Talk:John Lott/Archive 3

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NPOV

I will allow the NPOV tag to remain up for exactly 48 hours unless the inserter of said tag takes a specific and concrete NPOV dispute and writes it up in the ready made format, below

You will allow? There are long discussions on the errors that Lambert and friends want to insert in this biography, though you all want to move those discussions to the archives or worse cut them out when they don't go your way. Why not accept the warning label?
If there is no NPOV dispute, or there is no discussion on talk, the tag is not accurate. There is a lot of discussion on talk about how you hate Tim Lambert. There is no discussion on talk about the article. Below is a ready made section for you to discuss NPOV problems. Use it. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:52, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
There are so many disputes that haven't been responded to. It is amazing to read how much time and effort Al Lowe has spent on this. Others haven't spent as much time as Lowe, but there are other substantial discussions. I think that Al Lowe got it right when he wrote: "The article on John Lott clearly fails the NPOV test. And of course, if anyone tries to put in anything that responds to the opposing viewpoint, it is removed, and the poster labeled a sock puppet or accused of Wikipedia:Vandalism. This happens regardless the accuracy of the edits, which do NOT take away from the opposing views, but instead attempt to respond to them, in a balancing act.Al Lowe 15:11, 20 July 2005 (UTC)" See also: "You people are making a mockery of wikipedia.---Cbaus - December 21, 2005 4:01 p.m. EDST USA"
For some links to past discussions see:
1) See Al Lowe's comments 1
2) Al Lowe's comments 2
3) Al Lowe's comments 3
4) Al Lowe's comments on NPOV Failure
5) Al Lowe's comments on NPOV Reinsertion
6) Al Lowe's More on NPOV
7) CBaus's Observations from a Newbie
8) Timewarp's Moving Forward
9) 137.216.209.23's Ready made section to discuss a PoV problem
Hogwash. Take one of the so called problems, and write below. Hipocrite - «Talk» 23:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
"Hogwash" seems to pass for all the response that you are willing to give to all these posts. I may not know as much as these guys do, but it is clear that you are not interested in a discussion. However, just for the sake of discussion, take Timewarp's first point about "Why call Lott's research as being just on deregulation?" Timewarp proposed a concrete change, and he got nothing in return. His second point is a request to you: " I can not find one place where you provide even one example of a peer-reviewed research producing a result that is the opposite of Lott." That is just his first two points.
Are those your two NPOV problems? No problem. Propose a concrete change for the first issue, and I'll accept it. I provided a number of links to research - additionally, it's listed all over the references section. Additionally, linking to research is not an NPOV problem. If you believe there is a WP:NOR violation somewhere, point it out (as was done before) and I'll go cite you the cite for it. Hipocrite - «Talk» 00:01, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Those were just the first two points in only that single section. Both were discussions you were involved in and both were discussions where you failed to respond to concrete suggestions for change. The date on that discussion is October and you still do not offer a response!
I just offered you a response. 1 - propose a change to the scope of his work that is neutral, verifiable and factual and I will make it myself and 2 - NOR is not an NPOV problem. Hipocrite - «Talk» 00:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Since you were involved in this ealier debate, you know that a concrete proposal was already provided for both of these points by Timewarp, and you have decided to just pretend that it wasn't made in detail to you multiple times. Here was Timewarp's suggestion for the first point:
"Although Lott has published in academic journals regarding education, voting behavior of politicians, industrial organization, labor markets, judicial confirmations, and crime, his research is hard to consistently tag as liberal or conservative.
"For example, some research argues for environmental penalties on firms.[1] While other research on guns is viewed as quite conservative. He has also published in the popular press on topics such as the validity of the 2000 Presidential Election results in Florida, or how low the murder rate in Baghdad is after the US deposed Saddam Hussein, he is primarily known outside of academic econometrics for his involvement in arguments regarding the beneficial results of allowing Americans to freely own and carry guns."
*This is not accurate. The paper cite does not argue for environmental penalties on firms, it argues for the law and economics position, as was robustly discussed before (that's when John "Timewarp" Lott left the discussion, realizing that people were actually reading the papers he was citing). He is unknown inside and outside of academic econometrics except for the fact that he made up data. It is easy to tag Lott as "consistantly conseravtive and in line with the law and economics movement."Hipocrite - «Talk» 00:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
*Hipocrite might be "the expert" on law and economics, but my reading is that government penalties are needed to stop firms from polluting. Correct me if I am wrong, but Lott says that some crimes can be stopped by people paying less for products of criminal firms, but that apparently doesn't work to stop pollution. "Thus, environmental violations are disciplined largely through legal and regulatory penalties, not through reputational penalties." I thought that conservatives were arguing against government regulations. How many conservatives do you know that publish papers saying that we need the government and can not rely on firms themselves to stop pollution?
Finally, as cbaus pointed out before "Your tactic of bullying people until they leave is well established:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Purtilo&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Stotts&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cbaus&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sniper1
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gordinier&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Henry1776&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Serinity&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alt37
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Timewarp&action=history
Lambert conceded sometime ago that I wasn't Lott, but only after having the gall of accusing me also of being Lott, just like he accused cbaus and everyone else. I long ago came to the conclusion that cbaus is right and that these constant attacks are the real reason people stop participating. The lack of reasonable response by you, Lambert, and others has convinced me that this discussion is a waste of my time.Serinty 11:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I decline to respond to this personal attack. The fact that Lott adheres to the Law and Economics dogma was discussed before. That you don't know what the Law and Economics movement believes shows that you lack the background to edit this article, not that we haven't done a good enough job explaining things to you. Also, stop working off the abstract of the paper. If you want to cite it, you'll need to go to the library and get the whole thing. Hipocrite - «Talk» 23:14, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
1) After your comment, I looked at the paper. Download it here. 2) You are the one who vandalizes the webpages for Purtilo and Cbaus. Lambert, however, seems to make vandalizing people's sites and attacking them a full time job. 3) You all are still not responding to points raised. 4) Good bye for now. Serinty 23:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Whatever your problems with Lambert (who did in fact discover John Lott sock puppetting here and has never himself been reasonably suspected of sock puppetting anywhere), it has nothing to do with the content of the article. try and remember that. Gzuckier 06:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
It is a waste of space and is completely unnecessary since you have already had this provided before, but here is one of the responses offered earlier on the second issue.
Peer-reviewd studies that discuss, replicate, duplicate or disagree with Dr. Lott's research:
Other discussions regarding Lott's research, including non peer-reviewed research:
his research is hard to consistently tag as liberal or conservative. You do know that Lott is employed by AEI, don't you?Gzuckier 07:07, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Is Ben J. Wattenberg a conservative? He was a Member, Democratic National Platform Drafting Committee, 1972 and 1976; Campaign adviser, Senator Hubert Humphrey, 1970; Henry M. Jackson, 1972 and 1976; and advised Carter on Ambassadorial Appointments. Is Norman J. Ornstein a conservative? They are both at AEI.
This response involved some reading of the archives to write up. Several points are necessary to what is reprinted below from the archives by Gzuckier. The first part of Gzuckier reprinting of past archived material relies solely on allegations by Lambert. There are not other sources for these private email exchanges, and the archived material also states Lambert's history of doctoring documents thus leaving at least some question here.[3] Isn’t there also some rule that the facts in these articles has to be able to be independently confirmable by others? Let us be direct on this. Has anyone, including Lambert, interviewed anyone who worked on this survey to see when everything was set in motion? Rather than trying to get into someone's mind and worry about the alternative interpretations for Lambert’s evidence, wouldn't this solve the question and you wouldn't have to rely on Lott. Just ask was the survey being worked on prior to the very end of Sept. As has been pointed out in the archived sections, the time claimed to get everything together seems like an awfully short time to hire people and get everything set up. Finally, who cares? As Al Lowe pointed out multiple times, the survey was redone and the numbers used made it difficult to claim that the media was biased against guns, Lott used numbers that made his claim more difficult. There doesn't seem to be a question that this was redone and all the numbers are similar. Heck do you expect two surveys done in different years to get exactly the same results? Even if we concede all the mindreading is on target, why do we care? However, if you think that it is important, get some direct evidence.
On the survey results being unlike those of others, why isn't it relevant that all but two of the conflicting surveys are separated by over twenty years? The earlier archived sections of the Talk here also mention how the sets of surveys did not ask the exact same questions. Lott's asked about the last year. All the others apparently inquired about the last five years. Why doesn't this supply the reason for the differences? CHoward 00:57, 30 December 2005 PDT) (Sorry, minor fix on user ID)

