User talk:Antaeus Feldspar/Archive 05

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Church caps.

Hi, sorry to hear you haven't been well. Speedy recovery. In relation to an earlier discussion on the (R)CC page, you may wish to have a look at this MoS comment. Alai 05:39, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment at Talk:Scientology_controversy

Hi: It is my opinion that you are doing good work at the controversial Scientology_controversy page. GodHelpWiki is very upset about the contents of the page. It seems that we both disagree with much of what he says. That said, however, I do think that the tone of your last response to him was rather harsh in tone. "Well, then, clearly you don't know as much about Wikipedia as you think you do" could be taken as an implication that s/he is stupid (given the anger/hurt s/he already shows). The "clearly" is what makes it seem so pointed. "It seems to be one of many things you still don't understand" is similar; with "many" as the barb. I do not think think that your suggestion that s/he has not read what is being written is likely to make him/her any more amenable. Please would you consider rephrasing your response to soften it and to encourage constructive discussion? --Theo (Talk) 16:23, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User:Antaeus FeIdspar

My pleasure. It was a bit confusing at first, though — the two user names looked identical on every part of my screen except my address-box (when I hovered the cursor over them). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:09, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Facts or knowledge

The "distance", I would write, between facts and knowledge...but that's a matter of taste. --VKokielov 07:35, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Template

Antaeus, I felt you were a little unfair in the way you responded to Grace Note regarding Template:Explain significance. [1] I share your evident frustration over the amount of rubbish we often have to deal with, and I also know that it's annoying to have templates edited (I've had a couple of mine changed), but on the other hand, Grace Note's edit was quite reasonable and introduced only a subtle (but arguably important) change of tone. Perhaps a compromise text could be worked out. Anyway, I hope you don't mind me expressing my view here. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:04, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Grace Note's editing made two changes:

It removed the completely factual information that articles which make readers say, "So... why is this subject worth reading about, again?" do regularly get nominated for deletion (and as we both know, frequently wind up deleted once there.)
It inserted the suggestion to simply remove the tag "if you feel this ... is not necessary."

Both of those are more than a subtle change of tone. -- Antaeus Feldspar 11:39, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't think so. It still asks for extra information on "significance" (without pretending it's anything other than one editor's opinion that it does) and it still mentions that it might be nominated for deletion. I think it's only fair to point out to new users that they can remove a tag if they don't feel it's necessary. You and I know that's the case, because we are bold enough to make changes when we simply differ in opinion, but a newer editor might be intimidated. I'll give you an example: John Smith might be a world-leading widget scientist, and the stub might say so. How can you further explain his significance? He's significant because he's a world leader in widgets. That might seem plain to me and not plain to you. So you tag it because you think widget scientists are not "notable" and I remove it because I think they are. Okay? No big deal. We differ in opinion. But I think the template needs to make that freedom to differ in opinion explicit. Otherwise, you get what I've had with other templates: you can't remove it once I've put it there. Well, yes, you can. They're like any other edit. If the subject of a vanity page removes it, or its author, there are other means to keep it there. You can write to the author, explain the use of the template and ask them to leave it. Explain that it's meant to help, not hurt. Grace Note 06:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Fine. I'll still note that it is one of a very small number of tags which invite the reader to completely dismiss the concern that it represents. And based on my experience, new editors generally don't need encouragement to dismiss the concerns raised by more experienced editors -- what they much more often need is encouragement to take such concerns seriously, and realize that maybe some of the assumptions they're under regarding Wikipedia aren't the way Wikipedia actually works.

Your example of: John Smith is a world-leading widget scientist; the stub says so; Editor X puts on the tag because he doesn't think that even the world's single most notable widget scientist is notable -- sure, it's easy to follow that example, and it shows why it would be a Good Thing for the tag to suggest "remove me if I'm not necessary and the person who thinks I am is wrong!" But let me offer two counter-examples:

Newcomer Y hears a little bit about Wikipedia, and proving the adage that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", decides that this must be the most fabulous idea of all time: if they let anyone edit any page, it's going to be a great place to tell everyone how great and cool his lunchtable gang at his high school is! The tag goes on the article, but it suggests "remove this tag if it's not necessary." Newcomer Y still hasn't gotten the idea that the "-pedia" in Wikipedia means that we are aiming for an open-content encyclopedia, rather than something closer to a graffiti wall, and so the minute he sees "if it's not necessary," the possibility that it might be necessary is already gone from his mind. He chucks the tag, because who is anyone on Wikipedia to judge whether his social clique is "significant" or not? They don't even know his social clique, because they don't go to his high school!

