User talk:Geo Swan/archive/2013-06

This user is one of the 800 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

If you are considering initiating an xfd on material I started

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Nomination of List of cancer victim hoaxes for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of cancer victim hoaxes is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cancer victim hoaxes until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. AldezD (talk) 22:40, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

List of Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of possessing Casio watches listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List of Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of possessing Casio watches. Since you had some involvement with the List of Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of possessing Casio watches redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). AldezD (talk) 12:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 10

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Thank you

Thank you for taking the time to go through the E-Cat nonsense and reply on my talk page. I have written the following as a response to the ban page, and doubtless will be breaking various Wikipedia rules with it, even if I'm allowed to post it.

I understand what argumentum ad hominem means. AndyTheGrump denies it, but he still has not answered the various points I brought up, in particular the referenced errors about Rossi believing nickel and hydrogen combined to form copper, the cherry picked quotation from the stale dated PopSci article and possibly libelous defamation of his character, suggesting he is a criminal and a conman. Instead he goes after the messenger saying that I am clueless, a sock puppet, have threatened others (which I haven’t), that I should “go away and learn about how science works,” asking I have some connection to Rossi or the testers (I don’t) and accusing me of using the talk page as a soapbox.

My major complaint is that the article is not neutral. Give mainstream views prominence, but at least give something from the other side. Don’t cherry pick the most negative bits from the articles quoted as was done for Featherstone’s piece, giving an erroneous view. This is not even the current article from PopSci that is much more favorable. AndyTheGrump gives much weight to LENR being fringe science, but I believe it to be emerging from this category when Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center says LENR is proven beyond dispute, as does Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson and others.

There have been two independent tests of the E-Cat funded by the reputable Elforsk R&D organization. It might have been better to call them engineering tests in order to avoid the misunderstanding by some editors, who felt it should have been a scientific test to determine the physics of the reaction. The test never claimed that and was conducted properly as an engineering test, as I know from firsthand experience with scanning IR instruments. These tests showed the E-Cat worked with a high degree of confidence. A further continuous six month test to start this Summer has been funded by Elforsk.

AndyTheGrump made much of me posting a long excerpt from Engineering News. To start with, I have permission from Kenneth Creamer, CEO of Engineering News do this and secondly, like the piece I wrote myself, this was an effort to reach a compromise through discussion. I had no intention of showing Leonardo Corp’s address in the final piece, this was an attempt to show the E-Cat was real and not “fringe science.” You may indeed order a 1 MW plant from there with four months delivery and currently they are offering a 1 MW plant free to a user in Europe on the understanding it will be open to the public.

I made the mistake of posting on AndyTheGrump’s page that I apologized for ascribing Edison (talk)’s accusation of me threatening someone to him after he said I shouldn’t post there. (It is now deleted) Possibly there is some Wikipedia rule against civil discourse. I still don’t know how to reply to Edison as I don’t see any edit link. So, as of this morning I can no longer edit the E-Cat page although I have not been informed of this. I guess that the E-Cat will become accepted in six to twelve months but I won’t hold my breath to be reinstated and for AndyTheGrump to be banned instead. Adrian Ashfield Parallel (talk) 21:18, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Parallel, I am concerned you experienced lapses from WP:Please do not bite the newcomers. It is important to protect newcomers from goading, impatience, insults, and failures to WP:Assume good faith for multiple reasons. Not only is doing so the right thing to do, but if we allow rogue elements of the existing contributor base to get away with subjecting newcomers to goading, impatience, insults, and failures to assume good faith we risk giving those newcomers the impression that these behaviours are OK.

I encourage you not to follow the example of those who goaded you, and failed to assume good faith on your part.

Can AndyTheGrump prohibit you from leaving messages on their talk page? You will note that they made a similar, but more limited demand to me. Our policies, guidelines and established conventions are so complicated I don't know, for sure, how much support their demand to me would get, if I were to continue to leave comments related to the topics they said they weren't interested in. But they didn't try to totally prohibit me from leaving comments, because there are certain circumstances where I would have an obligation to leave him a heads-up. Some people would think we had an obligation to leave AndyTheGrump a heads-up to this discussion here, since we discussed his comments.

You haven't been blocked. I am going to ask you again to think about other topics you are interested in, particularly non-controversial topics, and make non-controversial improvements to those articles. You have less than 100 edits in your contribution history. If you were to spend a couple of weeks working on making what were clearly positive, non-controversial improvements to articles unrelated to cold fusion, I think you could get the topic-ban lifted.

What is the best way to respond to grumpy or aggressive people who do not seem willing to extend to you the assumption of good faith, or the courtesy of civil and collegial replies? I dunno. But I do my best to try to take the high-road, and ignore the temptation to "respond in kind."

I think there were valid points made by our challengers. If you haven't read WP:Verifiability you should do so. It is one of the core, original, key policies. It says we should not aim to make the wikipedia "true", we should aim for the much less ambitious goal of making it "verifiable". This means we should be satisfied if our articles neutrally summarize what WP:Reliable sources have to say about the topic. This can be a strain if you think those third party references got it all wrong.

When I re-read Talk:Energy Catalyzer I saw what looked like the regulars there discussing the recent reference you found. They referred to it as a primary source. Here on the wikipedia we generally prefer secondary sources to primary sources, because genuine secondary sources provide authoritative third party interpretation of raw data -- where actual primary sources don't. However, because we prefer primary sources to secondary sources some respondents stretch the definition of these terms beyond recognition so they can use questionable references, or so they can dismiss sources that really are reliable. If the reference you liked really was a primary source it really would be a reason to de-emphasize it.

Parallel, would you consider enabling e-mail, and sending me an e-mail? I have some advice I would like to offer you in private.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 09:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Since I have been informed of this thread by Geo Swan, I think it is appropriate that I respond here with a comment. I note that Parallel's above post was made after he was informed of the topic ban. As such, continuing to discuss issues relating to the E-Cat anywhere on Wikipedia may be seen as a breach of the ban - and this talk page isn't likely to be seen as excepted. Given that Parallel is a newcomer, the extent of the ban may not have been clear - I will contact MastCell, who initiated the ban, and ask him to clarify to Parallel exactly what a topic ban implies. Meanwhile, just for the record, some of what Parallel claims above is factually incorrect, and much of the rest is exaggerated - if he wishes to appeal the ban, he would find it best to get the facts straight. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:19, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Geo Swan Thank you for your reply. I have activated my email address (I think, but anyway it is initial dot name at verizon dot net) I did NOT post the above AFTER receiving a ban notice so AndyTheGrump was wrong. He does seem extraordinarily keen to silence me. Adrian Parallel (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• You are a newbie, so you don't know how to use "diffs". There is a tutorial on how to use them, somewhere. Basically they incorporate a full, external-link-type URL, to a specific change made somewhere on the wikipedia or other project that uses the Wikimedia software.

Your initial comment above, after the thank you, was a copy and paste of what you put on User talk:MastCell? You could have put enclosed this url http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:MastCell&diff=prev&oldid=559330483 in a single pair of brackets, like this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:MastCell&diff=prev&oldid=559330483], and that would render like this [1]. By clicking on that link you can send me to the specific comment you made. This works even for comments that have been removed like your last comment on User talk:AndyTheGrump.

Alternately you could include a comment, like this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:MastCell&diff=prev&oldid=559330483 ''could you look at this comment?''], and that would render like this could you look at this comment?.

If your cutting and pasting your comment from User talk:MastCell came after you were advised of the topic-ban, but as a newbie who didn't know about diffs, I think cutting and pasting your message to MastCell would be understandable. But I think the use of a diff would be less likely to trigger criticism from other contributors.

I hope you find diffs useful.

I sent that email.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 18:38, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• I saw MastCell's clarification. Feel free to discuss E-Cat with me, via e-mail. While I too am a skeptic about this topic, I think you raised some excellent points in the request for comments. But, as per MastCell's clarification, reply via e-mail.

You can call on my advice, for what it is worth, if you want to make edits to articles on other topics, so you can show you can be trusted to have the topic ban lifted. Remember, we are supposed to aim for "verifiability, not truth". On controversial topics even experienced contributors may forget this important principle.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 18:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I have posted an appeal here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard Parallel (talk) 19:46, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Disputed tag on LINK Train

I just wanted to let you know I changed the disputed tag you placed in the LINK_Train article to a dubious tag. The Disputed tag is meant to be used at the top of an article. If you feel the entire article need the disputed tag, then it can be added at the top.

I also started a section in the talk page for the discussion of this issue. Here is a link to it for your convenience. User226 (talk) 22:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Mahmud al-Mutazzim

The article Mahmud al-Mutazzim has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

BLP1E/BLPCRIME - No reason to think we'll ever know more about him.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 17:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Ashley Kirilow

The article Ashley Kirilow has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The article redirected to Email spoofing which does not mention Ashley Kirilow. This is not how redirecting should function. Either this person is notable and has an article or a section in an article about something else she/he is not notable and has none. We do not redirect the names of non-notable individuals to crimes they may or may not have committed.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:19, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

re Your assistance please

You closed the 2nd {{afd}} on Abd al Malik Abd al Wahab. He is in the news again.

• Carol Rosenberg (2013-06-17). "FOIA suit reveals Guantánamo's 'indefinite detainees'". Miami Herald. Retrieved 2013-06-18. The Obama administration Monday lifted a veil of secrecy surrounding the status of the detainees at Guantánamo, for the first time publicly naming the four dozen captives it defined as indefinite detainees — men too dangerous to transfer but who cannot be tried in a court of law. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• Carol Rosenberg (2013-06-17). "List of 'indefinite detainees'". Miami Herald. Retrieved 2013-06-18. These are the names and nationalities of the 48 Guantánamo captives, whom an Obama administration Task Force in 2010 classified as indefinite detainees ineligible for release, transfer or prosecution. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

I'd like to re-examine the article, to see how much coverage al Wahab merits, given this new news coverage. Maybe notable details from the deleted article merit inclusion into a new article on the 48 individuals who were on the previously secret list of ‘indefinite detainees’? The Obama administration's attempts to keep this list secret stirred a lot of controversy.

Recently, when {{afd}}s concluded specific Guantanamo captives didn't merit separate articles about them they have been closed as redirect and merge to the articles on Guantanamo captives to that nation -- with the original contribution history and talk page available for review.

In Al Wahab's case that would be Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I request you restore the original contribution history and talk page for Abd al Malik Abd al Wahab, and turn it into another redirect to Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay. If you are concerned someone will change the redirect back to an article, ignoring the closure, you could lock it so only administrators could edit it.

Thanks Geo Swan (talk) 15:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not an admin anymore, I suggest you post about this issue to talk pages of relevant WikiProjects, and/or seek out some other admin, and/or post a request to WP:AN, and/or file a request for reconsideration at WP:DRV. Good luck to you, — Cirt (talk) 19:45, 18 June 2013 (UTC)