To be clear, anonymous user who pretends to be registered, I have read the studies in question. There is no mind reading required. They are, in fact, surveys. They were conducted. There are more than two of them. They contraindicate Lott's made-up number. We are not discussing a bias survey, we are discussing Lott making up a 2% number out of thin air, much like your statement that "all but two of the conflicting surveys are separated by over twenty years." Thin air, "Howard." Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, my post must have violated some rules. Just couldn't figure out how things worked here. This is not my fight and I will leave this to others, however you have not responded to either point (both just taken from the archives). Let me boil things down for your long post below. What independently checkable evidence independent of Lambert[4] and mindreading do you have for the timing claiming? If we should care about this timing and not simply that the survey was redone (is not that what counts?), get some checkable direct evidence (interview those involved). Point two, explain why the differences in survey questions can't explain the different results. Again, sorry for violating any rules. (CHoward 15:56, 30 December 2005 PDST)
What timing claims? You link to some random asscovery by xlrq. Hipocrite - «Talk» 01:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
That's all very nice, but in the meantime, before we get into the totality of the unsupported misinformation "you guys" keep trying to revert to, before we even get into the totality of the questions regarding the unsupported misinformation regarding the survey fraud included in the version you guys keep trying to revert to, maybe you can answer my oft repeated requests to start one step at a time with some support for the first two of what appears to be counterfactual misinformation which is part of the misinformation regarding the survey fraud which is part of the mass of unsupported misinformation constituting the version you guys keep referring to. To wit:
OK, let's go one at a time. You claim the second book was written before the controversy over the existence of the first survey. The controversy had already started in 1998. The book was written in 2002. Kindly give us some evidence the book was written before 1998, or that 1998 is after 2002. Gzuckier 02:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
You aren't trying to be serious, and you obviously didn't read the discussion above, or at least didn't care. Out of all the points raised above you raise one and do so incorrectly. My understanding is that this discussion got serious in the beginning of 2003 and that to set up a survey and get all the people to participate in doing it probably took some time before the survey was even done. That probably puts us in the middle of 2002.Timewarp 19:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Your various attempts to cast aspersions on my motives, competency, or level of effort in no way alleviate you from the need to justify your counterfactual mass of edits, which you appear to believe represent one single large and lumpy fact. What part of "OK, let's go one at a time." confuses you? Who are we to believe, your understanding or the record of Usenet debate as freely searchable? Would you prefer it to read "the second book was written after the debate on the survey, but before the date which Timewarp says he understands to be when the debate got serious"? Gzuckier 16:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
As for when the discussion got serious, does this email from John Lott on Sep 21,2002, ring a bell?
I am extremely busy so please save up what you want to send me for a week or so, but this sounds like an excellent test. If they do any type of search, Nexis/Lexis or google or check the transcripts of my testimony, I am willing to bet that I don't start mentioning this figure until the spring of 1997. If I use it before I said that I did the survey, I will say that they nailed me. But if I only started using it about the time that I said that I did the survey, I think that it would be strong evidence the other way. Let's see what they find. (John Lott)
--TimLambert 17:13, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Since Timewarp seem eager to move on on multiple fronts, let's go to point two, in my limited list. This in no way is to be construed that the debate over the assertions regarding his personal hunch as to when the debate over survey #1 got serious are convincing regarding when the debate over the survey actually began.
[your suggested edit]In fact, Lott's 98%/2% figure contradicts the other two surveys over the last twenty years that estimated this rate. (changed from all the other surveys)
Actual list of surveys, (more than two)
Survey Percent firing Source
Kleck 24 Kleck 1995
NSPOF 27 Duncan 2000
NCVS 1987-1990 28 Duncan 2000
NCVS 1987-1992 38 Rand 1994
NCVS 1992-2001 21 NCVS online analysis system
Field 34 Kleck 1995
Cambridge Reports 67 Kleck 1995
DMIa 40 Kleck 1995
Ohio 40 Kleck 1995
AS you know and even if you did not it was pointed out in the previous discussion, these data here are when these surveys were cited, not when they took place. It is just an example of the misediting that people such as XRLQ have pointed to [26] Timewarp 22:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Firstly, the date of these surveys is irrelevant to the fact that Lott's estimate is wildly divergent from any and all of them, in terms of the question of whether his survey was done at all. Or are you suggesting that he can only be expected to tailor the reported results of his survey to match the data known at the time, and cannot be faulted for not matching results which only came in later? Secondly, in any event, the fact remains that his 98%/2% statement "if national surveys are correct" is false, based even on only whichever two surveys of the 9 which you deign to accept. Thirdly, the statement that the dates in the table reflect the publication date of the surveys, not when they were done, is not any sort of support for your assertion that there were only two surveys over the previous twenty years, given that six of the surveys have publication dates in 1994 and 1995. Or are you assuming that they were published before they were done? Turn the tables, if people accuse Lott of making up a survey result, maybe you can accuse everybody else of making up their surveys?
If you don't mind, I'll hold up on points 3, 4, 5, 6, ..... N until the community has reached some sort of consensus with these two, as the constant vague references to this all having been discussed previously keep things from making any progress.Gzuckier 17:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
If you don't have good answers to these objections, perhaps you should not be reposting the objectionable material as a part of a wholesale overhaul, under the guise of "being nonpartisan". Gzuckier 01:43, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I reiterate yet again: if you cannot even come up with some reason why my objections to these two of your (plural) mass edits are invalid, I don't see how we can honestly include them in the article. That being the case, I don't see how we can honestly use your (plural) communally accepted mass rewrite/frequent revert en masse. If you wish to deal honestly with these objections, then we can go on to the long list of other, similar objections I have to the other, similar, illogical, unsupported, counterfactual, and otherwise unacceptable edits, several of which I have taken the time and effort to list (now resident in the archives) without response (thus my starting off with only these two). And all the personal insults and self-righteous self-pity you guys continue to post here has no relevance as to whether these objections should be ignored. Even if everything you have stated about "our" treatment of your poor suffering truth seekers is true, you still have to answer to the general satisfaction of the community the valid questions about why your (plural) apparently irreducible set of edits do not appear to make any sense before you can expect said edits to remain as "counterbalance to a biased point of view". And I've seen enough of the unsubstantive weaselly "responses" here (see the section on "if the 2% question is so minor, then why...") to know that I need to restate again: these two objections are not the totality of my objections to your (plural) mass rewrite; see the archive for my list of just the objections to your (plural) rewrite of the bogus survey section; if that's too much trouble for you, I'll be glad to repost them here. And those are not the only objections to the entire rewrite you (plural) propose; that's just the one section. So, even if you blow off these two edits you propose, I can't honestly accept the rest of the misinformation you attempt to post until we resolve all those questions. Gzuckier 04:07, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'll just tack this on the bottom since I can't intersperse all the relevant sections where they belong. i assume people can remember what they said. Anyway, it's bizarre that the group of who knows what size which continues to demand one specific major rewrite and reverts to it again and again should claim that the rest of us, who change things and disagree on things from time to time are some sort of cabal. Al Lowe, for instance, has probably forgotten that around the time of his first appearance on this article, I was the one posting that Lott's research was notable and groundbreaking, or some such. And the rest of you who I would never ever accuse of sockpuppetry and hurt your feelings but all arrived here on the same bus with the same songsheet apparently failed to notice my edit last week summarizing the general opinion re Lott's likely veracity problems as being that it in all probability did not disprove his weaker statement, that more guns did not result in more crime. You were too busy trying to insert your prefab slate of changes. Oh well. Next up, my statements re the time at which the controversy began have nothing to do with Lambert's email, that's his addition. My statements come from a simple google search of usenet. I did not receive any email from Dr. Lott, but since I was in on the discussion on usenet at the time, I am also in a position to verify the dates involved, and google gives a public record of those dates. similarly, the 9 surveys which mysteriously equal two in your (plural) suggested mass revision have nothing to do with any private archive of Lambert, but are freely countable in the scientific literature. There doesn't seem to be a question that this was redone and all the numbers are similar. in fact, the results of his own second survey indicate a less than .05 chance of getting the results claimed for the first survey, which fits the generally accepted scientific definition of "proved flase". Regarding the question of Cbaus' first edit, you were taking the position that whether or not he did the survey he claimed to have done is irrelevant because he clearly believes he did it??? In the first place, that's a pretty bad example of getting into somebody else's mind, and in the second place, that's about the most biased point of view thing I have seen in quite a while. I stand by my original position, that since the vast preponderance of the evidence proves that he did not do the survey except for one person who believes (but can't be certain) he might have been part of the surveyed population, the statement that Lott believes he did it is indeed tantamount to stating that he is insane. Which I would not feel comfortable placing in this article, even if you believe it would remove the "point of view" regarding his lapse of professional ethics. As for allegations of Lambert sockpuppets, the site involved gives no evidence whatsoever of same and is simple, baseless character assassination. If you are so upset about being baselessly accused yourself, where there was circumstantial evidence including actual sockpuppets whose position you were repeating, I'd think you'd be a bit more sensitive about repeating groundless slander. Similarly, the evidence for Lambert falsifying evidence is lacking, other than the sayso of somebody trying to defend their own actions. But those are mainly for Lambert to speak to, I merely bring it up since it seems to be part of the alleged support for the set of mass rewrites you wish to introduce. Finally, let me apologize from the bottom of my heart for the false accusation of socketry puppetry, even if I had nothing to do with it, which has scarred you so deeply. However, as I mentioned previously, this does not constitute support for falsehoods masquerading as NPOV. Now happy frigging new year and don't fire your guns up into the air to celebrateGzuckier 02:06, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I don't believe you and I crossed keyboards as much as some of the others on this board. I didn't mention names because I try not to remember those who oppose me, so much as I prefer to remember those who don't oppose me, or should I say, those who were more fair in the way they treated my entries. I do not recall you as my main antagonist.Al Lowe 22:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Statistical One-Upmanship Quote

When this page gets unprotected, I'd prefer to expand that quote to prevent misunderstandings (my changes got lost in the revert war).

Basically, one gets the impression from the current version of the article that people don't like Lott's findings because he performs really, really complex computations. However, this is not at all the point of the Goertzel piece being quoted; Goertzel is pointing out that econometric regressions of the sort Lott performs have to be robust, that you should not be able to make a few very small changes along the way that radically change the final conclusion. Lott, however, makes computation that cannot be performed on ordinary computers, resulting in the inability of other researchers to check whether his findings are robust. Nevertheless, DESPITE these obstacles, other researchers did eventually find that Lotts work is not robust, and hence his conclusion are not valid. A fuller quote would communicate this criticism better. --Pierremenard 16:13, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Robust results are certainly to be desired ceteris paribus. But results do not have to be robust to be correct or the best results obtainable or the only results acceptable. If the “few very small changes” in question are all deviations from truth, then the original results stand. (I am not here claiming that Lott's results are correct or the best results obtainable or the only results acceptable; I am pointing out that Goertzel and you are painting with far too broad a brush. It is perhaps worth noting that Goertzel, in his own work, makes the sorts of mistakes with statistics that a first-term course is supposed to teach one not to make, such as computing regional means as unweighted averages of national means. Goertzel is not even approximately a competent authority on correct statistical technique.) —12.72.72.227 13:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag

Im afraid that after lookng over this article I am going to have to add an NPOV tag anmd am disputing the neutrality of this article This artcile is very loppsided and unblanaced in favor of criticism gainst the subject more than I have ever seen.

I think the only real alternative is to cut out alot of the info that is in the Criticism section in order to even things out, but do not know where to begin as I am not an expert on this topic. I'm afraid that if I did it now without mor input from the community that I would jsut get reverted and I would be like a bull in a china shop.

As the article stands now, it's just a hit piece. I think we need to take out approximately half of the criticism section or, in some other way, narrow the criticism down to clearer more discrete points instead of just going on and on about how everybody seems to hate this guy.

Sorry. I hate these tags, but this is not a good article in the least.Gator (talk) 16:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The fact that the folks who are "unbalanced in favor of criticism" are the ones who have the most knowledge about the subject while the ones who want to "even things out" seem to not be able to provide facts to support their edits or admit not knowing much about the subject is relevant, seems to me. Gzuckier 17:14, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
It would be nice if the article dealt more with Lott and his research rather than with conspiracy theories/criticism/speculation about popsuckets... I would attempt a rewrite of the first few sections but I admit I'm a little afraid after taking a peak at this article's historyWesbo 02:49, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

PLease don;t disregard my opinion on NPOV just ebcause I freely admit I'm nto an expert o this subject. No one has to be to bea ble to judge NPOV. I don;t ahve to be an expert to know that this artcile is lopsided and needs to be evened out. I'm sorry you don't agree, but that's OK. The fact is I am disputing neutrality in good faith and am oputting forth my reasons adn ways to fix it. I'm sure I'm not alone here. Sorry. How about we talk abotu ways to fix this article insterad of ways to undermine my opinions and trying to jsut ignore them. We can work together. Ia m more than willing.Gator (talk) 17:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Please suggest a concrete isolated change or concrete isolated problem in the article that you believe makes it POV. "It says attributed bad things about the subject, lots of them" is not a pov problem. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, one change at a time, preferably with a reason for it spelled out, if it doesn't fit in the summary box, then on the talk page; big changes with support of the quality of "well it's clear Lott believes he did the survey, so why is it such a fuss?" would just be more of the same old poopoo. Baby steps. Gzuckier 19:53, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed the intelocutors that always bothered me in the lead in to the Lott-rosh-dueling-usenet quotes. It always seemed a bit over the top to me. Hipocrite - «Talk» 20:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

mary rosh "not notable"

Google: "Results 1 - 100 of about 17,500 for "mary rosh"." Nuff said? Gzuckier 17:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe. I'm willing to compromise. The section doesn';t need to be sooo long. And you removed my npov tag...please tell me that was accidental, because I am disputing neutrality here adn have put forth my reasons...so there's no reason to do that. I'm willing to work with people here. Wholesale reversions aren't the way to go, I think.Gator (talk) 17:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you cut out too much, so I put it back. There is a lot there that speaks to Lotts honesty: refusing to debate, claiming not to have debated, whilst debating via MR. Perhaps it could be summarised though. William M. Connolley 17:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC).
Well, you've stepped into a mine field in a war zone, I'm afraid. Much as the Middle East, the situation badly needs a reasonable outsider to broker peace, but he/she will have to run the risk of being blown up now and again. I speak only for myself, but I'd be happy to accept editing that trims down some of the redundancy without losing major content points. I've done that occasionally myself.
If I may be allowed to "brief" you on my POV on the situation and the history, what appears to be a simple conflict of vews is less symmetric than that. Re what appears to be wholesale reversion from version A to version B and back again which led to protection, if you look back through the history (an odious task, but if you don't trust my word you'll have to) you'll see that the current impasse began a month or two back when overnight a huge mass of edits claiming to be removal of bias but in fact constituing a major rewrite emasculating all criticism and instituting a strong pro-Lott POV was posted without any support, explanation, or discussion on the talk page by a figure of mystery; and this same mass revision has become some sort of shibboleth among a group of newly arrived editors (including what does appear by IP address to be sock puppets, causing the apparently highly traumatic misidentification of another individual in that group as a sock puppet) and keeps being reverted back essentially word for word, despite requests to please deal with suggested changes one at a time with room for discussion and support for contested matters of fact. Just for example (now on the archives of this talk page), early on I myself posted on the talk page a large paragraph of disagreements of fact with just the rewrite of the "2%" section alone, which was ignored and the entire section, along with the rest of the article, reverted to the mass rewrite. I then tried to discuss my disagreements with just that section one at a time starting with the first two, and got a couple of half-assed unsatisfactory brush-offs, my disagreements with which were then ignored and meanwhile, again, the mass rewrite reposted again and again.
The situation is not symmetrical; the version which the <sarcasm> "Enemies of Lott" </sarcasm> such as myself revert back to is the version hammered out painstakingly with input from various sides over a long period of time, point by point, with arguments about whether Lott's research should be described with the word "groundbreaking" or not. In the lulls between the mass rewrite attacks, the evolution of the article proceeds, with edits which might loosely be termed pro and anti Lott being made back and forth. The impasse leading to the protection was the direct response to this recent invasion by this group who largely have no other Wikipedia-related contributions other than repeatedly reverting this one article to this one, single, highly disputable, rewrite without addressing the frequently posted concerns on the talk page; I consider it relevant that their "support" tends to include a lot of personal invective, ranting about a small group who are conspiring to push their anti-gun agenda, lectures on the right to bear arms, and reminiscences about their painful experiences being mistakenly labeled as a sock puppet a month ago, while simultaneously repeatedly accusing one of the Lott debunkers of being a sock puppet on the basis of no evidence other than a baseless accusation in somebody's blog, no less, rather than any factual evidence for their edits on a point by point basis. For my money, that behavior tends to look more like a biased cabal pushing a fringe POV, but as you can imagine, this has only hardened positions more than desirable and fossilized the evolution of the article so that now the long-time editors of this article are very touchy, and tired of spending so much time playing whack a mole when we do have other interests.
So, we do need a break in the ice, new blood being welcome, but I ask/suggest beginning with smaller edits such as removal of redundancies, rather than removal of whole topics like Mary Rosh which will re-irritate the POV wounds again, until you have gained the trust of at least some of the traumatized vets here. Gzuckier 17:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I am actually aware of the history and have been watching this article for some time. I really think it's time for a fresh start here and don't care to hash old issues with editors and really just want to proceed. Wholesale reversions and lack of compromise seem to be the order of the day here. Instead of just reverting everything and leaving nothing, try and compromise adn revert some or change things. Wholesale reversons help no one and just breed contempt.

William stated it nicely, thsi article needs to be summarized. If the crticism section can be summarized as to bring more balance to the article then I would be happy re: neutrality and would drop my challenge/tag. It's just hat, right now, this artcile is 20% fact about the guy an then it's just a hit list from then on...not good. He's nt Hitler, I mean there doesn;t sem to be a good reason to go on andon and on about how unethical and inaccurate and baised thgis guy is. I'm willing to work here though, please just don't revert every compromise attempt I make. Not helpful and is just the same old thing that's been going on here. Time to move forward.Gator (talk) 18:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Of all people, why would *YOU* try to repair an article of which *I* was a major contributor? Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Uhoh... Gzuckier 19:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

No no I'm not going to respond to that kind of stuff, it's not worth it and I encourage everyone to AGF here (and not to call me a "hack"...wow) Well I'm not sure what you define as "concrete" enough but I have stated that I dispute the neutrality of this artcile largely because the critcism section is WAY to long and broad and makes an unbalanced article that is not POV. I now you think it's NPVO but that's why the tag says it's "disputed" becuase there is disagreement. Please don;t unilaterally remove the tag and let's talk this through. There is agenuine good faith dispute over the neutrality and I know I'm not alone in the regard.

Ok, as a measure in good faith I will make small changes one at a time (in addition to putting back the tag, please PLEASE don't remove it, it's not worth an edit war over somethign SO small) and I am willing to copmpromkise adn see if we can't move forward and cut this artcile down to a NPOV size that everyone can be comfortable with. Thanks! :)Gator (talk) 20:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

No, really. Why would you come parachuting in like the bastion of NPOV and try to "fix" this article with a hacksaw? Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

AGF.Gator (talk) 21:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I spent too much time correcting your bad acts in the past. You'll have to prove it to me. Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

POV tag

I see there has been some dispute over whether a POV tag is required. I would like to ask you, if someone adds one, to keep it there. When that tag is there, it adds the page to a category of pages to be checked for their neutrality, in effect, acting as a form of dispute resolution (an RfC). If someone would like the article to be checked and adds the tag, I think common courtesy requires everyone else to not remove it. Because of WP:AGF, we are required to assume that whoever adds one adds it in good faith and only if there is evidence to the contrary can it be removed. Izehar 21:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Assume Good Faith does not mean Ignore Bad Acts. NPOV dispute has 1510 articles in it. 1510. If there was something that could be RFCed in the article, the neverending stream of sockpuppet accounts with no edits but this article would have RFCed something. That Gator1, defender of all conservative on wikipedia User:BigDaddy777 thinks there's an NPOV dispute (but can't be bothered to explain what it is, except that THERE'S LOTS OF BAD STUFF ABOUT HIM HERE), can't be bothered to use the talk page of an article with a big fat contravercial tag up top that just came off protection, and took a hacksaw to all the unflattering stuff as soon as he showed up got met with his precious tag (still no discussion in talk about any real NPOV dispute, by the way) reverted is expected. That he got a friend of his to try to tell a core of people who have been defending this article from POV warriors for the better part of a year (and we would have improved it, if we didn't have to constantly get rid of garbage edits) that THEY need to leave his tag up (which has been left up as soon as he got reasonable and stopped hacksawing "stuff he didn't like = POV") is just ignorable. Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Hip, we're working well togetehr on the artcile space, let's just focus on that instead of jsut bringing up old stuff (where BOTH of us acted wrongly by the way, don;t try and act like th innocent victim, no one's buying) I'm not going to try and prove something to you that needs to be assumed. Sorry. If you think it's wise and good Wiki etiquette to remove the tag, then feel free, but I will put it back unless I am the only one who feels that this article has a serious NPOV problem (and I know this is not the first time someone has said that about this artcile).

Tell you what, if no one else comes forward in the next 48 hours and agrees that the tag shoudl remain then I won;t fight its removal. I'm willing to do that. If I'm the only one that's fine. Let this be the ned of it for the next 48 hours. Please, now let's get back to work, enough of all of this ugliness. I';m ready to get to work on another paragraph if you are.Gator (talk) 21:53, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your last edit by the way. Well done. We've made a good start, let's keep going.Gator (talk) 21:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think the tag SHOULD remain. Of course, that's just my opinion. With regard to the survey, is there absolute proof that John Lott did NOT conduct the survey? I didn't think so.Al Lowe 08:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The article does not say that John Lott did not conduct a survey. Since you were solicited to come forward [5], I don't think this meets the incredibly low bar Gator1 set for himself. A number of other people would also meet the incredibly low bar -> any of the various reverters to the Serenety "version," anyone with no substantial edit history outside of this article, anyone who is solicited to come here. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:31, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

At this point in the game, I think it's best just to focus on editing andf workign togetehr there. We seem to do much better as colleagues when we're editing then when we're talking about these side issues. Things jsut tne dt get ugly hre, while, so far, things tend to get done on the article page. Just my thoughts. P.S. I only asked for his comments as he was a major contributor who had not yet weighed in, I had no clue what he might actually say on this discrete issue. Anyway, let's just move on.Gator (talk) 14:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Besides, if you felt that I set the bar too low you should ahve said somethign then instead of waiting until the tag gets support and then looking for ways to disregard others' opinions. At this point, it looks like more than one editor suppoprts the tag and disputes neutrality so it should remain until this is resolved (see admins (Izehar) opinion). We are making good progress and working well together, so I am confident that this can be worked through and then I will support removing the tag. Until then it's good that it's there as it will draw otehr people to this page and help out.Gator (talk) 18:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't know you were going to go out and solicit people to support you after you pretend that the 48 hour thing was some kind of test. If you'd like, I can go get a whole heaping load of people who think the article is just fine thanks to show up and start removing it, but that would be acting in bad faith - and I consider that your territory, not mine. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to respond to that, Hip. We're working well together on the article, let's just focus on that, OK?Gator (talk) 20:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Please please please please please don;t remove the tag until we've discussed issues. I've made concrete challenges and am working slowly, becuase I was askled to take baby steps and then wait for responses,s o that's what I'm doing. There's ALOT more that I apln on doing to try andf edit down the criticism section so that this article is NPOV. There's been support for the tag...so please just leave it alone. I't snot hurting anyhting and helps bring in more opinions here. It was th weekend adn I don;t edit on the weekends, so maybe that's where the confusion came from. Ok that's fine. Happy Monday everyone, let's get back to work...Gator (talk) 13:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I waited 48 hours without a single comment or edit from you. The article remained in your last edited state. In the event that another 48 hours pass without edit from any reputable editor on the other "side" of this assine contravercy, I will remove the NPOV tag, and will revert any attempts to reinsert it unless such is accompanied by an edit or discussion on talk page that does not read "I want my tag back." (which, by the way, is how I characterize your paragraph above.) There is currently no dispute on the talk page (except for that from non-reputable "editor" Serenity, who does not have standing). As such, the tag is innacurate unless you are in the process of finding something to discuss on the talk page. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:33, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I totally diasgree (it was the weekend and I explained that and I'm till challenging NPOV...so....the tag is totaly justifie) but am not going to go to war over something so trivial, so I'm giving up on this. Let's just focus on the editing.Gator (talk) 15:37, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't give two shits what you are "challenging." The tag reads as follows "Please see discussion on the talk page." If there is no discussion on the talk page, and there is no editing going on to the article, you should feel free to put the {{sofixit}} tag on it, which you can make to read "Some user dosen't like this article, but isn't doing anything to improve it or solve his concerns." Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:46, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Watch the language, I'm givng up remember? You win. I jsut came here to say that I agree with your last edit. Well done. Then I saw above....I could go ona ll day with responses, but no comment. Let's just move on.Gator (talk) 15:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Feel free not to comment. You have not brought a single concern you have had to this talk page. Not one. Everyone here is sitting on pins and needles waiting to find out what this elusive POV concern you have (so far, you've just been cutting down paragraphs in a way that no one appears to have a problem with). Size concerns are not POV concerns, especially not size concerns that NO ONE IS DISPUTING (no dispute = no dispute). As you might know, what you should be looking for is Wikipedia backing up one side in a dispute. IE - "John Lott is a fraud" vs. "Hipocrite says John Lott is a fraud." Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

OK OK, you're right I'm wrong, I'm not doing anything and had no basis whatsoever for a NPOV dispute and am not making any real changes....happy? Good, let's get back to work, We're arguing about a non-issue. PLEASE stop. I'm trying my best to AGF and work with you. None of this is necessary or interesting. Let's just edit and move on.

Now, I support your last edit, was there anything else or can I move on to another paragraph? Just let me know.Gator (talk) 16:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Moving on to 2% paragraph....ideas?

Wow, I didn't know where to begin in tryign to narrow downa dn sumamrize this paragraph....any suggestions? I didn't want ot start hacksawing through this without some input, but it's very very long and that lends to the overall NPOV problem with this article Thoughts? If nonet hen I'll just have a stab at it, but I wanted to get ideas from others first.Gator (talk) 22:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

How about you propose a concrete change right here on this talk page, paying SPECIFIC ATTENTION to the amount of press that the 2% problem recieved in the academic world from Lindgren and others. Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh I'd be happy to, I'm just interested in what others would have to say first. There's quite a bit there and I have been advised to take baby steps so that's what I'm doing. Good edit by the way.Gator (talk) 22:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The section is fine as it now stands, if not bending over ass-backwards to be Lott-POV. Paying specific attention to the section titled "Undue weight," there is exactly 1 scientist who believes that Lott did a study that showed 98/2, and the entire scientific community that believes that he misunderstood what Klerk said and continued the "stonewall" policy of never admitting error. The belief that lott did a survey that showed 98/2 is a flat-earth theory, and should be treated as such. Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, you think that no changes at all need to be made. I respectfully disagree. it relaly needs ot be cut down. No problem, though, we can disagree and not go to war lol. As long as you cosider my edits adn not blndly revert (which I am assuming you would never do) there shouldn;t be a problem. We can continue to work well together.Gator (talk) 22:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Like the big giant tag at the top says, please discuss major changes on the talk page before making them. Major changes, like removing all mention of a national survey. Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Allright if that was too "major" for you, I'll be more careful. I didn't think it was a big deal, but I'm aiming to please here. I apologize.Gator (talk) 22:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

OK cool, it looks like we're making progress here Hip and I'm glad. I gotta get going though so I'm done for the night. Gotta get home, balance the checkbook and then shovel the driveway, then eat dinner go to ebd adn start all over....yay...See yah!Gator (talk) 22:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

And Serinity weighs in

Well, if you can recycle your old garbage here, what the hell, eh? So without further ado, back to just the 2% section, for now, my first two objections, which you may be familiar with by now:

Gzuckier, do you think that simply by reposting what you have below you can pretend that this wasn't already responded to by CHoward on this very page. Before making people read again what you keep on reposting, I thought that people should see that this has already been answered. What is below is his response that he already posted. At the end of your post below you write others "cannot even come up with some reason why my objections to these two of your (plural) mass edits are invalid." Ignoring the responses seems to be your only way of saying that there is no response. Serinity 22:57, January 7, 2006 EDST)
This response involved some reading of the archives to write up. Several points are necessary to what is reprinted below from the archives by Gzuckier. The first part of Gzuckier reprinting of past archived material relies solely on allegations by Lambert. There are not other sources for these private email exchanges, and the archived material also states Lambert's history of doctoring documents thus leaving at least some question here.[6] Isn’t there also some rule that the facts in these articles has to be able to be independently confirmable by others? Let us be direct on this. Has anyone, including Lambert, interviewed anyone who worked on this survey to see when everything was set in motion? Rather than trying to get into someone's mind and worry about the alternative interpretations for Lambert’s evidence, wouldn't this solve the question and you wouldn't have to rely on Lott. Just ask was the survey being worked on prior to the very end of Sept. As has been pointed out in the archived sections, the time claimed to get everything together seems like an awfully short time to hire people and get everything set up. Finally, who cares? As Al Lowe pointed out multiple times, the survey was redone and the numbers used made it difficult to claim that the media was biased against guns, Lott used numbers that made his claim more difficult. There doesn't seem to be a question that this was redone and all the numbers are similar. Heck do you expect two surveys done in different years to get exactly the same results? Even if we concede all the mindreading is on target, why do we care? However, if you think that it is important, get some direct evidence.
Of course I haven't doctored any evidence -- the accusation is ridiculous. It is nottrue that the only source was "allegations from Lambert" The email came from Lindgren's report. If you seriously doubt that there was a mailing list discussion on the survey starting in September 2002 you could check with some of the other participants, like, oh, Jimmy Wales. And for those keeping track, CHoward is almost certainly another Lott sock puppet.TimLambert


WARNING STOP CUTTING OUT MY DISCUSSIONS FROM THE TALK SECTION. YOU ALL CAN DISH OUT DISTORTIONS, BUT CAN NOT TAKE EVIDENCE YOU FIND INCONVIENENT. EVIDENCE THAT CAN"T BE VERIFIED BY ANYONE MEANS THAT WE HAVE TO EVALUATE THE PERSON WHOSE WORD THAT WE ARE TAKING FOR THE CLAIM. FROM MY POST THAT YOU CUT: On just one post, several people provide multiple examples they say of Lambert "lying". What is the response to examples of doctored evidence. CBaus put together quite a number of people who you have accused of being sockpuppets including him (he also had other links to people discussing Lambert). This shows the list. Start with Purtilo, who you have accused of being a sockpuppet more than anyone else. Shucks, I forgot, you think CBaus is a sockpuppet! Serinity 22:57, January 7, 2006 EDST)


Ah Serinity, the master of the Write Only Browser. Whether you deliberately ignore my original replies to the comments you feel were not replied to, or you honestly can't see them for some reason; either way, it makes you tough to have a discussion with. So once again, a trip into the recent past, where Serinity had left us:
Next up, my statements re the time at which the controversy began have nothing to do with Lambert's email, that's his addition. My statements come from a simple google search of usenet. I did not receive any email from Dr. Lott, but since I was in on the discussion on usenet at the time, I am also in a position to verify the dates involved, and google gives a public record of those dates. ... As for allegations of Lambert sockpuppets, the site involved gives no evidence whatsoever of same and is simple, baseless character assassination. If you are so upset about being baselessly accused yourself, where there was circumstantial evidence including actual sockpuppets whose position you were repeating, I'd think you'd be a bit more sensitive about repeating groundless slander. Similarly, the evidence for Lambert falsifying evidence is lacking, other than the sayso of somebody trying to defend their own actions. But those are mainly for Lambert to speak to, I merely bring it up since it seems to be part of the alleged support for the set of mass rewrites you wish to introduce. Finally, let me apologize from the bottom of my heart for the false accusation of socketry puppetry, even if I had nothing to do with it, which has scarred you so deeply. However, as I mentioned previously, this does not constitute support for falsehoods masquerading as NPOV. Now happy frigging new year and don't fire your guns up into the air to celebrate Gzuckier 02:06, 31 December 2005
On the survey results being unlike those of others, why isn't it relevant that all but two of the conflicting surveys are separated by over twenty years? The earlier archived sections of the Talk here also mention how the sets of surveys did not ask the exact same questions. Lott's asked about the last year. All the others apparently inquired about the last five years. Why doesn't this supply the reason for the differences? CHoward 00:57, 30 December 2005 PDT) (Sorry, minor fix on user ID) Since you just reprint what you have below, I have just reprinted what choward has already put together. Serinity 22:57, January 7, 2006 EDST)
And again:
similarly, the 9 surveys which mysteriously equal two in your (plural) suggested mass revision have nothing to do with any private archive of Lambert, but are freely countable in the scientific literature. You say: There doesn't seem to be a question that this was redone and all the numbers are similar.; in fact, the results of his own second survey indicate a less than .05 chance of getting the results claimed for the first survey, which fits the generally accepted scientific definition of "proved false". Regarding the question of Cbaus' first edit, you were taking the position that whether or not he did the survey he claimed to have done is irrelevant because he clearly believes he did it??? In the first place, that's a pretty bad example of getting into somebody else's mind, and in the second place, that's about the most biased point of view thing I have seen in quite a while. I stand by my original position, that since the vast preponderance of the evidence proves that he did not do the survey except for one person who believes (but can't be certain) he might have been part of the surveyed population, the statement that Lott believes he did it is indeed tantamount to stating that he is insane. Which I would not feel comfortable placing in this article, even if you believe it would remove the "point of view" regarding his lapse of professional ethics. Gzuckier 02:06, 31 December 2005
That response is wholey inbadequate. There were more than two surveys over the time period. This is a true statement. The surveys in the period are cited. We know when the new survey was started because it was so well documented. We know when the contravercy started because there are all kinds of public record questions about the 2% number. Stop talking about how evil tim lambert is. The statement that the surveys are separated by 20 years is garbage. Look at the dates. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:08, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, let's go one at a time. You claim the second book was written before the controversy over the existence of the first survey. The controversy had already started in 1998. The book was written in 2002. Kindly give us some evidence the book was written before 1998, or that 1998 is after 2002. Gzuckier 02:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
You aren't trying to be serious, and you obviously didn't read the discussion above, or at least didn't care. Out of all the points raised above you raise one and do so incorrectly. My understanding is that this discussion got serious in the beginning of 2003 and that to set up a survey and get all the people to participate in doing it probably took some time before the survey was even done. That probably puts us in the middle of 2002.Timewarp 19:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Your various attempts to cast aspersions on my motives, competency, or level of effort in no way alleviate you from the need to justify your counterfactual mass of edits, which you appear to believe represent one single large and lumpy fact. What part of "OK, let's go one at a time." confuses you? Who are we to believe, your understanding or the record of Usenet debate as freely searchable? Would you prefer it to read "the second book was written after the debate on the survey, but before the date which Timewarp says he understands to be when the debate got serious"? Gzuckier 16:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
As for when the discussion got serious, does this email from John Lott on Sep 21,2002, ring a bell?
I am extremely busy so please save up what you want to send me for a week or so, but this sounds like an excellent test. If they do any type of search, Nexis/Lexis or google or check the transcripts of my testimony, I am willing to bet that I don't start mentioning this figure until the spring of 1997. If I use it before I said that I did the survey, I will say that they nailed me. But if I only started using it about the time that I said that I did the survey, I think that it would be strong evidence the other way. Let's see what they find. (John Lott)
--TimLambert 17:13, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Since Timewarp seem eager to move on on multiple fronts, let's go to point two, in my limited list. This in no way is to be construed that the debate over the assertions regarding his personal hunch as to when the debate over survey #1 got serious are convincing regarding when the debate over the survey actually began.
[your suggested edit]In fact, Lott's 98%/2% figure contradicts the other two surveys over the last twenty years that estimated this rate. (changed from all the other surveys)
Actual list of surveys, (more than two)
Survey Percent firing Source
Kleck 24 Kleck 1995
NSPOF 27 Duncan 2000
NCVS 1987-1990 28 Duncan 2000
NCVS 1987-1992 38 Rand 1994
NCVS 1992-2001 21 NCVS online analysis system
Field 34 Kleck 1995
Cambridge Reports 67 Kleck 1995
DMIa 40 Kleck 1995
Ohio 40 Kleck 1995
AS you know and even if you did not it was pointed out in the previous discussion, these data here are when these surveys were cited, not when they took place. It is just an example of the misediting that people such as XRLQ have pointed to [26] Timewarp 22:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Firstly, the date of these surveys is irrelevant to the fact that Lott's estimate is wildly divergent from any and all of them, in terms of the question of whether his survey was done at all. Or are you suggesting that he can only be expected to tailor the reported results of his survey to match the data known at the time, and cannot be faulted for not matching results which only came in later? Secondly, in any event, the fact remains that his 98%/2% statement "if national surveys are correct" is false, based even on only whichever two surveys of the 9 which you deign to accept. Thirdly, the statement that the dates in the table reflect the publication date of the surveys, not when they were done, is not any sort of support for your assertion that there were only two surveys over the previous twenty years, given that six of the surveys have publication dates in 1994 and 1995. Or are you assuming that they were published before they were done? Turn the tables, if people accuse Lott of making up a survey result, maybe you can accuse everybody else of making up their surveys?
If you don't mind, I'll hold up on points 3, 4, 5, 6, ..... N until the community has reached some sort of consensus with these two, as the constant vague references to this all having been discussed previously keep things from making any progress.Gzuckier 17:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
If you don't have good answers to these objections, perhaps you should not be reposting the objectionable material as a part of a wholesale overhaul, under the guise of "being nonpartisan". Gzuckier 01:43, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I reiterate yet again: if you cannot even come up with some reason why my objections to these two of your (plural) mass edits are invalid, I don't see how we can honestly include them in the article. That being the case, I don't see how we can honestly use your (plural) communally accepted mass rewrite/frequent revert en masse. If you wish to deal honestly with these objections, then we can go on to the long list of other, similar objections I have to the other, similar, illogical, unsupported, counterfactual, and otherwise unacceptable edits, several of which I have taken the time and effort to list (now resident in the archives) without response (thus my starting off with only these two). And all the personal insults and self-righteous self-pity you guys continue to post here has no relevance as to whether these objections should be ignored. Even if everything you have stated about "our" treatment of your poor suffering truth seekers is true, you still have to answer to the general satisfaction of the community the valid questions about why your (plural) apparently irreducible set of edits do not appear to make any sense before you can expect said edits to remain as "counterbalance to a biased point of view". And I've seen enough of the unsubstantive weaselly "responses" here (see the section on "if the 2% question is so minor, then why...") to know that I need to restate again: these two objections are not the totality of my objections to your (plural) mass rewrite; see the archive for my list of just the objections to your (plural) rewrite of the bogus survey section; if that's too much trouble for you, I'll be glad to repost them here. And those are not the only objections to the entire rewrite you (plural) propose; that's just the one section. So, even if you blow off these two edits you propose, I can't honestly accept the rest of the misinformation you attempt to post until we resolve all those questions. Gzuckier 04:07, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

PS if there is any doubt, every other thing Severity has inserted into the 2% part is equally objectionable, I just don't see the need to waste even more time. And I feel fairly safe in assuming that every other piece of the Serinity edit is as reliable. Gzuckier 02:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Person who claims to partcipated in survey

I took a look at the link in question and the web page does not say hal;f the tigns about that guy as our rtcile did. All of this talk about him being an activist or that he later believed that the survey was for Lott is simply not in that cite. This stuff may be true (still has NPOV problems as characerizing someone as an activist can be POV unless they clasim it themself or its exceedingly obvious) but the cite doesnt support any of that, so it should not be there until thise assertions can be. The artcile just says he was a attorney who claimed that he was apart of the survey. That's it. Al tis other stuff is entirely unspported and needs to be if it should be a part of the article Can anyone find something on that? Thanks.Gator (talk) 21:42, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

David Gross

Further, other than one Second Amendment activist who recalls being surveyed about guns in that period of time and now believes it to have been the Lott survey, [7] no one has come forward to report that they were associated with survey. ]

vs.