Newcomer Z hears about Wikipedia, and wonders if they have a page about his favorite band, the Mudskippers. When he finds out that they don't, he happily sets to work preparing one, including all sorts of biographical details that will surely be of interest to any true Mudskippers fan, like why Mark always wears that stocking cap on stage and why Kevin, the guitarist, will never use any brand of strings except Champion. Someone puts the tag on the article and when Newcomer Z sees it, he steps back and for the first time sees the article from the perspective of someone who isn't already a Mudskippers fan. "Oh!" he says. "Why are they notable? Uh... well, they're signed to one of the major indie labels, and their music is starting to get used in commercials and TV shows... I should probably put that in the article, shouldn't I?"

Now between those two sets of examples, which do you find more probable? I can definitely tell you which I think matches up better with what actually happens on Wikipedia, and it's the latter. I can even back this up with an example that just happened: Looking at the category that the tag places the article into, I see "La-Z-Boy". Someone thought La-Z-Boy was important enough to create a stub on, but forgot to mention the reasons why it's important -- in this case, the fact that they happen to be the United States' largest manufacturer of recliners. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:09, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Cognotechnology?

You put the page Cognotechnology into Category:Anti-cult terms and concepts. I'm a bit curious on the logic behind this, since the article does not mention cults at all in any form. -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

The logic behind putting it in Category:Anti-cult terms and concepts was rather informal and simple: It is somehow connected to the other issues in cat, has similar potential for discussion (critical, etc.), and is controversal. That's all, nothing about cult (do the other have anything to do with cult?). I thought it just had to be put in some category. I'll add engineering, too. Maybe neuroscience would be good also. I think, we need some new categories anyway, to get some order in engineering, neuroscience, etc. Please post me your ideas. Ben please vote! 05:22, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

Well, IMHO, something is wrong if there are articles in Category:Anti-cult terms and concepts that don't have anything to do with cults. It is "somehow connected", yes, but the connection is not strong: a frequent concern about cults is the possibility that they are exerting mind control over their members by means of sleep deprivation, love bombing, et cetera, while the article seems to indicate that "cognotechnology" is hypothesized mind control through nanotechnology and biotechnology. Category:Neuroscience seems appropriate, as does Category:Speculative technology or something similar if we have such a category. -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:46, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Antaeus. Anti-Cult terms and concepts is probably not a good category for the article. Then, the proposed category Category:Speculative technology sounds good. Thanks for your comment. I just saw it now. I'll remove the category again. Ben ^T/_C 06:19, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Lakireddy Bali Reddy

By "pov and wrong", I meant that the article previously said that Reddy had been able to "keep all of his ill-gotten gains", or something along those lines. The DOJ indicated that he had been fined $2M. The old article also lowballed his prison sentence at 6 years instead of 8. jdb ❋ (talk) 18:37, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Right -- what I was trying to say in my hurried edit summary just before I ran for the train (I have to stop doing that) is that the paragraph you replaced did in fact contain POV statements and statements which the reference you also added showed to be factually wrong. However, those statements were only about half of the paragraph. The other statements were not noticeably POV, so I restored them, and what my edit summary was meant to convey was "these might have been removed in too much haste, or they might have been removed because they too were incorrect. I've restored it in case it was the former, but feel free to re-remove them if it was the latter." -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:01, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Preston Lions

A bit too quick on the speedy trigger on this one; it had a long edit history, and a few edits back was the unvandalised version. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:25, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

D'oh. sorry. You've got me dead to rights on that one. I only saw it by following a link from some already-reverted vandalism, so when I saw it consisting mostly of juvenile abuse I thought it had been created by the vandal. Didn't occur to me it might not have been. sorry. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:34, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Barnstar of Diligence Award

Samantha Geimer

I've merged some of the stuff in Samantha Geimer into Roman Polanski#Statutory rape charge. Think that's enough? --ssd 04:19, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's honestly a surprising question. The usual intent of a merge is to put information that's in two articles and put it all in one article and convert the other to a redirect; one of the frequent cases where this is considered a desirable thing to do is when one of the article subjects really isn't notable except in connection with the other. Samantha Geimer is probably a very very nice person, but unless something's missing from her article, her only notability is through connection with Roman Polanski -- which is why I suggested a merge. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:11, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I know I'm dredging this up from the past, but given that Vili Fualaau has his own article instead of a redirect to Mary Kay Letourneau when his notability is for the most part similar, shouldn't the Samantha Geimer article no longer be a redirect? There's more to the story than that connection especially given the circumstances leading to it and what has turned out to be a flip-flopping of her story in recent years. What goes for one statutory rape "victim" is good for another victim, yes? Scrabbleship 00:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, which is why if anyone was asking me, I'd advocate merging Vili Fualaau into Mary Kay Letourneau, too. =) As for "a flip-flopping of her story in recent years", if you have sourced information on it, please add it to Roman Polanski and if others agree that it merits splitting out a separate article, then a split can be done. I'll note that Fualaau has done his own "flip-flopping", filing a suit for not protecting him from Letourneau and then marrying her -- and I still don't think he merits an individual article when he has no notability apart from l'affaire Letourneau. -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Monty Hall problem

Hi - A previous change I made to the Monty Hall problem article some time ago added a sentence with the critical assumptions in the first paragraph immediately before the question. Because of this addition, the words "the host knows what is behind each door" now appear twice in this paragraph. It is this redundancy I was trying to eliminate. The first occurrence of this phrase (the one I deleted) is in a parenthetical in a compound sentence. Deleting this occurrence seemed (to me) to simplify this sentence without changing the meaning, since the assumption that the host knows is still stated. Is there some reason it doesn't look redundant to you? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:19, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Misreading on my part. Believe me, I looked through that entire paragraph for somewhere else where that prerequisite was mentioned, and I didn't see it. I can only think that somehow I was expecting the other mention to be the first mention, making the second mention redundant, and therefore missed that the remaining mention was the second mention. Sorry. -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:50, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So, what do you think about nominating this article as a featured article? -- Rick Block (talk) 01:48, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

ADHD

Antaeus, as always your efforts are appreciated for their apparent sincerity. Your boldness in editing is admirable. However, you might encounter less resistance, your POV might be more effectively promoted, and you might generate less antagonism if your approach avoided what appears to be sarcastic overtones. Thanks again, though, for your diligent efforts. Ombudsman 14:45, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There wasn't any sarcasm at all in it. At this point there are far more medical professionals who accept the existence of ADHD than who do not. You've been clear about your opinion that ADHD is in fact an invented disease which does not exist, and the drug companies are responsible for somehow creating the general consensus that it does. How are you suggesting that they did this, if not by means of a conspiracy? -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:45, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A more collegial tone would be appreciated, Antaeus. With regard to ADD, the 'symptoms' subjectively used to facilitate diagnoses are generally quite real, especially from the point of view of those who may inappropriately seek to enforce overly strict discipline. The groupthink (rather than 'conspiracy', which comes off as sarcastic) is likely to precipitate backlashes on several levels, including the spread of illicit drug use among those without an Rx, and vulnerabilities to substance abuse among those given an Rx. The focus on artificially controlling behavior draws attention away from equally serious symptoms related to overly compliant and deferential behavior (perhaps associated with hyperfocus and neoteny), which are routinely and selectively overlooked. The resulting discrimination tilts heavily against children whose only crime, often, is being slow to grow up. According to one report, half of patients given psychiatric diagnoses at a facility were later found to have underlying non-psychiatric medical conditions which likely contributed to their mental health issues. Psychiatric diagnoses can only be made without identification of any medical pathology, because there are no tests specific to mental illness. The primary problem with most ADD diagnoses is one of discrimination, more so than fabrication of diagnostic criteria. Such discrimination (biased in favor of the sycophant) likely fosters, and culturally ingrains, the Peter principle phenomenon. Ombudsman 08:21, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, please, Om. Your efforts at manipulation are criminally transparent. When you think you can carrot, you hand out insincere barnstars. When you want to stick, you throw accusations like "parroting of proferred propaganda" and puff up your talk with all the twenty-dollar words you know, hoping that the time it takes people to figure out your point is time in which they won't notice that you haven't proven your point, only expressed it in big words and then claimed it to be fact. Don't talk to me about "collegial tone" when your own tone is an insincere attempt to manipulate people to your way. -- Antaeus Feldspar 11:53, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Antaeus, your diligence appears to be sincere, and worthy of a barnstar. Attending to content for a moment, it is the chemical imbalance theory that is most impoverished in terms of proof, something that seems to be lost on the expert worship crowd. The Wiki is a collaborative endeavor to expand, rather than obfuscate (using the smokescreens of orthodoxy) the collective knowledgebase. If your sincerity leads you to be disruptive, then your acerbic comments do not rise to the level of Wikipedian 'best practices'. Ombudsman 17:00, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:17, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Hi and not so Hi

