have a look at the edit. It's like the cold fusion POV war only in overdrive. Look how neutral it is? ha-ha Safe to say I'm not going to try to reason with those who took possession of the article, I'm much to biased you know? But it's there in the archive now, for you to find. :) 84.106.101.44 (talk) 02:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

You are more anonymous, if you want to be, with an account. There are also ways to drop an account, there is no particular requirement that you always edit logged-in; however, if you do it for certain kinds of purposes, it could be a problem. I.e., if you behave properly with an account, and then log out to insult users... or if you use logged-in and logged-out edits to create an appearance of additional support for some position, or if you use them to avoid violating rules about reverting others' edits, i.e., WP:3RR. But having more than one account, using different accounts to edit in different areas, is generally okay. But I wouldn't bother. Too complicated.

As to the changes you made to Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell, well, I'm more than skeptical. My operating and very strong hypothesis is that Meyer was a fraud. And a theory to extract energy from electric fields is nothing new. Problem is, it takes energy to create the field, and you can't extract more than you put in; indeed, you always extract less. I hope you don't think that cold fusion has anything to do with this! I'm aware of work attempting to extract energy from magnetic fields, and the behavior of those doing it is quite what I'd expect of sophisticated con artists. Steorn, to be specific. If they aren't scammers (which, by the way, is not necessarily illegal, it depends on how they do it, and I think they are pretty sophisticated), then they are doing a fantastic job imitating them.

In any case, you should know better than to source text in a Misplaced Pages article from a web page at Before It's News! --Abd (talk) 02:29, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, as to the changes you made to cold fusion, I'm more than skeptical. My operating and very strong hypothesis (read "uninformed bias") is that cold fusion was a fraud. And a theory to extract energy from heavy water is nothing new. Problem is, it takes more energy than you get in return, you can't extract more than you put in; indeed, you always extract less. (Some dude wrote this in the 1700's so it can only be right) I hope you don't think that Stanley Meyer had anything to do with this pathological science by press release! I'm aware of work attempting to replicate cold fusion, and the behavior of those doing it is quite what I'd expect of fringe physicists. Naturwissenschaften, to be specific. If they aren't scammers (which, by the way, is not necessarily illegal, it depends on how they do it, and I think they are pretty sophisticated), then they are doing a fantastic job imitating them. In any case, you should know better than to source text in a Misplaced Pages article from a web page at LENR-CANR.org it clearly does not have an editorial policy that is compatible with the goals of external sourcing!

I hope your sense of humor can take a joke like that. :) 84.106.101.44 (talk) 03:15, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you did have me going for a few seconds. --Abd (talk) 12:16, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Journal Ranking, Naturwissenschaften

Because it has come up that people have called Naturwissenschaften a "biology journal," some evidence and analysis:

• Springer-Verlag classifies this journal in their "Biomedical and Life Sciences" department.
• Many or most of the articles are related to life sciences in some way.
• However, SV also calls it their "flagship multidisciplinary science journal."
• Many (most? all?) of the life sciences articles are, in fact, cross-disciplinary. Naturwissenschaften seeks articles that cross disciplinary boundaries.
• The field in question has been Cold fusion, which is clearly a cross-disciplinary field, mixing aspects of Chemistry and Physics. For a reliable source on this, see , which states, on the topic of cold fusion:

The transfer of expertise across disciplinary boundaries affords great challenges, and this instance illustrates that a superficial view might label as misconduct what is basically a natural result of failing to recognize how intricately specialized are the approaches of every sort of research. Much of the fuss about cold fusion is understandable as an argument between electrochemists and physicists as to whether empirical data from electrochemical experiments is to be more believed or less believed than apparently opposing nuclear theory (Beaudette 2000). To electrochemists it may seem perverse, possibly even scientific misconduct, to rule out of the realm of possibility competently obtained results because some theory in physics pronounces them impossible. To nuclear physicists, it may seem incompetence verging on scientific misconduct for electrochemists to invoke nuclear explanations just because they cannot understand where the heat in their experiments comes from.

• Journal-ranking.com classifies Naturwissenschaften under "Multidisciplinary sciences.", and the rankings in this category are:

• 1 NATURE
• 2 SCIENCE
• 3 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF...
• 4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-MATHEMATICAL P...
• 5 IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
• 6 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-...
• 7 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
• 8 NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN
• 9 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF S...
• 10 ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

• Journal-ranking.com does not classify Naturwissenschaften as a biological journal.
• Springer's classification under "Life Science" must be seen, then, as a simple administrative classification.
• And the preponderance of articles connected to life sciences reflects the volume of research done in that field.
• The issue of "life science journal" was considered in a mediation at User:Cryptic C62/Cold fusion#Characterization of Naturwissenschaften, who concluded that the journal should not be characterized as a "life science journal," that this would "cause doubt."

This presentation is needed because that claim was again raised recently at ] In that discussion, an editor again raised the "life sciences" issue, presenting, again, the fact of classification by Springer as if this were determining. Anyone reading that may easily conclude that I was being tendentious by arguing against such an obvious conclusion, yet, as with many other similar issues -- it can be seen in the mediation--, I'm "pushing" what is already or will become consensus, once the evidence is reviewed, because it is solidly grounded. To establish this clearly, there, would have taken the text above, and thus would have even further established my reputation for "walls of text." Catch-22. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2010 (UTC)