User talk:John Carter/Archive 5

ANI

Due to your blatant disregard of a community imposed sanction I have reported your actions at ANI. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Your AE request

Doubtless you will see what I have already written there, but I wanted to drop a note here as well so there is no misunderstanding. When I said I believed a request for arbitration would be an exemption to the iban, that was on the assumption that you were talking about filing a request for a full case based on the current and past circumstances. You did not ask "what if I keep following his edits and if I see something I don't like and then I will try to bust him over at WP:AE" by any stretch. Let me be clear: you are right on the edge of being blocked for violating the iban. Consider this your last warning to just leave Hijiri88 alone and ignore their edits. That was the whole point of the ban, I suggest you just move on. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Please see my apparently edit-conflicted comment at AE. John Carter (talk) 21:46, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom

It's just my observation of how they usually operate, but I think ArbCom is highly unlikely to take up a case between you and Hijiri88 when a community IBan has just been put into effect. The response I would anticipate is "Let's see what happens". Now, if either of you violate the IBan, that's another matter (although such violations are likely to lead to blocks). Just my opinion, FWIW. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:58, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

You may be right, but as I indicated on the ANI page there is a serious question as to how far an "interaction" might go, particularly given that as an individual I think I may have been involved in damn near every older talk page and several article pages relating to Christianity, and, in a sense, the other party might, in some way, also want to now if that i-ban is also an effective topic ban from those pages. And I think it particularly perhaps relevant to note that I more or less requested a close for the purposes of ArbCom, so they might see the closing as being effectively an opportunity to seek that out. John Carter (talk) 01:01, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, but just be prepared: ain't gonna happen. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:01, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Email

I'm more than a little disappointed that you would exclude the two most important words from the sentence of mine you quoted in the email, and then use that as an excuse to call what I said "pejorative and explicitly judgmental". In fact, I'm surprised that you could even entertain that as a possible meaning of what I said.

I attempted to commiserate with you over what I felt was too harsh a response to your behavior, to express my desire to see you avoid further sanctions, and to tell you that I will be happy when this block is up. The fact that you could take that as some sort of attack is baffling and -frankly- disheartening. It causes me to regret and second guess my judgement of you as a valuable editor and a rational person. Please don't email me again. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@MjolnirPants: No commiseraton was sought, and, as I indicated, in all honesty, it can be to my eyes more productive to edit elsewhere. Also, I regret to say that, in your conversations here, you come across very, very much as an atheistic/humanistic "scientific" preacher. jps, who has in the past called himself more clearly a "Science Apologist," has tended to be less of a preacher in that regard than you. Based on your tendency to preach on things like human evolution, honestly, for no particularly good reason, I regret that as I said you come across more like a preacher for your beliefs than I think I ever have. Also, in my conversations here and elsewhere, I have noted that "rational" among several atheists is basically a codeword/buzzword for "like us". This includes for instance individuals who actively promote that Jesus never existed, even though the evidence of history itself tends to run contrary to that position. You are at a bit of an advantage over me regarding my ability to contact you, and, as I indicated, the archiving didn't work anyway, so, please, if I can be so bold, please refrain from coming to this page to indulge in comments such as you have previously indulged in here which to my eyes as someone who has, as he has said, reviewed a lot of the academic literature of all kinds, comes across more as attempts at preaching of positions which actually aren't as well supported by the academic community as they are by the atheist/humanist community which rather likes to call itself "rational" as a form of implicit derogation of anyone who might disagree with him on their, well, dogma. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 19:12, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Re Sandbox draft edits

As a sign of good faith I have complied with your request! If you have further concerns, please let me know! Cheers - Ret.Prof (talk) 18:15, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Your e-mail

Thank you for your e-mail, which I reproduce below for the sake of transparency:

"So I never reviewed what ban exceptions were. FWIW, the only other individual I've ever been involved with a ban in, [redacted], seems to have, as can be found in his appeal of the ban, in violation of it fairly frequently, leading to his being, ultimately, finally, blocked for it and allegedly "retiring" except for, once in a while, like recently, coming back and pinging others I am in disputes with. I think you can understand that on the basis of his actions before and after his "retirement" and no recent review by me of the pages myself in the days I was away, my conception of what is and is not permissable may have been wrong.

Anyway, my apologies for my obvious error, and strange as it might sound thanks for having the guts to do the block. I know you get a lot of heat for that, but it is something that needs to be done, and it's good we have someone willing to do it."

Although you did not ask to be unblocked, blocks and other sanctions on Wikipedia are intended to be preventative, not punitive. That is, they should last only as long as they are (likely) needed to prevent the reoccurrence of the conduct for which they were imposed. Your e-mail leaves me reasonably confident that the block is no longer needed. It is accordingly lifted. Regards,  Sandstein  20:23, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@Sandstein: 😲 😄 "Surprised" is nowhere near sufficient to describe how I feel right now. I was more than willing to take the month, and rather expected to. But, having said that, there are already a few matters here which could be dealt with in that time, including I guess adding wikisource templates to some articles I was going to add them to, and maybe doing more in some other open discussions. "Thank you" isn't exactly sufficient either, but based on my personal command of the language I don't really know what else to say. And, depending on how much you know my history, you might know it don't happen often that I shut up. John Carter (talk) 20:41, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Re the Intelligent Design RfC

I took a look at the RfC and I'm going to comment, but I want to point something out without giving the appearance of lambasting you in 'public' (at the noticeboard). In fact, I hope this doesn't come across as lambasting you at all.

You started the RfC with a comment in which you ended by saying "FWIW, personally, I personally have more reservations about creationism than evolution, although the evidence for either is at best fragmentary, and of a type which many if not most independent scientists would say is probably at least less than optimal support for either contention."