Well, it might be me. I feel really lonely and hated by the wiki community, what can I do? Frenchman113 22:58, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Anti-Psychiatry Activities

Hello, Antaeus, please help having a look on the activities of user AI - he is concentrating on inserting negative psychiatry articles. Uses expressions like "does not confront his past" and reacts pretty strong, as soon as critiziced). Irmgard - see at my user side as example. ;-)

(Sarcasm) Antaeus, thank you for helping with anti-psychiatry activities. --AI 02:00, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Content forking

Hi there! The reason was that I was cleaning out Category:Wikipedia proposals so that it might become a useful category (you'd be amazed how much unrelated issues were in there, or stuff that hadn't been edited for over a year...) From the current content of your article I figured it wouldn't be proposing anything, but if that's the direction you're heading please change it back. Sorry for the trouble. Btw you're probably aware of Wikipedia:POV fork? Possibly it should be merged into your article, because POV forks would be a subset of content forks. Yours, R adiant _>|< 08:14, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

No, I wasn't aware of it. It didn't exist at the time I created Wikipedia:Content forking, but it seems to cover a lot of the same territory, so merging of some kind should definitely be looked at. -- Antaeus Feldspar 13:55, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Prisoner link

Sorry about that. I just felt the anti-6 of 1 link was a violation of the Soapbox guideline, much as anti-Trek United links were removed from the Star Trek: Enterprise article earlier this year for the same reason. Personally I don't get what the big deal is about a fan club (this anti-6 of 1 thing destroyed the main Prisoner Yahoo Group). In the grand scheme of things who cares? I think it sets a dangerous precedent because we'd have to link every webpage that has an opposing viewpoint to any club, group, etc. otherwise listed. 23skidoo 15:30, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Church

Thanks for the kind words; it's always nice to hear good things. -- Essjay · Talk 04:54, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Thanks for your support for my adminship. I am honored by your vote. Cheers, -Willmcw

Monty Hall problem

Hi - I'm trying to address a comment raised at WP:FAC about the Monty Hall problem article. The suggestion is to delete the explanation you originally added under this edit (effect of opening a door). Rather than delete it I agreed to find who added it and discuss it. Isn't the opening a door side of this analysis tantamount to an explanation of the original problem? It's not obvious to me what the comparison adds. If you could explain it to me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) July 2, 2005 21:54 (UTC)

Well, the key point (which, I'm afraid, did get lost in trying to make the analysis so complete that no one could misinterpret it) is that if the host doesn't open a door, the chance of winning by switching is the intuitive chance, 1/3: it must be the correct decision to switch (a 2/3 chance) and the player must pick the correct door to switch to (a 1/2 chance); 2/3 * 1/2 = 1/3. The "a-ha" of how the host opening a door can raise the chance of winning above its intuitive level is the realization that when the host opens the door, he is eliminating the 1/2 chance that you might correctly decide to switch but choose the wrong door out of those that are left. -- Antaeus Feldspar 3 July 2005 19:41 (UTC)

Thanks. I get this. User:Wile E. Heresiarch just deleted the section. Do you think it's worth adding back at this point? I notice you haven't commented at WP:FAC. I haven't exhaustively examined the history, but I gather you actually did a lot of the work on this article. Do YOU think it should be a featured article in its current form? Thanks -- Rick Block (talk) July 3, 2005 19:47 (UTC)

I haven't been able to take a good exhaustive look at the article in some time, so I'll abstain on whether it's ready to be a FAC. As for adding the deleted section back in -- no, not in the form that I wrote it, which wound up far less clear than I wanted it to be. However, I think the central point may be worth explaining, in some form: Many people are blocked from seeing the solution because their intuition misguides them; they don't see how the probability for any door can rise above 1/N where N is the number of doors. They don't realize that the host, by opening a door, is actually removing something that lowered their chance. Whether someone can phrase that better than I can... -- Antaeus Feldspar 3 July 2005 19:57 (UTC)

Psychosurgery

Glad to have that relatively cleaned up. I still wonder if there is some way to really emphasise that both "psychosurgery" as a term and a practice is now more or less an historical thing. I don't know about other countries, but I'm pretty sure that no procedure related to a lobotomy/cingulotomy is performed in my country (New Zealand, although I think some may be done in Australia). Or am I degenerating into POV again?Limegreen 3 July 2005 00:28 (UTC)

I think it's probably possible to put that emphasis in in an NPOV fashion. You could point out that the practices collectively referred to as psychosurgery were all based on fairly crude assumptions about how the brain functions, assumptions which have now been discarded by science. (ever see those 19th century charts that showed the brain divided up into neatly delineated regions, each labelled with the area of thinking that brain section concerned itself with?) Any statistics you can find on the actual occurence of such surgeries would probably help support the contention that psychosurgery is primarily a thing of the past, too. -- Antaeus Feldspar 3 July 2005 22:00 (UTC)

RfC

You stated "there is no such 'Wikipedia alert' as AI would find it convenient to claim" in your contribution on 6 July 2005 16:10. [2]. I meant Wikiquette alert, I am assuming you knew and just decided to play word games. Please check more carefully before you jump to conclusions. The Wikiquette alert was removed after today and and RfC has been filed: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Antaeus Feldspar. --AI 7 July 2005 03:59 (UTC)

As usual, you assume wrongly. I don't make it a practice (as you clearly do) of filing Wikiquette alerts, and you didn't ever notify me that one had been filed; how exactly was I supposed to know that you were making your tiresome allegations behind my back in that particular corner? Of course, if you had actually called it by its correct name, then it would have been less effective for dead agenting purposes, since everyone would be able to see that this "Wikipedia alert" of which you thought everyone should be aware was simply just you finding another place to kvetch. -- Antaeus Feldspar 7 July 2005 04:15 (UTC)

"As usual, you assume wrongly" How else are you right? --AI 19:56, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Express yourself comprehensibly and I might reply. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, How else are you right? --AI 00:28, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Your query is still lacking in communicative power. I can only make sense of it if I interpret it as a fairly cheap attempt on your part to change the topic from your incorrect and uncharitable assumption that everyone should know what you mean by "Wikipedia alert" and that anyone who say they don't have any idea what you're talking about is lying. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I will say instead that I still can make no sense whatever out of what you're saying. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:59, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Alright, and how else are you right? --AI 01:10, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Is the purpose of this "discussion" to annoy me? That's the only thing it's accomplishing, and accordingly, any attempts to continue it will be reverted unread. The purpose of my having a talk page is not for you to badger me in an attempt to divert attention from your own failings. -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:20, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. --AI 01:40, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Antaeus, your RfC was deleted only because I am new to the RfC process and didn't get it certified in time. --AI 01:40, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Please start the RfC again. I am with you. --Zappaz 03:05, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Antaeus, what is annoying is your inexplained reverts and your bad faith and your rhetoric and your inability to carry on a logical argument in opposition to people who know what they are talking about. This is not a personal attack, this is the beginning of a complaint. --AI 02:53, 16 July 2005 (UTC)