However, at least one person[8] has come forward to report that they were associated with survey.


1. There is no evidence that anyone else has come forward. "At least one," while it includes "one," is not as accurate as "one."

2. The individual that came forward was David Goss, [9], [10], [11], [12], who is best described as a "Second-Amendment Activist"

3. If you were fully engaged in the issue, you would be aware of Lindgren's interview with Gross that said, in part "As I delved into the other studies being done in the 1996-97 period, I found that Gross’s description of the questions that he was asked fit a 1996 Harvard study by Hemenway & Azrael better than Lott’s account of his study questions." If you'd like to bulk up that section, I would be glad to do so. Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

PS 4. The same interview with Lindren also included : "When I asked him if he remembered anything about who called, he said that he “was beginning to think” that the call came from students in Chicago, perhaps at Northwestern or the University of Chicago, but he was very uncertain about whether the call came from a Chicago area source. In his public statement issued after he talked with me more than once, however, Gross’s very uncertain memory became a bit more certain, suggesting that the call probably came from the University of Chicago. That and the timing (which he was also not certain about) were the only things that pointed to him having been called by Lott as opposed to another survey organization." Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry for not being "fully engaged" so feel free to cite the "fact" that he is an activist and that he is the only one. Unless there is SOME kind of support for those assertions, they just can't be made, that's crazy! You can;t jsut assume he's the only one because he's the only one that you or I know of LOL! Go ahead and cite away and we'll take a look at it from that point, thanks, have a good one.Gator (talk) 21:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Is there another person that has come forward? No one seems to know of one - Lott only alleges one came forward. Lott's detractors allege only one came forward. Is there someone else who alleges someone else came forward? LOL! Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:55, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, thats the point. You can;t jsut assume that w/o some kind of cite lol. You said Lott only alleges one came forward. Ok, cite that and that's fine, but it clearly can;t stand on its own without SOME proof, come on lol.

You can't prove a negative. He's the only one Lott has shown coming forward. If you can find someone else coming forward, then we'll include them also. LOLOLOLOLOL. Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

First of all: jus relax, it's not a big deal, Second: then what basis does anyone have to say that he's the ONLY one??? If it's only becuase he's the only one that you know of...then that's not good enough. If you have an actual cite that says he's the only only one I'd probably trust that or a cite that has Lott saying he's the only one...that'd be even better, but it's just OR without SOMETHING to back it up....of course! I'm not demadning hard core proof, just SOMETHIGN that says that he was the ONLY one. The blog just seems to imply that he was the first...not the only one. Thanks for the cites, it's fine and much better cited, thanks!Gator (talk) 22:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

He's not the only one I know of, he's the only one that's been reported anywhere. He's the only one Lott talks about at www.johnlott.com. He's the only one the critics talk about at their various cites. He's the only one who issued a press release. There is no other person that has come forward. No one reports "No one other than this chumly has come forward," they report the news "chumly has come forward." If you could find a news source that said "In addition to chumly, chump has come forward," please do so. With regards to "relax," I'm not the one fat-fingering keys and honestly inserting "lol" at the end of everything I write - that's you. Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Lott himself can't come up with anyone else who was surveyed other than Gross [13] so I really don't feel it would be NPOV for us to assert that there were more than one. PS it's probably good for Gator to "keep us honest" by asking for robust support for our position; I await with some trepidation the riposte from the "other side". Gzuckier 04:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
In fact, now that I think of it, before the "other side" reports Lott's self-justifications as truth, I'll preemptively prepuncture what's in Lott's survey defense page linked to above; Lott presents his documentary "proof" here(zipped pdf) and here for the following assertions:
1)Lott states 1)Professor David Mustard confirms that I discussed doing the survey together with him many times during 1996; Lott's supplied documents, however, have Mustard saying precisely:
Do I have direct first-hand evidence about John Lott’s survey?
I did not co-author the work on the survey with John, I did not work for John as a paid employee, and I do not know anyone who worked with John on the survey. I have not seen any survey instruments or primary data from the original survey.
Mustard tries to soften the blow to his friend by confirming the existence of Lott's disk crash without reference to the survey, and that Lott had thought about doing a survey, and that he can't remember when Lott first mentioned the survey but he thinks it highly probable that it was in November 1998 (2 years after Lott had been discussing the 2% figure in public and print):
Did John specifically mention that he lost his survey data in his computer crash?
John told me that he had lost all his data in the crash. He specifically told me that he lost all data related to our paper, which I later restored to the best of my ability. He also mentioned how he lost many things related to his book, which set him back in completing the book and forced him to eliminate some things he intended to include in the book.
Was their [sic] evidence of Lott’s intending to do a survey?
As we worked on the concealed carry paper, John talked about pursuing other projects to extend our work on concealed carry and guns. We talked extensively about self-defensive uses of guns and how we knew how frequently guns were used for self-defense and in what contexts they were used. John articulated a desire to learn more about self-defensive uses through a survey
...
When do I first remember talking with John Lott about the survey?
I do not remember the first time John Lott and I talked about the survey. At the time there was nothing exceptional about the survey for me to associate with it and help me remember when I first learned about it.
I believe it likely that John informed me of the completed survey in 1997.
I think it highly probable that John told me he had completed the survey at the time of my talk at the Academics for the Second Amendment conference in Washington, DC in November 1998.
I know beyond a reasonable doubt that John and I talked about the completed survey before I testified to the Maryland House of Delegates Judiciary Committee on 20 October 1999
Mustard goes on to confirm the existence of Lott's 2002 survey and his disk crash, neither of which are in any doubt. In fact, many witnesses can testify to the loss of Lott's main body of work in the crash; yet none of those presented by Lott as witnesses can attest to the loss of this survey under question. It's as if a kid who claims the dog ate his homework attempts to prove it by producing a picture of his dog. Gzuckier 05:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Lott then cites 2)A statement by John Whitley, who at the time was a graduate student at the University of Chicago and is now at Adelaide University in Australia, saying that he believes that he met the students that conducted the survey. He also confirms my hard disk crash.
In fact, Lott's provided documents have Whitley saying precisely:
Unfortunately, I can't directly corroborate the survey, but I do have one memory which may be related. I remember stopping by John's office one time I think during my first year and there were some undergraduates in the office. John was finishing up with them and my recollection is that he introduced me to them and then they left. I think he introduced their names (which I don't remember) and said that they had recently worked for him (although I don't remember if he said on what), they then left and I met with John to talk about working as an RA for him. I am pretty sure they were undergraduates because I seem to recall them being impressed when I said I was an econ graduate student (anything that inflates your ego during the first year of graduate school at the University of Chicago is a big deal at the time).
In that situation, what I really remember most is the scene and not the words. I don't know when exactly it was, but I can remember the room. It was in John's old office, when he was in the middle of the back wall of the Chicago Law School library (before he moved over near the stairwell to the smaller office). I can remember him sitting at his desk and the students (I am pretty sure there were two students, but not 100% positive) were standing between me at the door and John at his desk against the far wall. I think one was taller than me (I am 5'6") and had lighter hair while the other was shorter and had darker hair (the heights I am pretty sure of, the hair color I am less sure of). The taller one was closer to me and seemed to be more of the leader. For some reason, that image sticks in my head.
Unfortunately it is possible that I am mixing this scene up in my head with other events, but it is fairly clear in my head so I am at least reasonably confident in it. If my recollection is correct, it is entirely possible (very likely, in fact) that these were some of the students who had worked on the survey (I do have some vague recollection that they had coordinated something and that others may have been involved). Unfortunately that is all I can really remember on that one right now, sorry I can't be more specific.
Of course, Whitely goes on to recollect that there was a disk crash, although without any recollection that a survey was involved. Gzuckier 05:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
3) David Gross, a former assistant city prosecutor from Minneapolis, provides evidence that he was interviewed in my survey in 1997. There were only two other defensive gun surveys after 1995 and neither was done in 1997. Both those other surveys were done by Hemenway and were extremely different from the survey that I gave.
As described above, when Gross told Lott he thought he remembered being in the DGU survey, Lott did not reply that that was his survey; that came later.
4) Geoff Huck, the editor at the University of Chicago Press who handled More Guns, Less Crime, remembers that I lost the computer file for my book in the computer crash and that part of the book was permanently lost, though it has been six years and he can't remember what part that was. While he no longer works for the Press and does not have his work e-mails, he does have one e-mail on his home computer from the end of July 1997 that helps verify the loss of material for my book.
Yes. There was a crash. Once again, Lott lost the main piece of his book; he told everybody that at the time; nobody questions it. He told nobody he lost the survey until the existence of the survey was questioned.
5) Multiple academics also confirm my hard disk crash. Many of these academics were involved in co-authoring research with me and themselves suffered from this loss because it affected our joint research. They don't remember all the other data that was lost, but they can confirm that the hard disk crash was catastrophic and that I lost all the data that I had. All these statements are backed up by memos in the attached file. Eight academics wrote letters to the Post, but I could have gotten many others
Yes. There was a crash. Once again, Lott lost the main piece of his book; he told everybody that at the time; nobody questions it. He told nobody he lost the survey until the existence of the survey was questioned.
If that's the best defense Lott himself can provide for the existence of the survey, I don't feel too comfortable taking the unsupported word of the Lottophiles that there is other evidence that Lott apparently doesn't know about himself. Gzuckier 05:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Gzuckier and Hip, it's much better cited now, thanks. I refuse to have any hard feelings towards you Hip, no matter how angry you become with me. Real progress is being made on the artcile, so it's hard to understand the level of animosity of the talk page. See AGF. I have no hidden motives here. What you see is what you get. Great edits by the way.Gator (talk) 21:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I protest!

Just kidding, I'm ok with all the edits to my last version as of now. Excelsior! Gzuckier 04:16, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

References

Oops, I thought that were automatically deleted. My mistake! Thanks!Gator (talk) 22:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

rosheduction

Yeah, I'm OK with the current. Gzuckier 23:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The deleted info is definitely uncited, but I do not see why its vague or fundamentally unsupportable. It seems to me that the best thing would be someone familiar with the Mary Rosh postings to re-insert it, complete with citations for every assertion. ---Pierremenard 00:27, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Or we could just have Serinity rewrite the whole article for us. Gzuckier 20:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

A great deal of that was uncited and I've been unable to find evidence on those points. can anyone get cites for al those quotes and paraphrasings? If not, then its unsupported. I don't think the whole sockpuppet thing deserves much mention anyway. If it were not for the fact that sockpuppetry is a mortal sin no where but here, it would barely get any mention if at all, but I admit is is notable, but still needs to be cited.Gator (talk) 20:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

That alst edit was me, I got signed out for some reason. Please stop putting it back without the proper cites. It's not amatter of preference, all taht nformation jsut needs to be cited and it's not. I looked and cannot find that info, so fel free to have a go, but reverting adn putting in uncited info like that is not the way to go here. Please stop.Gator (talk) 20:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Its not good enough to say that all that stuff has been sourced by TL elsewhere. It needs to be sourced in this article. Every claim in that paragraph needs to be accompanied by a specific citation. --Pierremenard 21:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
It'd be helpful if editors could use accurate edit summaries. One editor removed the Mary Rosh quote with the summary:
  • Mary Rosh online persona - moved things around to get same point across in a more NPOV fashion.)
Things weren't "moved around", they were deleted. And if the issue is sourcing then say so, rather then saying that the problem is NPOV. It is hard to answer an objections which isn't stated. -Will Beback 21:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I apologize if "moved around" wasn't accurate enough for you, but I can see where you're coming from. As far as NPOV, that was my initial objection but when I took a second look at it I did realize how little was atually cited. A lot of quoted so I assumed it must have been cited, so I didn't look coser, but on second glance I saw the problem and provided the appropriate edit summary. My apology for the confusion.Gator (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

If sourcing of the quote was the problem, it only took a few moments to find it. -Will Beback 22:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well thanks for finding that cite I havent checked it yet, but thanks. And not hat was not the onyl problem but was oen of them. The section is still almost entirely unsupported with only a couple cite needed tags in there. While that's a step, the fact remains that thwere is unsupported material in the article. If it isn't supported, how long should it remain that way before it just needs to be removed? As a measure of good faith, I won't remove it and will give it time for someone to source this stuff, but for how long? Thanks.Gator (talk) 13:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC) That section needed alot more cites than just two, it needs several more in order for all thsoe assertions to be properly supported and remain int he article, so I added citation needed tags as appropriate.Gator (talk) 13:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, wehave a problem. If those thigns don;t need to be cited, then come here and explain why, but blidnly reverting and remogint erh ccite needed tags is the wtrong approach. I think all of those thigns need o be cite adn I don;t think I'm "gettign carried away." It looks like alot, becuase, frankly, there is a ton of unsupported claims in this section (I haven;t even looked at other sections yet) and they jut need to be supported if they are going to remain. please stop blibndly reverting and make your arguments here. Thanks.Gator (talk) 14:39, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I have no idea what happened with those cites. If I did that inadverently I apologize. Deep breaths folks.Gator (talk) 14:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Bad memory or bad faith?

You removed the following content that was in the article before you came here, because you said the article was too long on the rosh stuff:

"After the discovery, Lott stated to the Washington Post:

"I probably shouldn't have done it – I know I shouldn't have done it – but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously." "

Today, you are putting cite needed on "Lott admitted that he had created and used "Mary Rosh" as a fake persona to defend his own works on Usenet."

Either you are acting in bad faith, or you lack the memory required to effectively edit this article. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

If there is a cite for that quote, then let's use it to replace one of the cite needed tags (The one at the beginning I think). I don't remember there being one or else I would like to think I would have thought twice about removing it. If there is a cite, let's use that at the top. I still don;t think we ened the quote if he admitted it, but we do need a cite right? Thanks. Oh and AGF.Gator (talk) 14:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Hipocrite

Thanks for finding those cites, Hip. That's what we needed.Gator (talk) 15:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Other sockpuppets

OK, I did read Tim's cite for otehr sockpuppets, but it's just a cite to his own blog with the allegations of other sockpuppetry. I didn't think that was nearly good enough and its not palced after the sockpuppet allegation so it's confusing. Now I'm not saying he didn't do it, I personally think he did, but my probelm is with the sourcing. Do other people feel that a cite to his own blog is good enough or should there be something more concrete? Thoughts? I will move/copy the cite to the correct placve so it looks cited.Gator (talk) 16:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't care. Attribute it to Tim Lambert, if you want. Hipocrite - «Talk» 17:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Anyone else? Oh and Hip, if I didn't fix the cites correctly, I'm sorry, it's a little beyond me. Please feel free to show me how it's done and I'll do that correctly from now on. Thanks.Gator (talk) 18:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh and the whole "period" thing? What's that accomplishing? Come on.... Check WP:CIVIL. Gator (talk) 18:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Cite

I started to go through some cityea dnt he first one I looked at had a problem.

The article attributes the following quote:

"The papers that get downloaded the most get noticed the most by other academics. It is very important that people download this paper as frequently as possible." (Emphasis in the original) to: [14].

However, footnote 26, doesn't include this quote. Anyone know where that may be? Did I just miss it? Thanks.Gator (talk) 14:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


Because you fucked up the footnotes - AGAIN - the numbering is off. Check the name of the footnote, not the numbering. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Dude, CHILL. I only touched them ONCE and you corrected and told me never to do it again "period" Remember that? Calm down and watch the language. Just find the right cite and put it there. It's not a big friggin deal. There is no need for a nasty comment from you every time you have to edit. Just stop it. See WP:CIVIL and read it this time.Gator (talk) 14:23, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes

Why don't we use the traditonal citation method of just putting the website in single brackets after the cited sentence. Call me stupid, but this footnoting system seems overly complicated. Is there a real advantage to this system verus the traditonal method? Let's just do it the easy way. Thoughts?Gator (talk) 14:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

No. What is currently in place is one generation behind best practice. You want to take it back to two generations back. If you'd like to learn how to do citations right, please review [15] Template:Ref/examples, Wikipedia:Footnotes. We can't put the list of dozens of articles that you insisted I include in the references section as inclines. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I understand that one os more advanced or newer thant he other, but how exactly is it better? I've reviewed that before and I don't really see how one is generations ahead of the other. Just different. Why can't we put them as inclines? It takes up the same space and people can just click the number and go to the web page instead of having clicking the number and then being brought to the bottom and then having to go back up to remind themself what the footnote number was and then going down again and then clicking on the footnote.

If one is really better than the other that's fine, but I'm just not seeing how it is.Gator (talk) 14:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

How exactly are you going to do note 9, which you insisted I include, as an inline? Why won't you just spend the time to learn how to do footnotes? Then, instead of POV warring across the encyclopedia, you could actually contribute. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Knock it off, I'm being polite and civil here. No one is POV warring here or anywhere else. I could care less about John Lott, it's you is astonishingly emotional about this guy (I don;t know why) so stop trying to prompt irate replies that can then be even further ridiculed, in turn. There's a word for that.

At your invite, I have learned how to do them I just really think they are unnecessarilly complex. I'm not sorry for insisting that things need to be cited but they were (and still are) alot of unsupported allegations. We could just remove them but people want all of them in so they need to be cited.

As far as footnote 9: we could either try and find an electronic version (which is preferable for cite checking anyway) or just cite it paranthetically. That's not as pretty, but those ciotes are in the minority, so I don't think we should adopt such a more cumbersome and complex system for jsut a handful of those kind of cites.

Anyone else have thoughts about the citation system that's been adopted?Gator (talk) 14:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I've converted it all over to the new cite.php extension. Should be a best-of-all-worlds situation, I hope. Bryan 01:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

PoV check

You've had your way with the article for two weeks with basically no disagreement from the standard editors of this page. It's about time for the tag to go. As such, I have modified it to pov_check, and must insist that people that see remaining POV problems with the article to POST THEM BELOW, ON THE TALK PAGE. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to remove the tag. Much good work has been done despite unnecessary animosity. I was thinking of removing today or tomorrow anyway. Thanks.Gator (talk) 15:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Pov Problems

Problem 1

Anonymous vandal

If the anonymous vandal reintroduces his biased version and is not reverted by Gator1 at some point within the next 24 hours, I will revert to my prefered version of the article. If it is to be anonymous sockpuppets flailing at people trying to fix the article, I might as well make my reverts count. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I go out of town for a little bit and all heck breaks lose. Word to anons and alleged sock puppets...use this page to argue for your version instead of just reverting. it makes you look like nothing other than vandals and will guarantee that your version (nor any part of it) will never be included in the article. Start talking. Stop reverting.Gator (talk) 13:33, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Semi-Protect

I've requested that this page be semi-protected to stop anon sock vandals from doing this garbage and Ihave reported the sokcs as vandals in multiple locations.Gator (talk) 16:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I expect that this will not be seen as vandalism as opposed to agressive and poor editing by the sockpuppeteer in question. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Had same thought, but I'm trying anyway. At least a semi-protect, by itself, would help. We'll see what happens.Gator (talk) 16:37, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Ahhh much better. Thanks!Gator (talk) 21:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

An opinion

This page needs to be permanently semi-protected. --Pierremenard 00:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but it has been protected from all editing and I don't see the reason. Other than anon vandals, things are going well and there are no major discussions regarding content right now. Please go back to semi-protection.Gator (talk) 13:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Semi-protection is not designed to keep bad editors who refuse to log in from editing the page, and was innapropriate in this case. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Sei-protection keeps anon editors from editing, which is where almost al of the vandalism sock edits were coming from....if you're opposed to semi-protection thats fine, but why do you want to prohibit all editing? There are no discussions going on here that require that and (at least with semi-proection) you can stop most the the anon vandals? What's your rationale?Gator (talk) 14:17, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
While the anonomyous editors were doing nothing to help the encyclopedia, WP:VAND does not evaluate the quality of the edits, rather the motive behind them. The anonymous editors were not vandalizing the article, they were just editing poorly. As such, semi-protection is not justified. I did not request full protection. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Alright, I thought you would want semi-protection to keep them out, but it looks liekw e agree that full protecton is unjustfied. I'd like to know who requested it or why Woohoo felt it was necessary. Let's get rid of it.Gator (talk) 14:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree that full protection is unwarranted at the moment. --Pierremenard 15:38, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Then please come to the request page and say that. I'm done arguing with him about every little thing.Gator (talk) 15:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Just the facts, Ma'am

I suggest that the entire piece be subjected to a meat-cleaver, reducing it down just a bibliography and academic background. There are hundreds (thousands?) of political commentators, and Wiki isn't the place for pro-and-con wrangling over their subject(s) of interest; ....that's what blogs and Amazon.com book reviews are for. See the Robert Spencer entry for an example of truncation (see the history link for the formerly bloated and incessantly-argued version). --Mike18xx 05:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The dishonesty in this case is the subject of articles in the Washington Post, and the academic dispute is the subject of numerous journal articles. Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Er...exactly. Which is why chop/hack/thwock/mince/grind/crunch down to bib+aca, otherwise you'll never, ever get away from the endless cycle of people all clamoring to insert their most favoritist puff or slam piece on all earth.--Mike18xx 12:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
This would be a betrayal of our duty to write an encyclopedia. Wikipedia does not shrink from controversy; see the George W. Bush article for details. Yes, this article will always be edited often, but I don't see why thats a bad thing. --Pierremenard 15:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
The controversy regarding Lott's studies, and concomitant accusations of dishonesty, are very significant factors regarding Lott. An article that omitted these would be incomplete. The challenge is ensuring that this is done in a NPOV manner, and that weight is given appropriately based on the prominence of various criticisms and defenses. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 09:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppets and meatpuppets

The section below was added to the article by 152.163.100.10 Purtilo. It obviously doesn't belong in the article but it is relevant here in talk. 152.163.100.10 Purtilo asserts that the people in the list below have been accused of being sock puppets and writes:

Purtilo While Purtilo has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott over 20 times in different places, Jim Purtilo is actually a computer science professor at the University of Maryland.
Stotts While Stotts has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott several times, he is a Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
HenryBowman While HenryBowman has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott several times, he is a professor at a small midwestern university. He was accused of being a sockpuppet for just pointing out that this page was contentious.
Cbaus While CBaus has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott at least four times in different places, Chad Baus lives in Ohio.
Gordinier While Gordinier has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott four times, Michael Gordinier teaches at the Washington University Business School in St. Louis, Missouri .
Henry1776 While Henry1776 has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott, he is Henry Schaffer, at NC State.
Sniper1 While Sniper1has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott four times, he is Mike Fleisher, a resident of suburban MD.
Serinity Serinity was accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott four times before people stopped claiming that he was a sockpuppet in November, 2005.
66.92.151.249 (Washington, DC,, Speakeasy, Inc.) While 66.92.151.249 has been accused of being a sockpuppet for Lott several times, Jeff Koch lives in the same city as Lott, but he is not John Lott.
Alt37
Timewarp
Even those posting from places where Lott is unlikely to be located are accused of being him.
137.216.209.23 (South Dakota)
66.190.73.64 (Fort Worth, Texas)
128.8.128.182 (Hyattsville, MD)
128.239.177.196 (Williamsburg, Va.), 206.165.74.6 (Phoenix, AZ)

How does 152 Purtilo know the real names of all these users? None of them identified themselves. The only explanation I can think of is that a call for help went out on some pro-gun mailing list and these users edited the article and reported back to the list (or to Lott) what they had done. That makes them meat puppets. There is also a difference between saying that someone is a suspected sock puppet and accusing them of being Lott. I suspected that Purtilo might be Lott; I accused Timewarp of being Lott. Note that 152 Purtilo does not deny that Timewarp is Lott. He also includes some users identified by IP address that I never suggested were Lott, but leaves out ones that I did suggest were Lott. I did say that 66.190.73.64 was probably Lott and that is indeed in Fort Worth. Thing is, though. All four edits by 66.190.73.64 were done on the night of October 13 2004 and according to Lott's blog he gave a talk in Austin on the 13th and in Lubbock on the 14th, so it sure seems reasonable that he spent the night of the 13th in Fort Worth. --TimLambert 13:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

My error, I misread the year. There is no evidence that Lott was in Fort Worth when those four edits were made. My thanks to Purtilo for noticing this. --TimLambert 16:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Tim, it's pretty exhausting trying to talk reasonably about this stuff in the forum when the first thing you do is obliterate the points we try to make. Answers to some of the rhetorical questions you raise were already there in earlier material, which you snipped. Oh well. So let's look at just the narrow question of sockpuppets and meatpuppets for the moment. I checked out the names I could find from the histories (fortunately there are other research tools besides WP on the web) and the ones I found are real people, and they're listed accordingly. What motivated them to want to get involved? Beats me, I don't speak for them, but there's no question this discussion has been noticed in many other forums on the web. (I'm cheerfully using it as the basis for disallowing Wikipedia's use as an authoritative source on my campus, for example.) Your antics in talk.politics.guns are well known, and surely there are blogs where someone has observed "there goes Lambert again." But look, your own analysis above isn't even self consistent. I dutifully traversed the links on the pages you cited above, and surprise, the log from Lott that you use to prove Lott was in a town on one date (and supposedly posted here as such) cites a different year than is under discussion. I'm not sure that what Lott did in 2004 has much to do with where he posted from at the relevent 2005 dates, other than those who don't look close might be satisfied - typical of the "I'll see it when I believe it" crowd. Give it a rest. -- Jim Purtilo
I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say "I checked out the names I could find from the histories (fortunately there are other research tools besides WP on the web) and the ones I found are real people, and they're listed accordingly." Huh? Listed where? How do you know, for example, that Cbaus is Chad Baus from Ohio, that Gordinier is Michael Gordinier from WUSTL, that Stotts is from UNC-Chapel Hill, that Henry1776 is Henry Schaffer, that Sniper1 is Mike Fleischer? -- Pierremenard 15:57, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Purtilo, things that are wrong get corrrected as I did above. If you can identify errors in the article about Lott, please do so, so they can be corrected. Calling me names does not prove that the article is wrong. --TimLambert 16:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Purtilo, not 152.163.100.10, put this post up first, Lambert. 152.163.100.10 was just copying what had already been put up. You can't get even something that simple correct. You can't get the year correct that the person from Fort Worth made the posts. You accuse Purtilo yourself most of the 20 times that he was accused of being Lott. You accused me. You have been the primary accuser for everyone. Based on what? How sad. Yet, somehow we are supposed to trust you as the sole source for all these attacks on Lott. Be serious. The discussion in the talk section document dozens of other mistakes. Anything that relies on you as the sole source should be removed permenantly from this discussion. You get things wrong two, four, six, maybe eight times, we might forgive you, but you must be in the hundreds. --Serinity 2:04, March 3, 2006 (UTC)


Hmm, yes, Purtilo added it on Jan 25 before 152 did. I have corrected my comment. Now it's even more interesting. How did Purtilo know who all those people were? Notice that he left a response without offering an explanation of how he knew. Very mysterious. And Serinity, the two of you have found two errors in a comment on a talk page. Trying to pretend that two is "hundreds" does not help your credibility. --TimLambert 10:15, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Try just counting up the sundry times you accused others falsely of being a sock puppet. Try your reposting saying "not discussed on talk page." That is not serious and you know it. Reading through the archived discussion pages you apparently have edited evidence to make your claims. You have been corrected so many times I can't even count. Do you have anything that indicates that Purtilo's post is at all wrong? Did he falsely identify anyone as not being Lott? Is Purtilo Lott? If you accuse someone of that 20 times, you and your compatriots should have evidence that you can show us. He said that he wasn't over and over again and provided evidence yet you all would erase and ignore it. Until you either take back all your false claims or until you show he is wrong, you shouldn't be allowed to post any more. This Wikipedia discussion is useless if people can just make things up, and I am going to stop participating. --Serinity 13:11, March 3, 2006 (UTC)
Alternately, how about a Sock Puppet ID Success Ratio, consisting of the number of times a person correctly identified a sock puppet out of the total times he/she identified someone as a sock puppet? On that scale, TL is quite a ways ahead of all those who make vague allegations to "Lambert has sock puppet problems of his own". Gzuckier 21:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, Cbaus, I can say that Purtilo knows who I am and where I am from because after I was attacked by Tim Lambert on my very first visit here of being a sockpuppet, I got interested in the history of this whole thread and saw Purtillo had been through much the same as me (only far worse - he has much more patience for you folks than me), I contacted him. I am not ashamed of who I am, and I don't appreciate having my credibility and honesty questioned by people who don't know me. Honestly, some of you Lott-haters here must be getting paid for all the time you spend preventing any sense of fairness here. Me - I have a real job - and thus can't keep up with you. That's how you've driving most others listed above away too. --Cbaus 4:16 p.m, March 3, 2006 (EDST-USA)

Also, we could derive a Sock Puppet Sensitivity Index as the number of times a person mentions/complains about having been identified as a sock puppet, divided by the number of times he/she was actually identified. Cbaus, you are getting up into the high numbers here. Gzuckier 21:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Purtilo has created a page criticizing wikipedia on this issue. I note that he fails to explain his apparent collusion with the other meat puppets. TimLambert 14:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppet theatre

On Mar 19, we had a little edit war much like the previous ones. Culminating with an edit by 69.141.3.180 described like this: (Stop these reverts back and forth. Keep the version that Rory096, Pearle, and Lambert had.). Except that it didn't revert to Rory096's version. Instead most of the material about John Lott's use of sockpuppets was removed (see diff). Both of the sides in this little show seem to have been sockpuppets of Lott. Thanks for the show, John! --TimLambert 03:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thus proving it really does take one take one to know one. Thanks to you as well, Tim!
Lambert's Got His Own Sockpuppet Controversy --Cbaus 9:47p.m., 21 March 2006 (EDST-USA)
Sorry, I don't use sockpuppets. Someone I caught using several sock puppets came back with a lame accusation that two commentors on my blog were my sock puppets, even though their IP addresses showed that they were from a different country. You just destroy you credibility by repeating such lame attacks. --TimLambert 15:13, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
And what credibility do you have by constantly accusing people who disagree with you of being John Lott, as you did me when I first posted here? I see you accused 69.141.3.180 of being John Lott, while offering no proof. --Cbaus 9:39p.m., 26 March 2006 (EDST-USA)
Ok, so I've waited long enough. Lambert is apparently not going to try and offer proof of his accusations that 69.141.3.180 is John Lott, just as he had no proof when he accused me or dozens of others here of same.
He may not be willing to do it here, but I see that elsewhere Lambert claims that 69.141.3.180 "tracks to Swarthmore, PA, which is where Lott lives."
Not so.
Using this locator, the IP tracks to Aston, PA, not Swarthmore. I know Lambert's from Australia and all, but clearly Aston and Swarthmore are two different places. Mapquest says Aston is just over 10 miles from Swarthmore, which is where Lott may or may not still live. But even assuming he does, wouldn't it make more sense that if Lott were willing to drive 10 miles to set up a puppet, and given that Lambert makes it his full time job to watch out for any hint of such a thing, that he might have gone the same distance and found himself in Delaware or New Jersey? Or in the other direction the same distance, to Philadelphia?
The bottom line is, Tim Lambert cannot back up his repeated assertions that there is sockpuppetry here, and appears to be willing to assert things that he hopes others will not check up on to prop up his claims. --Cbaus 10:16p.m., 11 April 2006 (EDST-USA)
Locations given by Geobytes are only accurate to a few miles and can change as the contents of their database change. When I looked it up Geobytes gave Swarthmore as the location. In any case, I have an email from Maxim Lott, Lott's son, using that IP address. Those Comcast IP addresses are unique to a household. TimLambert 14:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Cbaus, I realize you did not appreciate being wrongly identified as a sockpuppet once and are therefore sensitized. Nevertheless, those who would accuse others should have clean hands themselves; and your repeated parroting of accusations of sock-puppetry against TimLambert, despite such accusations when traced back to the primary source being clearly contra-factual inventions (which point TL has pointed out himself here), tends to undermine your questioning of his grounds for sock-puppetry accusations. Gzuckier 16:08, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I'll address these both at once:
Tim - So it's Geobytes' fault you were wrong about the location, and 69.141.3.180 isn't a John Lott anymore, but is instead might be his son? But you weren't wrong in your initial accusations, and there is no way you could be wrong now, I'm sure. You're 100% sure the residence of the Lotts hasn't changed, ISP hasn't changed, etc. etc. etc.?
Gzuckier - Funny you mention Lambert's false accusation against me two hours after my first-ever post here. (And actually the count is at least four times I've been called a sockpuppet by TL or one of his surrogates, not once). Do you know he still hasn't apologized for that? How many times has he (or one of HIS other surrogates (you know who you are)) been wrong, ignoring people's legitimate attempts to contribute to this page by making false accusations against them? I know Purtilo tried to compile a list, but I lost count.
That has been my complaint all along about the way you all have handled yourselves. You reject any attempt at what Wikipedia has in mind for creating an encyclopedia-style reference in favor of a one-sided personal attack piece, and ignore every attempt to steer the thing back into legitimacy by immediately accusing anyone who tries to do so of being someone they are not. When we're proven to be real people, you just change the slur to "meatpuppet" and keep on attacking, ignoring the obvious fact that your collective behavior mirrors the same thing you are accusing us of.
Tim - as long as you're writing to apologize for your false accusations about me, which are long overdue, let me know whether or not you are being paid to obsess about John Lott, would you? I'm dying to know why else someone would spend so much time stalking him like you do.--Cbaus 9:53p.m., 21 April 2006 (EDST-USA)
" You reject any attempt at what Wikipedia has in mind for creating an encyclopedia-style reference in favor of a one-sided personal attack piece, and ignore every attempt to steer the thing back into legitimacy by immediately accusing anyone who tries to do so of being someone they are not." Does this mean that somebody actually answered all of the individual questions I posed regarding the big huge proLott rewrite which was reverted to again and again and again and again and again and again and again, verbatim, without a single answer being to any of my questions? Which were posted at the cost of substantial time and energy on my part? Should I post them yet again here, in hopes of another answer than the usual "that has been answered previously"? Or is the article better served by ad hominem attacks based on a personal sense of insult, rather than haggling over actual verifiable facts? We could argue over how many times you were suspected of being a sock puppet, and whether Lott might have moved his residence, or we could argue over where one might be able to find some evidence regarding the purported second individual who reported being part of the infamous 2% survey, as was posted here numerous times. Gzuckier 17:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

AEI

In the introduction it says that he is "currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute." While later the article states that he left AEI in 2006. He doesn't appear on AEI's list of scholars and fellows, so it would appear that the later information is correct. Could we change the article to reflect this also in the introduction? --Kristjan Wager 05:38, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

anti-Lott bias

There's ten times as much criticism about Lott's conclusions than about the evidence and reasoning by which he reached his conclusions. I didn't even see his simple claim that when states like Florida started allowing concealed weapons again, violent crime immediately began dropping and stayed way down.

That's not something that has to be teased out of the data with complex calculations no one can check. It's a single number. (It's something like 40,000 crimes a year dropping to 30,000 crimes a year; we're talking grade-school math here.)

I'm not going to argue FOR his conclusions here on the talk page. Rather, I'm challenging my fellow contributors to give the man's ideas a fair shake by summarizing his views and quoting a few references to the evidence he offers in support of his views.

Just saying "Lott favors guns" and then spending the rest of the article arguing against him, is not up to encyclopedia standards of quality. --Uncle Ed 17:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, John Lott#Debate over adequacy of data for definitive answer to the question of the relationship between guns and crime shouldn't be a subheading of criticism. I'm not even sure it should be in here, but moved to some general article on studies of relationship between guns and crime, with a reference here, but at least here is better than deleted completely from Wpedia. Gzuckier 17:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

objective data?

Removed:

  • These are numbers you don't get by single-issue research. His work on personal protection (largely the topic which draws the flammage of resident critics such as Tim Lambert) is apparently only a small fraction of the work he has done on topics from minimum wage and other price controls to crime and over-criminalization of companies and individual actions, to a variety of campaign issues, and to the environment.

inserted by Mr. Purtilo, slightly optimistically summarized as "Objective data added to the fact package" Gzuckier 18:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Issues and positions

Cut:

Lott has published in academic journals regarding the beneficial aspects of government deregulation of various areas, and has also published in the popular press on conservative topics such as the validity of the 2000 Presidential Election results in Florida and how low the murder rate in Baghdad has been since the U.S. deposed Saddam Hussein.

This passage blurs the distinction between the issue, and the stance Lott has taken on it:

Now, neither of these is a conservative topic. Liberals are equally concerned about these issues.

However, a conservative stance on the topics might be:

  • The Florida election results were valid.
  • The Baghdad murder rate has fallen considerably since Saddam's defeat.

Anyone care to take a crack at fixing this? --Uncle Ed 19:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


Lott has published in academic journals regarding the beneficial aspects of government deregulation of various areas, and has also been published in the popular press taking conservative positions on topics such as the validity of the 2000 Presidential Election results in Florida and how the murder rate in Baghdad since the U.S. deposed Saddam Hussein.
Good? Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Hoping things have improved

Gator seems to have been successful at changing the climate around here a bit over the past few months. However, Uncle Ed's point about the article (see "anti-Lott Bias" above) still applies.

I have read through the article, and have a few suggestions for discussion:

1) The "Concealed weapons and the crime rate" section only lists statements from critics. There exist many examples of researchers whose work supports Lott's conclusions, and these have been listed in discussion at different points. Could we reach a concensus opinion to add the following to the end of the existing work on this section:

"Other researchers have found no evidence that Lott used biased statistical models, and still others have found evidence to support Lott's conclusions.
William Alan Bartley and Mark A. Cohen examined Lott's original 1997 research, as well as Black and Nagin's critique. They concluded that "the deterrence results are robust enough to make them difficult to dismiss as unfounded, particularly those findings about the change in violent crime trends."1
Bruce L. Benson (Florida State University) and Brent D. Mast (American Enterprise Institute) found that "of all the index crime categories, only rape is estimated to have a consistent negative relationship with private security", but they also found "little evidence that the Lott and Mustard results are biased because of a lack of controls for the private security measures employed in this study."2
Carlisle E. Moody (College of William and Mary) says that while he found Lott's 1997 "study might suffer from several possibly important errors" that "Lott and Mustard's basic conclusions are generally robust with respect to these potential econometric problems. Overall, right-to-carry concealed weapons laws tend to reduce violent crime."3
Florenz Plassman (State University of New York at Binghamton) and T. Nicholaus Tideman (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) found that "the effects of such laws vary across crime categories, U.S. states, and time and that such laws appear to have statistically significant deterrent effects on the numbers of reported murders, rapes, and robberies."4
David Olson (Loyola University Chicago) and Michael Maltz (University of Illinois at Chicago) found that their own "results show that the liberalized carrying laws are associated with a number of effects, some that are consistent with those found by Lott and Mustard and others that are not."5

I don't know how to do footnotes, but here are my citations:

1 Economic Inquiry, 1998, vol. 36, issue 2, pages 258-65

2 The Journal of Law and Economics, vol. XLIV (October 2001)

3 ibid

4 ibid

5 ibid


On second thought, before I list any other suggestions now, let's test the climate before I spend my time.

I am not tied to this exact text, but I am hoping that there can be a concensus among editors here that only publishing critics is, as Uncle Ed stated, "not up to encyclopedia standards of quality." Let's hammer something out to reflect the existence of this research and add it to the article. --Cbaus 4:31 p.m., 22 August 2006 (EDST)

Those articles are already listed in the Bibliography. If you want to do this it would be better to add annotations to the cites there. --TimLambert 03:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
So am I reading you right - are you saying that despite all the critiques that have been put in the text, mentioning/ quoting work in the text that supports Lott's research is not allowed, save for a footnote? --Cbaus 10:18 a.m., 29 August 2006 (EDST)
Tim - I am wondering if maybe I misunderstood your last. Are you saying you are ok with the text I proposed, and recommending that my footnotes point to the articles currently listed in the Bibliography? --Cbaus 05:00 p.m., 12 September 2006 (EDST)
Appparently I am not going to hear from the only commenter on my proposal. Unless I hear objections from anyone this week, I will plan to add the text proposed above and provide annotations to the cites already listed in the Bibliography, per Lambert's suggestion. --Cbaus 09:39 a.m., 19 September 2006 (EDST)
Sorry not have responded -- with all the spam edits I didn't notice. The text you proposed belongs in an annotated bibliography. It does not belong in the main part of the article. IF you look at other wikipedia articles you won't find lists of papers with comments in the main article. --TimLambert 06:09, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
In that case we remove the Zimring/ Hawkins comments that are already there. Otherwise there is a double standard. Which would you all prefer? --Cbaus 09:39 a.m., 19 September 2006 (EDST)
Well, I'll butt in here... One thing is the somewhat asymmetric nature of critiques. I.e. people typically criticize a scientific paper directly, but "support" it not directly by saying "I repeated it and it worked out the same" but by doing similar work that agrees, more or less. So, there's a vague line between papers that support Lott and belong here and papers that are more truly part of the Gun Politics article, so I guess it's on a case by case basis. Looking forward to lotts of more arguments, haha. Gzuckier 13:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
The researchers I am proposing we list did the exact same thing Black & Nagin did, as far as I can tell at a quick glance. They took Lott's work and reviewed it. So there are at least nine academics whp reviewed and came to similar findings, but the article only mentions these two who came to different conclusions after their review. Thus, the article is still "not up to encyclopedia standards of quality," as Uncle Ed put it.
So I will ask again for the same basic change that I proposed back on August 22 - can we add in the quotes/ references I am proposing, or would you all rather take the Zimring/Hawkins/Black/Nagin references out? I think the former would be most appropriate. --Cbaus 03:51 p.m., 10 October 2006 (EDST)

Weasel words tag

I've removed the {{weasel}} tag from the article as the editor who placed it there, User:68.213.79.191, has not left a note on the talk page to describe what his problem is with the article. I've also left a note on that user's talk page. If anyone thinks it should be re-inserted, please do so, but please also describe your reasoning on the talk page as well. Thanks! --- Deville (Talk) 12:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Media Bias

With regard to media bias, I came across the following information, which might be something to add to the main page or not tell me what you think.

A two-year study by the Media Research Center concluded that television reporters are overwhelmingly opposed to Second Amendment rights. For broadcasts from major networks from July 1, 1995 to June 30, 1997, covering 244 gun policy stories:
• The ratio of anti-gun to pro-gun bias was 16:1.
•Anti-gun spokespeople (Sarah Brady, etc) were given three times the number of sound bites than pro-gun spokespeople (NRA, etc).

Does the above not prove John Lott's point on media bias? Or is the Media Research Center considered biased in favor of gun ownership? Al Lowe 02:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I would think it would be worth an entry, but more probably in an article on gun politics, cause it's not Lott himself.Gzuckier 18:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
The Media Research Center's own mission statement says that they are out to prove liberal bias in the media. Their counts might be correct, but it would be better to find something from a neutral source. --TimLambert 03:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
As much as I would love to find a neutral source, I have serious doubts that one even exists. Al Lowe 16:51, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Why isn't this page semi-protected??

I came to this page to check out edits by an IP account I think may be an open proxy used by spammers. I noted this page is frequently vandalized by what appears to be a spammer and I'm curious as to why it's not semi-protected. --A. B. (talk) 15:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Semi-protection declined [16] -- guess I asked a dumb question. By the way, here are the stats (I may be off by an edit or two):
259 vandalistic edits by 249 different IPs, most of them probably open proxies, to the NPOV section, since 26 January.
Each one leaves a ton of spam, much of it to porn sites, some of it promising teen porn.
Personally, I find it disillusioning to watch this continue unabated. --A. B. (talk) 16:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Correction: 105 vandalistic edits by 94 anon IPs. My algorithm was wroking wrong.
Every time it happens it is quickly reverted, and the offending open proxy is reported and blocked indef. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's a spammer leaving the material. I suspect that it's someone who dislikes this page. -Will Beback · † · 18:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Only 25 out of 94 open proxies hitting NPOV section were ever blocked indefinitely

Last 94 IP vandals, Talk:John Lott page, NPOV section only:

22 were noted as open proxies at the top of their talk pages; 1 was never actually blocked:

4 additional IP addresses were blocked as open proxies (just not noted at the top of the talk page or on the user page):

12 received blocks, but not indefinite, for a variety of reasons:

39 have received warnings but never been blocked:

17 have never received warnings or blocks:

--A. B. (talk) 17:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Thank you for compiling that. If I were an adminstrator, I would go deal with them all right now. My suggestion is that you copy the valuable work you have just done and send it to WikiProject on open proxies - they use a format, but I bet they'll give you a pass based on the size of the report. Again, thanks for the effort - it is much appreciated! Hipocrite - «Talk» 17:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment. I have reported them all at WikiProject on open proxies. It took about 2½ hours to research it all, but I was afraid to accidentally throw an innocent IP into the mix. (Who says only article writers do research?) --A. B. (talk) 17:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
If it's not going to be semi-protected, I guess you could think of it as something like a honeytoken for open proxies. --A. B. (talk) 18:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I s-protected it for a month, back in July. Three days after removing the protection the vandal was back. -Will Beback · † · 20:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
So in that case, why not just leave it semi-protected? --A. B. (talk) 05:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
The normal prejudice is against leaving articles semi-protected for long periods, and is even more opposed to semi-protecting article talk pages. However I don't see any legitimate IP contributions to this page in over a year. I'll re-protect it for another long stretch and let's see what happens. Also, we could probably archive the whole page. If it is really a vandal rather than a spammer that might help. -Will Beback · † · 06:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

4 additional open proxy suspects

Likely open proxies that have attacked Talk:John Lott in sections other than the NPOV section:

--A. B. (talk) 05:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

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