I want to point out that this is not true. The evidence for evolution is actually quite overwhelming. It's one of the best-evidenced theories in all of science. One of the key features is that evidence from many different disciplines all stands in perfect agreement and has for some time, a feature very very few other theories share. For example, the theory of general relativity is virtually universally accepted (even by those with religiously motivated views of science), yet it has only been confirmed through the disciplines of astronomy, particle physics and electrical engineering. Compare that to evolution, which has confirming evidence from physical anthropology, anatomy, paleontology, biochemistry, genetics, linguistics, zoology, animal husbandry and a large number of other fields.

Again, I don't want to come across as giving you grief, I just want to state that you expressed concerns about labeling ID a pseudoscience in the same comment in which you demonstrated a misunderstanding of the difference between ID and evolution. As to whether or not your concerns are justified, I have addressed them in the RfC. I didn't come here to debate the RfC question here. I just wanted to (hopefully) help you correct a misunderstanding. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 14:43, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@MjolnirPants: Um, actually, if you noticed, it isn't yet an RfC, but, rather, a discussion as to whether to start and, presumably, how to phrase an RfC. I know that to start an RfC the tag has to be specifically added, etc. Sorry that wasn't clear. John Carter (talk) 19:20, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Be that as it may, it is beside the point that I raised here, which I hope you will give serious consideration to and do some research into. I will be happy to help in any way, I have an extensive bookmark collection related to reliable sources for the evidence for evolution that I would be quite happy to share. However, the WP article on that subject is a very good one, and contains enough information to keep you busy for quite some time if you wish to absorb it all. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:26, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@MjolnirPants: And, I guess, I should have specified specifically "human evolution", which I didn't. I am aware of the icefish in South Georgia which is a clear indication of evolution, and have actually thought of writing about it, but the evidence for human evolution in particular is much more fragmentary. I am sorry that I was less specific than I should have been. Believe me, my recent history of editing here is almost exclusively in regards to reference works in general, including lists of articles and named subarticles in them, sources cited in those articles, etc. Much of that has been in the field of religion and pseudoscience. In fact, I have several hundred pages of hand-written notes from such sources, which I haven't yet added here because of burnout from dealing with some problem editors. John Carter (talk) 19:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, if you had been even more specific, I would have to agree. For example, if you had said "the physical anthropological evidence for human evolution -in the form of verifiably human-or-human-ancestor fossils and other physical remains, not including artifacts of culture- is at best fragmentary," then you would, of course be perfectly correct. But I'm afraid that, even within the subdiscipline of human evolution, the evidence is extremely strong and comes from a wide variety of sources. Note my use of linguistics as one of the examples in my first comment. To refer specifically to human evolution, one can drop zoology and animal husbandry from the list above, and add cultural anthropology, comparative religion, human history, archeology and, again, many many others.

I just want to reiterate that I'm not trying to berate you for not knowing this, or to suggest that anything else you believe is, in any way suspect. If you believe I'm wrong, I'd be happy to cite as many reliable sources as you want to evince anything I'm saying here. If you have reason to doubt me, I don't want to imply that my word is good enough to go on. But I suspect that you do, indeed have the ability to verify anything I say yourself. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 20:56, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I happened to read your response to my comments on your email and...

I looked just like this as I read it. ;)MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 23:48, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

If my comment regarding how you misrepresent modern archaeological evidence for human evolution as being in some way a form of "proof" of earlier human evolution looks just like a photo of Carl Sagan to you, then I think the time has probably well past for you to get at least your eyes examined. :) John Carter (talk) 14:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration case request declined

The Catflap08 and Hijiri88 2 arbitration case request, which you were a party to, has been declined. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 20:12, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 7, 2017)

The Sun and planets of the Solar System (distances not to scale) are examples of astronomical objects. Hello, John Carter. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Astronomical object Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Secondary school • Nvidia Shadowplay Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:08, 13 February 2017 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

A note

You might want to be careful about joining a discussion that Hijiri's been one of the most active contributers to—you don't want to find out that "broadly construed" includes such situations, especially as you've made a counter-proposal to one of Hijiri's. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:15, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, FWIW, I think I was the first one involved in the discussion, even starting the thread at WT:COMICS. If that is the case, then the other party might be the one who might have more cause to worry. John Carter (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Uh ... no, not by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever. I was hoping to prevent another potential ANI dramahfest. Feel free to ignore this. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:32, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

What exactly are you saying "no" too here? That I didn't start the thread at WT:COMICS#Assistance in developing content relating to individual characters across multiple articles? I thought I did. If drama arises, I don't know that I have necessarily done anything to spark it. John Carter (talk) 23:35, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to continue this discussion. I was trying to be helpful. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:51, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The help might be better directed elsewhere, I think, if problems arise. Your argument seems to me to be based on the premise that, having been inactive since Wednesday, any activity of mine thereafter has to be weighed against developments in the interim. While under some circumstances that might be reasonable, I also think that, prior to Wednesday, as the record shows, I have been one of the most involved people in the discussion, and I think that much earlier involvement on my part would have to be looked at by any admin seeking to level sanctions. John Carter (talk) 23:52, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

"Your argument ..."—I have no argument. You're reading something into my comment that was never there. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:01, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Different use of the word "argument" I'm afraid. I was thinking more along the lines of Milton, using it as a synonym for "summary of content" or something similar. I think you might be reading something into my comment which wasn't intended to be there, whether it could be perceived as being there by others or not. John Carter (talk) 02:04, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I really don't care. I was trying to be helpful. Fuck me. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC)