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My local time: 19:05

NOTE: If I left a message on your talk page, then I will be watching it for a while. Perhaps it is better if you reply there so we have a coherent discussion.

Archive 1 Archive 2

Homeopathy

Just a heads-up: I've added the Arnica example. See what you think. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me. I made some changes to the caption, and I think they should make any OR issues moot.

Only very tangentially related: I have closed the AN discussion for now. I really appreciate your efforts, and I would be happy to discuss any issues that might come up here before reopening the AN discussion. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Fyslee

Well, he did cross out the section when I asked. It's probably best to just drop the past, and I'll promise to keep an eye on all further discourse (at least on Talk:Homeopathy), and you can tell me if there's any other problems.

I'd rather do this as mediation, if possible, as I do firmly believe both of you are trying to act in good faith to improve the article, if from very different perspectives. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Striking something out without showing any sign of understanding why it was wrong in the first place, and setting up a straw man ("ambiguous") in a discussion with a mediator, are not what I would call encouraging signs.

Sorry, but "dropping the past" is not an option that I can accept. Formal mediation (if that's what you mean) might be one, but I am not wasting my time on that before anyone has given me any clue as to how I can explain Fyslee's bizarre behaviour and still respect him. Call me intolerant, but I cannot respect adults with a 100 % lack of self-critical insight. (I am assuming he is an adult or close to it because he has been editing for more than 3 years.)

For some reason (which has to do with an earlier mediation attempt I made elsewhere) I was under the impression that Fyslee is an admin. I just realised this is not the case, which makes his unpredictability much less dangerous than I thought. Nevertheless he has brought me to the point where I am making this a test case for deciding whether I want to continue contributing to this part of Misplaced Pages. See my earlier request to Verbal at User talk:Verbal. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your comment in the talk page of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I could realize global sense about this problem well. I only knew the Japanses's side, I wanted to know other side. (Realizing is not my purpose of this discuss.) Best regards.--9 hits (talk) 02:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)--(and if you (IPUser-san) watch this, thank you, too.)--9 hits (talk) 02:16, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your very constructive attitude. I can imagine that common Western positions to this must be puzzling for you, just like common Japanese positions are puzzling for us. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No respect, no harmony. We don't need to assimilate. We can make harmony and cooperation, if we can respect the differences of each other. Understanding is the first step for it. I think it is almost same in WP. --9 hits (talk) 12:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

orsakovian method

Hello. Korsakovian principle of dilution is a redlink, could you redirect to the appropiate article and add there a note on what is it exactly? (you mentioned the method here) --Enric Naval (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, forget it, I redirect it to Semen Korsakov#Homeopathy --Enric Naval (talk) 21:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Your input is welcome

I saw your comment here. Your input and edits are requested here. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Now that's funny. I got your message while reading User talk:Ryan Postlethwaite/Date linking RfC, which was already on my watchlist. Now I am puzzled: What's the purpose of that new page? --Hans Adler (talk) 01:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

"Date linking RfC" is the background page i.e., history of dispute, lists advantages/disadvantages in detail; it serves as kind of an FAQ and glossary of terms with a few proposals thrown in). User:Ryan Postlethwaite/Draft RfC is the actual skeleton structure of such an RfC. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Incivility

Incivil edit summaries, like this one are not acceptable and should not be repeated. Hipocrite (talk) 11:25, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

You must be joking. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

To refresh your memory: ScienceApologist is a convicted sockpuppeteer who later forgot logging in so often that the question whether by doing so he was breaking an injunction became a major issue. I don't remember how it was resolved, though. There is no chance that he thought that his accusations against Colonel Warden had any merit, so he was obviously just stirring shit. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Found it : "You are not to edit in the topic area of pseudoscience, broadly interpreted, or on pseudoscience-related topics, without logging in using the agreed user account, and if you do make any edits as an IP, they should be promptly signed (or otherwise confirmed) with your account. An occasional accidental lapse may be forgiven, but if you continue to edit these areas as an IP editor, in a way that suggests deliberate carelessness or indifference about logging in, other blocks may be imposed (on both the IP(s) and your main account)." Since even he was told explicitly that "an occasional accidental lapse may be forgiven", defacing an established editor's user page for a single logged out edit was pure disruption. I think under the circumstances my formulation "this has already been laughed out of WP:SI" when referring to this ("most certainly NOT abusive sockpuppetry") was well within reasonable bounds. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: There was a second frivolous sockpuppet report against Colonel Warden by Orangemarlin, for another single edit from the same provider. Colonel Warden very obviously doesn't edit from the same time zone as the two IPs. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:33, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Apothecaries' system

Hi Hans Adler, I have some books now (bought & borrowed) and I made a few minor changes to this article, just two in-line citations. That was hard work, so I awarded the article GA-status. Congratulations on your work.Pyrotec (talk) 20:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. I am not convinced that this was technically justified, but I am not going to complain and WP:IAR is policy for good reasons. Thanks for your contributions. Zupko and Skinner are two sources that I didn't use, but I just checked that they are available in my library. Would you recommend borrowing one of them, or both, for improving the article? --Hans Adler (talk) 21:05, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I've got both of them on loan until 31st March so I was going to do a bit more work on in-line citations. I would recommend both books. Gemmill & Mayhew (1995) only has a single chapter on weights & measures, I've also got that until 31st March. Linacre is good, its list price was £12.99, but for the £5 (plus postage) I paid it was a bargain. Half of Zupko is Appendices, but he has footnotes on every page. Skinner has a lot of detail, but no references or footnotes. Linacre has a two page bibliography and has been using "good" sources.Pyrotec (talk) 21:35, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment

Hi. I was re-reading your comment at AN/I and it occurs to me that you might consider refactoring words such as "hooligan" and "childish". Thanks for listening. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:42, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you consider one of these two descriptions to be incorrect? For me being a hooligan means "supporting" a team mindlessly and violently, and in such a way that you bring the team into disrepute and get into conflict with the law. This seems to be an accurate description for Orangemarlin's behaviour. As to "childish", I am not a native speaker so I may have got some nuances wrong. Would "immature" be better? --Hans Adler (talk) 01:38, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for considering and discussing my comment. I make no comment as to accuracy or inaccuracy; I'm not even considering that question. I consider it to be about more than that. Do you consider it polite to go up to a fat person and say "You're fat, you know!" It would be accurate, but would it be OK to say that? We are enjoined by policy to "comment on content, not on the contributor." When I notice a comment about an editor, for example an adjective or descriptive noun applied to the editor, which I believe would be unwelcome to that editor, I generally post a comment such as I just posted above. Anything that we really need to say in order to discuss and manage the writing of the encyclopedia can be expressed in terms of behaviour and in impartial language. "Childish" and "immature" are generally considered derogatory, while "childlike" can be a compliment; (incidentally, I bemoan the language's lack of an impartial (neither positive nor negative) term for the concept_. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:50, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, we cannot completely avoid discussing editors, and ANI is one of the places for doing it. In this case the main problem with the two editors is that they are themselves currently engaged in very little other than discussing other editors, and in situations where it's not appropriate and it only serves to avoid on-topic discussions that threaten their article ownership. Orangemarlin is clearly the more problematic of the two. I supported him after the absurd secret Arbcom case against him, as a matter of principle. After that incident he pulled himself together for a while, but recently he has fallen back into his old ways. By now I am convinced that he is not willing, or perhaps unable, to change his behaviour sufficiently to make him a net positive for the project. Probably something fundamental like insufficient attention span or insufficient frustration tolerance.

I also think that I have a moral duty to express my opinions on these editors in this situation where several people, but especially Unomi, are suffering from their unfair attacks. I think your metaphor doesn't fit. In some situations we have every right in the world, and in fact a moral obligation, to walk up to someone and say: "Stop hitting that child!" Or, more to the point, to call the police and say: "There is someone beating a child here." Unfortunately some of the fundamentalist "pro-science" editors are running amok since it was clear that ScienceApologist would be temporarily banned. Probably the martyr effect. If all of this seems a bit incoherent it's because I should really be in bed. --Hans Adler (talk) 02:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

"Stop hitting that child!" is a statement about behaviour and is (arguably) expressed in neutral terms. The person might agree that they are in fact hitting the child. (Or they might possibly say "I wasn't hitting! I was only spanking!" or something.) But who would admit that they are a hooligan or that they are childish? These are subjective terms that can't be proven and that people are unlikely to accept as statements about themselves. The person is unlikely to learn from the statement but will just deny it. Statements like "You reverted 3 times" or "you did X after someone had asked you not to" or "you started 3 threads which took up the time of 20 editors" etc. are in impartial language and the person can't really argue that they're not true. If you look at arbitration decisions passed by votes of arbitrators you'll see that they are almost all about behaviour expressed in impartial, unarguable terms; they tend to be in my opinion a good example to follow. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 02:32, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I tend to rationalise this by saying that I mirror other people's bad behaviour when I am angry about them. Theoretically it's plausible that an editor who is told "you are a hooligan" should learn that it's not helpful to say "you are a sockpuppet" or "you are a POV-pusher". In practice this rarely if ever works. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that's not a good strategy (over and above the fact that it would entail sometimes violating policy). What if everyone did that? Mirroring the other person's bad behaviour, but because perceptions differ, often the mirrored behaviour which seems to one person to be equivalent to the other person's behaviour will seem to the other person to be slightly worse (or, often, a lot worse). And then they mirror that perceived worse behaviour back again, etc., etc. That's called "escalation", (not to be confused with escalation up the steps of WP:DR), and if it gets you where you want to go then your goals must be a lot different from mine. Here is what I think is a better idea. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

As I said: "this rarely if ever works". It's not what I want to do, it's what is easiest to do. Actually I do try to follow the method you recommend, but I am not perfect. I am certainly trying to follow it with the user conduct RfC that I am preparing (see below). If you don't mind I may ask your opinion about that when I feel it's more or less ready. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:58, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Evolution FAQ

Thank you. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Orangemarlin RFC

You said on Unomi's talk page that you would begin a User Conduct RFC on Orangemarlin "once the dust settles." The discussion at the aspartame controversy has been placed on hold for the RFC's sake among a number of reasons. I would begin the RFC myself, but I don't quite know how. Tealwisp (talk) 06:41, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually I have the same problem. It's important that we cross all t's and dot all i's, since his personal friends and the other uncritical "pro-science" editors will likely try to shut it down for formal reasons. I will have to do some reading before starting this, and I think we shouldn't rush it. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

One of the conditions for user conduct RfC is that it must be "certified" by two users who previously made a serious attempt at resolving the conflict. In my opinion this is a mere formality because one of the problems is that Orangemarlin does not respond to attempts at dispute resolution in a constructive way. On the other hand everybody always thinks that it's a mere formality, and that's no excuse not to take it seriously. Making the entire community discuss an individual editor is a serious step and must not be taken lightly.

Here is my plan. I am going to analyse Orangemarlin's behaviour over the last year or so to identify the most serious problems and so that I can describe them well and with the best evidence I can find. Then I will try to phrase everything constructively. (Like most people I must force myself to do that; see section #Comment above.) I will approach Orangemarlin on his talk page, giving very specific feedback and making very specific requests. If this doesn't work I will try to get an Arbcom member involved (a new one, for reasons that are obvious if you were around last summer), or a similarly respected editor. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I want to thank both of you for taking the time to help resolve this issue. If there is anything I can do I would be more than willing, however I feel that it would be best if neutral parties such as yourselves bring attention to the problems to avert allegations of 'harassment' on my behalf.Unomi (talk) 11:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't call myself neutral. But it's true that I don't have a current, deep-rooted conflict with him. Merely a (possibly mutual) belief that he is severely hurting the project. You can help by looking at Orangemarlin's past contributions and looking for patterns of disruptive behaviour. I believe in principle it's admissible to document this kind of research on a page in user space or user talk space, strictly for the purpose of preparing an RfC. But I think it's not wise to do that as it tends to lead to further drama, often starting with WP:MfD. Therefore if you want to do this I suggest doing it off-wiki and exchanging your findings with me by email.

What I am doing in practice is the following: I open the form for a new page in my user space, write everything there, and use only the "show preview" button. This allows me to use all the usual markup. Since I have the Lazarus plugin installed in Firefox (it automatically saves all information entered into web forms and makes it easy to retrieve it later, even different versions) I am unlikely to lose my work. Since I have activated the user option that nags me when I try to submit something without edit summary, I am unlikely to submit the page inadvertently instead of previewing. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

As I noted on his talk page, I also have concerns with User:Orangemarlin's interactions with others (especially should they arbitrarily dismiss the other person as a "troll" or whatever).

That said, due to the venues that this user tends to frequent, (and also due to the potentially tendentious editors that this editor has therefore interacted with - who may have "other" motives), I have concerns about whether a resultant RfC will be neutral (or, for that matter, helpful) and not result in (devolve into) a free-for-all.

Whatever happens, I'd sincerely appreciate a "friendly notice" update.

Thank you in advance. - jc37 01:08, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Great, I will let you know. Also, I am not sure if Jpgordon is still mentoring OM, but I am planning to send my evidence for the RfC to him before putting it onwiki. (To OM as well, but I will be pleasantly surprised if I get any meaningful response from him.) But at the current pace it's going to take at least a wiki before I am finished. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

PS: I just see that your message is one day older than I thought – sorry for the delay, this may be the first time I hade responses in two different sections at the same time. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:49, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The two-editor requirement is met, I think, by the fact that both Unomi and I tried to resolve the issue in the mediation case and were met by the same response.

Also, I appreciate the dedication you have to the Project, Hans, especially when it comes to delivering justice, as you did here. I would give you a barnstar, but I don't think there is one that fits. Tealwisp (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. But it looks like the RfC isn't going to happen anytime soon. Orangemarlin was blocked for 24 hours for edit warring, and hasn't returned by now, 2 1/2 days after the block expired. I think it makes no sense to greet him with an RfC immediately after returning, and I am not going to start one unless I feel that events after his return make it necessary.

BTW, I was surprised to see that this was only his third block, with the other two followed by unblocks. I have sampled 12 of his editing days throughout 2008, and there seems to be a clear pattern. I am not sure if I have exactly the right description, but it's something like: He was very nice, patient and cooperative in situations where he apparently felt in control, but fell into communicating only by reverting and abuse when he felt there were ideological differences. On Talk:Evolution you can see that the effect can be quite disruptive.

His habit of reverting only once every few days, but then to the version of his previous revert without any regard for even the most obvious improvements that happened in between, and of not saying what it is he objects to, leads to his opponents regularly getting strongly negative feedback for good edits. I vaguely remember having experienced this myself and having felt quite distressed. Since his revert density per page is very low, he is almost invulnerable, and if it wasn't for the support by ScienceApologist and the (currently very weak or non-existent) "pro-science" tag team one could safely ignore him.

I'd have to look a bit closer, but from my samples it appears there were a few months last year where I can generally say only positive things about him. This seems to have started after his block. Together with the current lack of enablers for his negative side, I am very hopeful for the next months. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:12, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

if it quacks like a duck

"I am sure I am not the only editor with a firm science background who is sick and tired of seeing these editors' confrontative tag-teaming and complete failure to communicate in a meaningful way, each time they are confronted with a new user they don't agree with. It is my impression that they often prevent discussion and proper framing of notable fringe opinions in articles where it belongs, by refusing to discuss anything but the editors who propose such discussion. I am sure if these editors were editing under their real names they would be more careful, because there would be a real chance for them to hurt their real-life careers with their recklessly sloppy approach to writing about science. The fact that a large number of "pro-science" editors support each other in this misbehaviour doesn't exactly help, either."

Yes, it's beyond belief that one cannot write a factually accurate scientific article on en.Misplaced Pages because its anti-pseudoscience quacks consume so much energy and spew so much bad faith in trying to get their quackish anti-pseudoscience platforms in all of en.wiki article space they can possibly imagine.

This is my latest example of a useful and sufficient addition, by another editor, that is being replaced by two paragraphs of garbage by one of the anti-pseudo science quacks:

"The key tenets of flood geology are refuted by scientific analysis and do not have any standing in the scientific community."

They are not anti-pseudoscience in my opinion, they are just quacks, exactly the same as the pseudoscientists.

--KP Botany (talk) 20:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. "Even if both hypotheses did an equally good job, many scientists would nevertheless reject Flood Geology"??? Wow. The evil conspiracy of anti-Christian scientists. "The scientific community contends"??? "Flood Geology supporters are accused"??? I am not a native speaker, but to me that's an implicit assertion that this rubbish is taken seriously. This may make sense in the US, but from a global view it's simply not true. Are we here on Conservapedia, or what? I would have seen this sooner or later since I am in the process of preparing a user conduct RfC on Orangemarlin.

For a moment I thought he had replaced the "key tenets" sentence with this, but even so: Flood geology#Evidence against a global flood does an excellent job of debunking this belief. Such a poor second attempt to do it once more only detracts from that and gives creationists the subjective choice between two sections to attack. Of course they choose the weak one.

I think you may not have been involved much with the community here outside your field of expertise when this page was still alive. It may have been a major factor in the organisation of the unqualified "pro-science" mob. It would be nice to have a similar place of congregation for the scientifically minded editors. I believe the key point is awareness of what's going on. We all need to mutually watchlist our talk pages, as well as some key pages such as the fringe noticeboard. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you could speak kindergarten English and see the garbage for what it reeks of: nonsense.

I don't edit in my field of expertise because it's been taken over by people who took one course on the subject in college or, more likely, a weekend seminar (my expertise is in a technical area), and revert my researched and referenced additions to articles based upon their "experience."

I used to dabble in my other area of expertise, but, the anti-pseudoscience quacks are rampant there. Mind you, I'm an historical researcher, naturalist, and study evolutionary biology and paleontology, and primarily add brief details, write up obscure scientists, and reference articles on Misplaced Pages, so when I tried to add a sentence that said something along the lines of, "the plant became known in parts of Europe with the publication of a Latin herbal on mesoAmerican medicinal herbs," and got put in my place for it, I left that area to the quacks.

By the way, OrangeMarlin does not tend to accurately quote his sources. Like the pseudoscience ducks's "research" and "references," all of the ones of his that I've checked have been poor and obvious misinterpretations, or simply not in the article. He'll even use quack articles to make his points, like the "memory of water" which deserves no place on Misplaced Pages.

Experts get chased away also because quackery masking as anti-pseudoscience is more important than science on Misplaced Pages. And, no matter how much the quacks claim it is so, the scientists are not spending their time refuting pure crap like Flood Geology. There's nothing to refute.

I suspect and RfC will result in the usual group of non-experts gathering around and supporting the continued inclusion of speculation that non-science can become science and that if it becomes science scientists won't believe it like that incredible piece of garbage you quote above. Don't forget, there are no limits to the fear of knowledge. --KP Botany (talk) 05:04, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Nasal Irrigation

Sorry to say I am not a physician, but my mother would be pleased you think I am. I am obviously biased I believe in this but no I am not who you think I am. I thought it was improper to assume someone’s identity on Misplaced Pages. To resolve this matter I have requested that a medical authority figure rule on the matter and the relevency of pulsating nasal irrigation within the article on Nasal Irrigation. I will abide by the decision as long as you will.--Grockl (talk) 07:02, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I added a heading for pulsating irrigation above your abbreviated edit. Is this acceptable to you? Would you object to the placement of the photo as there is one of other irrigation devices? I am trying to find a compromise we can all live with I am tired of this. Whats the alternative I keep adding my edit back and you keep removing it?--Grockl (talk) 07:10, 19 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grockl (talk • contribs)

I did not respond to you earlier because you hid your comments between two unrelated sections. I just discovered what was going on and fixed the problem. Please use the little "+" button at the top when you want to start a new section on a talk page. If you add a talk page section by hand, add it to the bottom, where people expect new sections to appear.

I don't know why you insist on a separate section for this type of device. Perhaps because it affects the Google search rank? For now I have no problems with it, although it is ridiculous and likely to disappear when the article is rewritten to give it a more reasonable structure.

For anyone reading this who wonders what is going on, the background is at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Grockl/Archive. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Hans, Sometimes I feel like I live in an alternate universe when trying to discuss this with you but I will try to be civil and cooperative as you suggest as we try and come to some sort of resolution. Folks within this wierd, wonderful, frustrating, and less than accurate Misplaced Pages community have lots of names for folks who are experts in one particular area and lack neutrality but I have yet to see one for editors that try to own articles or demonstrate their own bias or ignorance on a particular subject. I think it is only right that an editor who continually objects to submissions be held to some standard of competence. Please allow me to respond to a couple of comments you have and continue to make:

1) While I may be guilty of being what you folks in the wikipedia community refer to as a WP:SPA because of my POV and attention to a single subject, wikipedia guidelines on this are as follows: "Some editors are concerned that contributions by SPAs have not aligned with Misplaced Pages's neutrality or advocacy standards, thus conflicting with what Misplaced Pages is not. Other editors raise counter-concerns pointing to the need of the Community to attract new and well-informed users knowledgeable in a particular subject, thus being able to cite relevant reliably sourced publications. Identifying and interacting with SPAs requires both civility and tact."

2) Jala Neti is simply one form of nasal irrigation not the definition of nasal irrigation and has its own heading. Pulsatile Nasal irrigation is a popular, medically supported, and distinctly different form of nasal irrigation as such equally warrants its own section. The only thing ridiculous is your logic or bias that what is good for one application within the nasal irrigation article is not good for another. Your actions to date appear to me to be biased something I am accused of because of my POV which I have admitted. Your own bias merits challenge equally.

3) I am not a doctor

4)I am not a sockpuppet I simply choose to login and not sometimes.

5) Do you object to the picture of the pulsating nasal irrigator being included? You already have pictures of a commercially available neti pot and nasal wash bottle in the article.

6) Now for one last comment, since there are no medical experts or advisory board to monitor the information that is published in Misplaced Pages and the so called experts are actually derided for their contributions and lack of neutrality and POV regardless of the published medical reports that support the claims, many of which are not read in full or understood by the wikipedia Community and its editors. I suggest that regulatory oversight and warning labels by government agencies be required to communicate to the public that the "Statements and information contained in articles published by wikipedia and its Community have not been evaluated and this information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease". I plan to use my experience in this area to promote strict oversight to information passed along on wikipedia as an authority when it is clearly not but simply the POV of some editor who can literally be anyone especially in areas of health. While you continually question the references supplied you failed to even read them in their entirety probably because you do not have access to the full text because you are not a medical professional or researcher. As I have stated I am willing to abide by what we agree for now as I don’t have the time to go back and forth or try and convince you of something you fail to understand or care to.

I welcome your response.--Grockl (talk) 09:13, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

You may be right about the alternate universe. Misplaced Pages is a separate universe, and you are clearly not part of it. Let me respond to your points:

1) Thank you for reading one of our policies, WP:SPA. Note that "users knowledgeable in a particular subject" refers to subjects, not tiny fractions of such. You have not demonstrated any potential value to this community. Also, note the word "relevant" in "able to cite relevant reliably sourced publications". As to civility and tact, this cuts both ways. Since you didn't react to subtle clues I had to be more direct, and you responded badly to that. That's hardly my fault.

2) The device depicted at the top of the article – I have no idea what it's called, although I have one – is not a neti pot, in my part of the world it's the most commonly used nasal irrigation device, and it doesn't have its own subsection. The article is in a very bad state, and after the rewrite that I have in mind the heading for the neti pot will be gone as well. The main difference is that we don't have an SPA with an obsession about neti pots who is going to attack me for that.

3) I never claimed you are a physician. An anonymous user repeatedly claimed that you are Dr Grossan and I told that user to stop. However, you have been arguing from an assumed position of authority while questioning another editor's competence based only on that editor's competence in an unrelated field. ("I am not going to debate a math teacher on the efficacy of a proven medical device.") That's a big error both of judgement and of wiki etiquette. Even worse: "Reading through some of these comments I appreciate the work you folks do to edit these articles, however, it seems to me it would be helpful to have editors with a medical background that can fully understand and put into context the medical references. Biofilm certainly does have a primary role ." If you are not even a physician this comes dangerously close to claiming to be one, don't you think so? Still, I haven't made up my mind which it is so please stop complaining.

4) Nobody attacked you for sometimes logging in and sometimes not. The problem is, your IP address when not logging in was constant for a long time. Then suddenly two "other" anonymous editors from the same city and using the same internet provider as you supported you very uncritically on a low-frequency talk page. Immediately afterwards your IP address was different from the one before this incident. Don't you think that's a curious accident? Care to explain how that came about? – The outcome of my sockpuppet report against you was that your sockpuppeting was not proved beyond reasonable doubt. However, MBisanz, a very prominent, experienced and respected member of the community, has found that you are "a WP:SPA account pushing his POV" and that this was (at least) an instance of meatpuppeting. – If you continue on this road you will be banned from editing Misplaced Pages, which means that you will be indefinitely blocked, any new account identified as being yours will be blocked as well, and any anonymous edit identified as yours can be reverted regardless of merit.

5) I would not normally object to such a picture, although it does not add much value to the article. Currently I do object because you are on an obvious advertising mission with no regard for the interest of the encyclopedia.

6) I asked for an expert from WP:WikiProject Medicine. As a result, experienced editor WhatamIdoing, who appears to be a health professional, evaluated your citations. She found that most of them were completely irrelevant, as I had told you before. You chose to ignore (as in: not even respond to) that and continued to edit-war them in. – On the German language edition of Misplaced Pages, every health-related article has a prominent link to a page (de:Misplaced Pages:Hinweis Gesundheitsthemen) which contains such a warning. I don't know why we don't have that here, but I consider it a good idea. However, I am not the person to address with such a request. If you want to pursue this, I suggest asking at Misplaced Pages:Help desk.

--Hans Adler (talk) 10:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

At the bottom of every page is a link to "Disclaimers". On the top of that page there are links to more disclaimers, including a Medical disclaimer. -- Fyslee (talk) 15:52, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't aware of this. The difference is that on de there is an unobtrusive little banner template which is present on a large number of health-related articles. An English version of de:Vorlage:Gesundheitshinweis would look approximately like this:

Please observe the medical disclaimer!

--Hans Adler (talk) 16:48, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Sometime during the last four years I actually did suggest that the Medical disclaimer be strengthened and displayed more prominently, but was immediately shot down. The page cannot be edited directly, but the talk page can be used. I wish you luck, since I too think it should be prominently displayed on all medical articles. -- Fyslee (talk) 02:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what more to say I have been as clear as I can and have offered several peer reviewed published medical reports in well regarded medical publications citing the efficacy of pulsating nasal irrigation directly and not any other cleansing applcation. With regards to the ancillary references on the efficacy of pulsating irrigation in other applications and their relevancy to nasal irrigation I cede to your concerns. However, many leading medical professionals do understand and appreciate the corellary benefit of these reports as well.

I am not sure why you failed to review them, I assume you did not have access to the full transcript and if you did perhaps would not understand it fully anyway. The other two contributors one of which you cited do not appear to be medical experts or physicians at least by their response. As I indicated I admit to my bias but most experts in a particular area are bias and do have an interest in that area. I have repeated my request for a medical professional to review the information provided. You have deleted many of the references I have supplied including the ones that are directly relevant to pulsating nasal irrigation. I am happy to provide them again so that any medical professional that is familiar with pulsating irrigation may comment.

here's just a few:

Pulsatile irrigator Irrigation with Adaptor is used for CF, Cystic Fibrosis Currents Volume 11, No 4 Clinical Study and Literature Review of Nasal Irrigation, Davidson, T., Laryngoscope 110: July 00

Management of Sinusitis: Current Clinical Strategies, Michael Kaliner MD and David W Kenned, MD, Sinusits Disease Management Guide. PDR 2000

Therapeutic Agents In The Medical Management Of Sinusitis, Mabry, R.L. In: Inflammatory diseases of the sinuses. Otolaryngologic Clinics Of North America, Volume 26, Number 4, pp 561, 1993.

Sinusitis: Acute, Chronic and Mangegeable, Rachelevsky G S, Slavin R G et all. Patient Care. Feb 28, 1997 Vol 131:4.

Sinusitis: Bench to Bedside, Part 2 Study of Sinusits Kaliner MA et al. Otolaryngology June 97 116:6

Pulsation Irrigation: a Simple, Safe Effective Treatment of Many Nasal Complaints, Pope, A., O.R.L. Digest August 1974 15:8 pp 3638.

I do not believe the medical disclaimer is anywhere near sufficient given the total absence of knowledgeable review in this area. I and hope others will work to solicit better editorial oversight by both research and medical experts and will work with US regulatory oversight to ensure that proper and sufficient medical disclosure is made.

71.156.53.160 10:45, 11 March 2009 UTC)--Grockl (talk) 23:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Hans, I reinserted the picture of the pulsating irrigator to be consistent with the other forms of irrigation being discussed and images portrayed since you did not seem to object when I asked previously. Was not sure how to format it so it looks better on the page given the abbrevated section resulting from your edits , perhaps you do. --Grockl (talk) 10:28, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Date formatting and linking poll

Thanks, Hans. your change is fine by me. Ohconfucius (talk) 15:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Sea Shepherd

Thanks for fixing the things you did on Sea Shepherd. It still has some problems, but fewer. That's what we're here for, right? Thank you. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 22:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Sorry I crashed out of healthfulness just after nominating it, dagnabbit. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the initiative. Are you better now? --Hans Adler (talk) 12:14, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy and overlinking

I don't know of any consensus on the issue. I personally prefer omitting all internal wikilinks from citations, as citations are supposed to be to external, reliable sources and the wikilinks give an inappropriate visual cue to readers as to which of these citations Misplaced Pages editors like. (Also, the plethora of blue text is offputting and confusing. :-) I understand that some other editors like it, though, and wikilinking the 1st occurrence is a reasonable compromise. Eubulides (talk) 23:43, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. In that case I would actually prefer no author links at all in such a long list of citations. Also, because the lede is definitely the part of this article that's being edited most, I think your compromise isn't going to work here in practice unless somebody specifically monitors this aspect. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:06, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Date autoformatting poll

Hi Hans, I noticed that like me, you are opposed to any form of dates autoformatting. I have created some userboxes which you might like to add to your userspace to indicate your position. You will find the boxes here. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

No thanks. I try not to overdo it with userboxes. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:36, 1 April 2009 (UTC)r

Is there any other way a person could read option #1? Like you (and everyone else?) I see it as option #4, plus the guideline to aid migration. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 11:25, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I am not aware of another way to read option 1. That's why I am puzzled by what PMAnderson and Arthur Rubin are saying. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:47, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

CFD for Category:Psychics

I've made an alternative proposal for renaming Category:Psychics, and I thought you might like to read my remarks and respond in some way. Regards, Cgingold (talk) 11:42, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I feel there isn't really much that I can add. There are reasons for and against renaming, and it may be better not to touch this. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:48, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:RSN

Errr, sorry for flooding that discussion with long comments. I got a bit overenthusiastic.... --Enric Naval (talk) 19:26, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Response

You're right of course, but I am rather frustrated lately with the amount of useless garbage put into articles by the anti-pseudoscience quacks. I started editing some of it last week, and it's completely hopeless. Still, you're right, not because SA may become a useful contributor (he might), but because it's pointless to engage at the same level. --KP Botany (talk) 23:54, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Re this: SA made massive contributions to Redshift, and may have been the primary force in making it a featured article. Cardamon (talk) 05:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I wasn't around at the time, and of course I didn't go through all his contributions. The final, successful FAC seems to have a little dispute of the kind I was driving at, but I guess it dwarfed in comparison with the fringe dispute with Iantresman. But this example makes me think that perhaps I was too optimistic – perhaps there is two much fringe around for avoiding it completely, and once it gets into the same article as SA there tends to be a nuclear reaction. The experience I meant was heated disputes such as whether Leeds refers to the incorporated city or the settlement within the city. I think they can be very good training for AGF and for a constructive attitude when faced by what looks like unreasonable opposition. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:34, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so irritated at SA if I thought he couldn't write science articles. Or if I thought he didn't know exactly what he was doing putting preachy essays instead of information into article space. --KP Botany (talk) 08:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Mühsam

I have answered your doubts on the Jamal page and guess I have been coming on a bit strong. Hope you don't mind too much--Radh (talk) 19:25, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review for Bosnia and Herzegovina–Malta relations

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Bosnia and Herzegovina–Malta relations. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedy-deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Nick-D (talk) 06:38, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Kaffir

Do you know who he's a sock of? Clearly someones, but have no idea. If you have an idea, there's probably an admin who can clean it up quickly and quietly. Best.Bali ultimate (talk) 15:10, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

No, I haven't got a clue. I emailed oversight, so I hope it will be sorted out with no fuss. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:12, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

rfa vote

I noticed your comment in Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Orlady, that some opposition is normal with noms for long-active persons, which is quite reasonable. However, I am one who oppose. I just added an "Addendum" to my Oppose vote at the RfA, including reference to User talk:Doncram/Archive 7#Reply to your comment on my talk page. Now I notice it was you who had helpfully intervened in that discussion. I wonder if your reviewing how that turned out, given your perspective about communication style, etc., might lead you to decide differently in the RfA now. Either way, I appreciate your opinion. doncram (talk) 05:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Rollback

Hi there Hans, I've just granted your request. I'm sure you are already familiar with the guidelines but please do take a look at WP:RBK to be sure of the situations when you can and can't use rollback. Kind regards, Nancy 13:42, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I am actually most interested in WP:RBK#Custom edit summaries. I read it as saying that with Ilmari Karonen's script I can use it without worrying about anything other than getting the edit right. If there are any problems with the script I may in fact ask for rollback to be removed to prevent mistakes and simplify my user interface, since I rarely encounter vandalism. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:03, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Posting of email

Thanks for your note. I posted the email after that site and the mail was mentioned by Orlady herself. I would not have done that under other circumstances, because I appreciate everyone's privacy on Misplaced Pages and elsewhere. The reason I did that was not to be seen in a bad light. Although I oppose Orlady's adminship I found it only fair to let her know that her name is used in some questionable context. I sent her that email out of fairness not out of spite or for any other ugly reasons. That is what I wanted to make absolutly clear. Yes, I have disabled the email option. If there is something to say, I prefer it is said in the open if not very rare circumstances require more privacy. Thanks again! Take care, doxTxob \  21:27, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Sockpuppets and RfA

Hans, I really appreciate your ways and your honesty. Here is something that is getting too much for me. Look at this diff, it shows so much: . You bring the arguments in the edit summary why you deleted the content and your arguments are valid and to the point, so much to the point that I am happy to agree with you. But in the next edit, the deletion by someone else was accompanied by a summary that the edit was made by (one of 300 alleged) sockpuppets, and needs to be deleted "probably in total", that is like preparing the next step, complete annihilation of the rest of the article. Come on, that is too much and too general! If you bomb everything that "probably" sounds like a duck with canons, there will be many, many innocent victims who are not ducks. Half of Misplaced Pages would be gone in a second if "alleged" quacking would lead to deletion. Quack, Bang, Boom! Is that the way to go? Please let me know. I sort of trust you and your honest attitude. For the History of New Rochelle, New York I have suggested a possible solution to improve the article without nuking it off the planet completely, but by addressing the valid concerns point by point and solving them step by step in a civilized discussion. Do you think that is an reasonable request? doxTxob \  04:06, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I had seen Orlady's edit, and my first reaction was "another instance of 'era of suburban living'?" – oh, I missed that. Your position also makes sense. You might want to have a look at these two Google searches. 19 hits for "era of suburban living", and 10 of them mention New Rochelle and are from Misplaced Pages or one of its mirrors. This may have been written innocently by an editor summarising the passage that was copied from the book. In this case it may not have been a copyright violation. But even then it was obvious plagiarism. Researching who added this passage takes a lot of effort because of New Rochelle's unusually long and convoluted edit history. And not all instances of copyright violations can be checked online, because not everything is on Google Books. If there is ever a court case against the Foundation because of copyright violations in this article, I believe the Foundation must prove that we have shown due diligence. This includes nuking every suspicious edit. One thing we could do, and your article split seems to be a good occasion, is rewrite everything from scratch, using the current article as a source but not plagiarising from it (plagiarising being what we usually do here, because it's more efficient and in our context it's normally proper). I think this would be much more effective than discussing each sentence separately. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Trolls

Hi Hans. I just now noticed your comment about my post on SA's talk page. SA and I have a history of collegial banter. I understand that sometimes a conversation can be perceived as something it's not, but I assure you that I was just saying hi and attempting to be humorous. I apologize if my comments were perceived in a way that I had not intended. I'm confident that if you contact SA he will let you know that I wasn't trying to make trouble or have a go at him and that he understood where I was coming from. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I understood that a few hours after making my comment. Sorry for not getting the joke initially, when there weren't all that many clues. Do you want me to change my comment? --Hans Adler (talk) 18:10, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

No worries. My fault for being so sarcastic. Thanks for your reply and I apologize for getting you mixed up in any nastiness. I should be more careful about leaving crazy notes for people. I'm going to crawl back under my bridge now and wait for tolls. :) KIDDING, only kidding. :) Seriously though, it costs one wikicookie to pass... ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:17, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

(Two templates removed)

I'm not sure if you realize that you have an unread message at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Requested change to Monobook skin. -- IRP ☎ 01:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not unread. Our little dialogue seems to have reached the stage where we are talking past each other, so I saw no need to continue it. Let me try to be clearer: It makes sense that links to Misplaced Pages, Wikisource, Wikibooks etc. should have no external links icon, no matter how they are addressed. But I found that currently links to some pretty dubious wikis have exactly the same inconsistency issue: Doom on a lottery machine vs. Doom on a lottery machine. This must be solved in the opposite direction. I suspect that most people simply don't use prefixes such as CrazyHacks: because they don't know about them. Your proposal would result in such external links appearing without the external links item, and I object to that.

You are also addressing a very minor issue (icon or not), when there are major usability problems left in this area. It's currently impossible to create links to diffs that go to the normal server when clicked on the normal server, and to the secure server when clicked on the secure server. Even the most basic thing doesn't work: Clicking a link to Wikibooks from the secure server takes you to the normal server. I object to minor tweaking bringing no clear improvements, and causing some degradations, of something that has much more fundamental problems. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:48, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Jumbled up mess of link types. You are invited to participate in the discussion. -- IRP ☎ 21:32, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

April 2009

Please do not remove information from articles, as you did to Defecation. Misplaced Pages is not censored, and content is not removed even if some believe it to be contentious. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page to reach consensus rather than continuing to remove the disputed material. You also have the option to configure Misplaced Pages to hide the images that you may find offensive. Thank you. Yourname (talk) 20:05, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Please stop. Misplaced Pages is not censored. Any further changes which have the effect of censoring an article, such as you did to Defecation posture, will be regarded as vandalism. If you continue in this manner, you will be blocked from editing Misplaced Pages. Yourname (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Replied on user's talk page. This page is now off-limits for the user. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I saw your edit summary and rushed over to ask you to reconsider leaving, but now I see it was a wasted trip. Oh well. Verbal chat 21:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me. I see I should have written "Bye, Yourname". I will try to remember this when I encounter the next troll of this kind. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:08, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

He's at it over at Human feces‎ too. Verbal chat 21:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I have given User:Yourname a final warning about giving baseless vandalism templates and being generally disruptive by edit warring. If he continues he will be blocked again as the condition of his prior unblock was not to carry on with such nonsense: . I hope this incident has not discouraged you Hans. Chillum 21:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

That was my misreading of an edit summary. Hans isn't going anywhere. Verbal chat 21:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I am in fact not easily deterred by crap, even though I could well do without it. I have a lot of practice with nappy-changing, and recently I learned the hard way that 4-year-olds can get temporary lactose intolerance, which leads to diarrhoea.

Thanks, Verbal, for lending a hand. It's always a nice change when we agree on something. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:52, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

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Leftöver Crack??? The rest is pretty good. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Welcome

Hi, Hans Adler, and welcome to WikiProject Bilateral relations! We are a growing community of Misplaced Pages editors dedicated to identifying, categorizing, and improving articles relevant to the relations between two countries. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the talk page, and we will be happy to help you. Again, welcome! We hope you enjoy working on this project. Ikip (talk) 05:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to the project. Ikip (talk) 05:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:N/N

Hi, I saw your comment at AN/I. WP:Notability/Noticeboard was created back in January, but it doesn't have much traffic. Flatscan (talk) 04:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Do we need a notability guideline for pets?

It really should be named Minky (Hans Adler's cat). Or possibly just Minky (cat), as that name isn't taken. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 13:18, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Good point. There is no guidance about this at WP:Naming conventions (fauna), so it should probably be rewritten from scratch. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed! I propose that we split up the fauna naming MOS into individual per-phylum naming MOSes. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:04, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

To get back to the thread's main topic: I believe the notability guideline for pets should clarify that a pet is not notable unless its owner can be verified to exist in a non-trivial way. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a good start. But what about pets that are dressed up in little suits or dresses or hats? Those will be covered by the BLP policy. You know, Biographies of Little People. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:14, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

AN thread

I've started an AN thread regarding a matter where you were previously involved. You may wish to comment. Durova 16:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

TUSC token 80250a7ebb7ee226ee5cc7b44dcf286d

I am now proud owner of a TUSC account!

Re Talk

Hans, thanks for the feedback– though I'd still say that there's a crucial distinction per your analogy. For instance, pseudoscience is a catch-all term for a number of things, but is restricted to unscientific methods passing off as science.

Whereas "Neo-Stalinism" is a catch-all term comprised of multiple completely distinct meanings, used as a generic insult against various ideologies and political people in very different ways. (Which is not only inherently POV but excruciatingly superfluous when there are objective categories to make use of.) PasswordUsername (talk) 12:05, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Peace
		The Barnstar of Peace is awarded to users who have helped to resolve, peacefully, conflicts on Misplaced Pages. This barnstar is awarded to Hans Adler, for his fine work on Foreign relations of Argentina by country. Your work will directly help resolve the Bilateral relations deletion wars. Thank you. Ikip (talk) 14:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope you don't mind if I delete this in a few days, like the few other barnstars I got in the past. Anyway, I think if anybody deserves this thing then it's certainly you for patiently doing most of the work.

By the way, I think the table is a bit too big. What do you think about splitting it by continents? I think that has three advantages: 1) We lose the continent column. 2) The resulting tables are more manageable and probably create less display problems. 3) We have continent headings to which we can add relevant "further information" links if/when articles such as Argentina–Europe relations are created. On the other hand the columns of the individual tables won't align exactly, and if someone really wants to sort by establishment of diplomatic relations, they don't get the result in a single table. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:25, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Delete away :)

Libstar suggested the continent idea, the "diplomatic of..." page is order by continent too. I am indifferent myself.

what else you think we should remove?

Man, Foreign relations of Argentina by country is a real pain in the ass huh? I should be done today. I think afghanistan is next--which is easy, there are only 14 articles and one deleted article on wiki right now. Ikip (talk) 19:03, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Biophys' distortion of sources and false accusations

Hans, firstly, thanks for your unbiased and objective point of view.

It seems that according to Misplaced Pages:Vandalism's list of types of vandalism sneaky vandalism includes both "adding plausible misinformation to articles, (e.g. minor alteration of facts or additions of plausible-sounding hoaxes)" as well as "reverting legitimate edits with the intent of hindering the improvement of pages." As far as Biophys' recent edits, he has twice deleted the Arno J. Mayer reference at Aleksandr Kolchak as well as misrepresented the Soviet encyclopedia source, which states that "25,000 people" were killed by Kolchak's forces–though given his POV and selective interpretation, he repeatedly transformed that into "25,000 Bolshevik rebels" through WP:SYNTH (see talk)–although this pales in comparison to the absolutely blatant misrepresentation of fact he perpretrated on the Novodvorskaya article. (My warnings to Biophys were only on account of his [frivolous deletion of the Mayer sources, although I also mentioned his tendentious assumptions as to just who those 25,000 victims of Kolchak were in my edit summaries.

Biophys now makes the claim on my talk page that I was reverting a bunch of his edits to "teach him a lesson." Nowhere did I say such a thing, unless he is reading into my words things that are not there. I frankly explained to him that his editing constituted sneaky vandalism per his malicious editing–including such frivolous edits to Kolchak as this.

The biggest travesty was what he did to the Valeriya Novodvorskaya article–my case is completely laid out on the Novodvorskaya article talk. There Biophys goes in completely changing the meaning of Novodvorskaya's own words–as supported by references from her own political organization–without, of course, bothering to give his own references for this inverted reality. This would be evident to any Russian-speaking Misplaced Pages user.

Would it be possible to get a Russian admin to take a look at the travesties Biophys has perpetrated with these Russian sources and give his/her position on this case? I wouldn't mind asking an Admin from to help out myself, but in the interests of neutrality, given my being a party in this case, doing this through a third party (if at all possible) would seem the fairest possible option.

What is your take on this situation? PasswordUsername (talk) 21:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

You could try to get another Russian speaker involved, but I think it doesn't really matter whether it's an admin so long as it's a respected user. Or you could try posting at the talk page of Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Russia. And you should really read WP:VANDALISM#NOT and drop the vandalism red herring. Sneaky vandalism would be something like adding an obscene word in the middle of a paragraph; the important point is that there is no chance you can commit vandalism and not be aware of it. If Biophys removed "or tortured" from what the GSE says and turned "people" into "Bolshevik rebels" (I can't check this), then you are probably right it's a misrepresentation of the source. But you shouldn't call it vandalism because he probably felt this was the right thing to do to correct a perceived bias in the source. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Offliner's already responded on Talk:Valeriya Novodvorskaya, though I'll try to get some more comments. The warning wasn't for changing "people" to "Bolshevik rebels" per his interpretation of the encyclopedia–it was for deleting Mayer with frivolous justifications like this–which I took as genuine vandalism (note that the frivolous rationale for deleting here was "let's cite actions, nor words, he actually did not do it"). Does that constitute vandalism? PasswordUsername (talk) 21:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's vandalism, either. It's not a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Misplaced Pages". It's an attempt to present history from a certain point of view. Also: "However, significant content removals are usually not considered to be vandalism where the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary." I wouldn't even call this a significant content removal, and the rationale may be invalid but isn't exactly frivolous.

It's a typical beginners' error to think something must be against a rule because it's obviously wrong. That's not how we decide content disputes. In reality, the winning side is the one that has (or manages to convince) more active editors and behaves better. The latter is important because admins can only correct behavioral problems but must be neutral about content. (This can be gamed. I know two admins who seem to take sides secretly, and then only intervene against one of the party when there is a good reason to do so, but never again the other.) --Hans Adler (talk) 21:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. I'm still getting a hang of the ropes, and I'll try to rectify it with Biophys. PasswordUsername (talk) 22:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

FYI

Deletion of Bilateral relation pages despite ongoing merging effort Ikip (talk) 21:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: "I don't think there is an entitlement that these AfDs stop. But they seem to be a waste of time, since ultimately most of them will be about deleting a redirect."

I agree. Two articles are done. I am going to finish the low hanging fruit (small countries with few articles) then I will go onto the larger countries. Ikip (talk) 06:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

• Heads up - I started Foreign relations of Greece - hope we are not overlapping. Think it is best to start with lists that have more than one article in AfD. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:21, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. No, I am not working on this. I just finished Switzerland / EU members and will take a break before beginning with the other Swiss relations. (There are hundreds of articles that I am more motivated to work on than these, and for which I actually have qualifications that most others don't.) Thanks for your useful table template! I hope you don't mind if I add the countries I need. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Switzerland and the European Union

Good work with the merge. LibStar (talk) 16:02, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Offer to userfy

See Thanks for all your help again, I appreciate it. Ikip (talk) 05:10, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for reasearch about codomains

Thank you. It's interesting topic. 123unoduetre (talk) 14:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I don't consider it all that interesting. It seems clear to me that the definition of functions that includes the codomain is the "correct" one: Apart from the stupid technical problem in set theory (which could easily be solved by a general convention that we can talk about finite tuples of proper classes) it seems to make no difference at all in most fields, while being superior in those fields where the distinction matters. In this situation it naturally takes some time for such an innovation to become universally accepted as the standard, official, definition. Geometry Guy has just added some very nice footnotes to the article; the reference by Stewart and Tall says it well. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Sentential logic

I proposed to rename this again. I think we agreed pretty well, and then philogo came in and confused the issue. Anyway, if you and I ever agree on something, well it probably just should be done. My goodness. Be well, CFD

Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Malaria in Iceland

I am not going there. No way. But feel free! :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 17:52, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Courtesy notice

Abd has brought up your comment on my talk page here MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#New_evidence_and_explanation_from_Hans_Adler_re_copyvio. for some reason. Cheers, Verbal chat 16:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Email

I sent you an email as you were composing your message. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 13:41, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I just read it. Sorry that I was a bit provocative in the MfD. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:50, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No problem at all. Best wishes, Mathsci (talk) 13:58, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Gratius Falsius etc.

Hi, I have no hard feelings, just the desire to have accurate articles. I hope the major edits are done now, so we can move on with our lives. Have a nice day. Green Squares (talk) 01:12, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, that is an interesting article http://www.american-bulldog.com/molossus_myth.htm instead of deleting my writings, why don't you refute them with this article and others. It would help improve the quality of the article. Thank you. Green Squares (talk) 23:38, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi

http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Tomcervenka —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomcervenka (talk • contribs) 20:12, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I edited your comment.

See . As I said in the edit summary, if this bothers you for any reason, feel free to revert me. LadyofShalott 14:58, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Obviously not! Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Contratulations

… on this - a new angle to a tired (and tiring) discussion!  pablo_hablo. 15:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

When I saw this coming up again and again on my watchlist I just thought it was a snowstorm plus tireless comments by the creator. But by now two editors I have met before have voted for keeping the article. Amazing. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:12, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Judging by one of the comments we can perhaps look forward to an article on Mind-reading binoculars - I think I'll watchlist it just in case.  pablo_hablo. 15:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Sam Blacketer controversy

" Hi, I noticed that another editor had deliberately inserted that section as being pivotal to the article and thought that especially as the matter is in the middle of a contentious Afd that the matter should be discussed. Maybe bring the issue up on the article's talk page, rather than here (my interest is only peripheral)? Cheers, Esowteric (talk) 15:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)"

" (ec) Have you looked on the article talk page before reverting? Without the information that you removed the article is a severe BLP violation. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)"

Hi Hans, please feel free to do what you have to do. I just thought the matter should be raised before a unilateral deletion, hence my undoing the deletion ... and I could be wrong. Cheers, Esowteric (talk) 15:42, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Replied there. This was a misunderstanding cause by an edit conflict and my very unambiguous language. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Adler's Laws of Misplaced Pages

1. Misplaced Pages values all contributors equally (especially those with special needs such as a complete lack of judgement or writing abilities).
2. Elitism is against the core principles of Misplaced Pages, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit; consequently those who abuse their abilities by writing substantially more than their fair share of featured articles must be made to understand that they are suffered, not supported, by the community.
3. Anyone who uses humour in Misplaced Pages (and especially in project space) exhibits a severe lack of respect for those of their fellow editors who have no sense for it.
4. Prolific writing of content that cannot be improved is a dangerous, systemic, problem because it will eventually lead to the death of this project. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not to finish it.
   

As now quoted on my userpage. Fences and windows (talk) 18:38, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

*Blush* Thank you. That's a great honour. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:46, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Quoted on mine too. --Malleus Fatuorum 12:08, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

You have been nominated for membership of the Established Editors Association

The Established editors association will be a kind of union of who have made substantial and enduring contributions to the encyclopedia for a period of time (say, two years or more). The proposed articles of association are here - suggestions welcome.

If you wish to be elected, please notify me here. If you know of someone else who may be eligible, please nominate them here

Please put all discussion here.Peter Damian (talk) 10:37, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It's an interesting idea, but I am worried about the possible consequences of such an organisation. An informal meeting place for content writers, e.g. WP:WikiProject Article writers would probably be a good thing. Currently FAC seems to fill this role, but for various reasons that's not optimal. But a formal elite with elected members? No thanks. Don't push this too hard, or I guess you will get into serious trouble. This way of addressing the problem that the uninformed mob is slowly taking over the encyclopedia is not compatible with the wiki philosophy. There are systemic reasons for the problem, and they should be solved by changing the rules of the game, not by adding a new player. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:55, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your comments. The point is that a formally elected group (not 'elite') like a trade union in which real power would be given to those with grievances, is the only thing that will address what is wrong. Peter Damian (talk) 10:59, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Articles on Misplaced Pages editors

Given your devotion and passion to deleting articles on Misplaced Pages editors of marginal notability, I wanted to make sure you were aware of this page Misplaced Pages:Wikipedians with articles. I trust an editor of your high integrity and standards of fairness will want all of these articles treated consistently according to appropriate procedure and protocol. Have a great weekend. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:22, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I can't personally solve all of Misplaced Pages's problems. I get involved in some situations that catch my eye, and in particular in some high-profile situations where things are seriously going in the wrong direction. When it happens, as in this case, that I walk in one direction, and prominent, experienced and well-respected members of the community such as Thatcher walk in the same direction a bit later, then this seems to confirm to me that my judgement isn't too bad.

I will have a look at the category you mention, and if it's as bad as you are implying I may even do something about it. But should it turn out that it consists mostly of neutral, well-written biographies of people of borderline notability who don't mind having an article on themselves, then there won't be much to do. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:36, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

So biographies of Misplaced Pages editors of borderline notability are okay until there's substantial media coverage of a controversy involving them? At which point we must speedy delete the offending article?

See that just doesn't seem right to me. I've watched how the subjects of articles are treated when they come here to "fix" things, and I think this old boy network of double standards and improvising the rules as we go along is wrong. Our article standards and approaches need to be fair, consistent, and without subterfuge. There should be an article on this subject that complies with our standards, just like all the other articles on similar subjects (and yes there are lots of them).

Editors who haven't objected to the existence of their articles don't get to delete them when there's unfavorable stories in the news. I don't support book burning of any kind, especially not by the Firemen of Fahrenheit 451. Bias and censorship are wrong, and worth standing up against. Cheers. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:48, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

You continue to misrepresent the situation. I don't know if this is because you can't understand the situation or because you choose not to. And I don't care. Repeating negative statements about someone, without comment, when you know they are not true, is lying. Lying is wrong, and excusing it by appeal to words such as bias and censorship is hypocrisy. It's not bias to shut up instead of lying, and it's not censorship to stop you from doing it. Now keep off my talk page. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:58, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

2003 Ernst Interview

You have probably already seen this, but in case you hadn't, I thought I would point out this 2003 interview of Ernst by Sarah Boseley. I thought Ernst's comments on his early experiences working at a Homeopath Hospital were interesting. An excerpt from the article:

His first post was in a homeopathic hospital in Munich, where he was greatly impressed. "If you study medicine and pharmacology, you know can't work," he says. The active substances in homeopathic medicines are so diluted that pharmacology says they cannot have an effect. "Then you start working in a homeopathic hospital and people get better. Is that a miracle? It certainly is very impressive for a young doctor.

"Looking back, I wonder if a lot was a placebo effect." Placebo to him, however, is not a negative. He would never assume people who get better on placebos were not ill in the first place. "I would like to have an institute of placebo research, but the funding would be even worse. You would get placebo money! But it's absolutely fascinating what's happening there. It is what gels mainstream and complementary medicine together. As doctors, we don't want to realise it. We pride ourselves that therapy does the trick."

This is a scientist willing to explore the unthinkable and unwilling to be told what to think. Scientific logic says homeopathy cannot work, but Ernst continues to study its therapies not to shoot it down, but in the hope of discovering what it is that does work. He treats his French wife with homeopathy, he says. "We were both brought up with it."

--stmrlbs|talk 07:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, very interesting indeed! This explains the apparent contradiction between Ernst's cv (I knew he was at a homeopathic hospital, so I assumed he was a homeopath) and what he writes. And it's reassuring to read exactly my opinion as stated from a leading authority. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:38, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, not exactly. That seems to have been confirmation bias. But at least he seems to give a lot more weight to the placebo effect than is customary. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I know.. it is as if he thought enough of it to use it with his wife, and yet, later on attributes it all to a placebo effect. Yet, does this in a way that says how powerful this effect must be. I thought it was interesting, especially in light of many of his later (after the homeopathic hospital) evaluations. --stmrlbs|talk 09:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Apologies

Please see my response on my talk page. Pasquale (talk) 15:55, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:ANI

I've made a complaint about your removal of the RfC at WP:Link talk. HarryAlffa (talk) 16:26, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Please do not remove RfC templates on discussions prematurely. I understand that the discussion had, for all intents and purposes, ended, but as a participant in the discussion your removal of the request can be viewed as disruptive. In the future please refrain from removing requests that are still technically "active" unless you were the original requester. Thanks, Shereth 17:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Relevant threads archived at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive545#User:Hans Adler and WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive546#User:Kotniski. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:18, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussions to participate in

You might find Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Bozo bit of interest. You might also want to check my German at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Bavarian Pigeon Corps. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 03:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• The first isn't my table, but I found the second very interesting, as you can see from my post there. Thanks a lot for thinking of me! --Hans Adler (talk) 12:08, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I've added more on Brons thereto. I hope that you are double-checking my German. Uncle G (talk) 18:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I haven't done it yet, but will do it once my daughter is in bed. By the way, your Brons (2006) is the same as mine, and you can call me Hans for at least two reasons (speaking English and being on Misplaced Pages). Oh, and is M. something like xe/xyr or did you mean Monsieur? Someone called Franziska Brons would normally be expected to be a woman. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:28, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
      • It's intended to be sex-neutral, yes. With my encyclopaedist hat on, I don't care about M. Brons' sex. I care about xyr credentials, expertise, reputation for accuracy, and reliability.

        There's what appears to be a German language obituary of Neubronner that I came across in my searches. I'll try to re-locate it and cite it. Uncle G (talk) 18:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

        • I am not sure what you want me to check about your German references, since you don't seem to have given any translations. They are all relevant, and none of them mentions actual military use or a connection to Bavaria. I am not sure it makes much sense to translate them at this point. Interesting family, by the way. See article talk page. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Green Squares

No CU for SirIsaacBrock was done I believe. I'm away today, if nothing has happened by this evening I shall go ahead and block. Dougweller (talk) 04:53, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course, it may be that one of his known socks had a CU done. Dougweller (talk) 05:29, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I've started a discussion at ANI. Dougweller (talk) 19:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The IP is almost certainly him. Dougweller (talk) 18:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Hans Adler 18:49, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I thought it was him, but I changed my mind. The IP has been static for at least 3 months, it didn't edit typical articles, and it edited outside reasonable office hours. Hans Adler 22:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Bubble Tea

Kayau (talk) has given you a bubble tea! Bubble teas promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a bubble tea, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy drinking!

Spread the awesomeness of bubble teas by adding {{subst:User:Download/Bubble tea}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!

Hi, Mr. Adler. I have seen your heated argument with Betty Logan at the Manual of Style. I hope that Betty Logan's arguments have not hurt your feelings too much. Thank you ever so much for your attention. Kayau (talk) 06:29, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Brouwer fixed point theorem

Dear Hans,

In your recent edits you seem to imply that Borsuk-Ulam is an indirect consequence of Brouwer's theorem. Can you link me to some source? This is something I'd like to show to my students, but I was so far too lazy to find. The usual proof of Borsuk-Ulam goes through the homology of projective spaces, a topic that I have no chance to touch in my classes (contrary to the proofs of Brouwer's theorem via Sperner's lemma or Stokes theorem). All the best, --Bdmy (talk) 09:42, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

For the moment I am just translating from fr:Théorème du point fixe de Brouwer, without thinking more about things than absolutely necessary to get the translation approximately right. The passage you are referring to is a bit obscure in the original. fr:Théorème de Borsuk-Ulam says that Borsuk-Ulam can be used to prove Brouwer and gives a reference. Perhaps that's what is meant by "indirectement issu". I can't see immediately how to do it the other way round, this direction is not mentioned in the reference, and I see that Borsuk-Ulam was proved 20 years after Brouwer. What a pity. I have changed the translation of "issu" from "derived" to "emerged" to make it clearer that this is not about logical consequence. Hans Adler 17:04, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

PS: Thanks for looking over the article. I am shamelessly relying on others to do the proof-reading in this case. Hans Adler 17:24, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I Apologize

disturbing you. I'm french math's teacher in Paris, and I'havd contribute with a new page françois Viète on Wpfr. I' asked an help for translation on Wpen, but nobody answered. I rewrote the page alone, but, i'am not native and my english is poor. Therefore there are probably a lot of francicism in that article and in New algebra. Some guy, named Classicalecon, put on the page an horrible ribon, and i ask some help to the mathetician's communauty to make this article better. If you have any idea, even the smallest... you'r welcome.Jean de Parthenay (talk) 14:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup pour l'article ! Je crois que l'intention de la notice de Classicalecon est tout à fait constructive : chercher un éditeur qui peux améliorer la présentation de l'article. J'espère que j'aurai le temps de m'en occuper, mais peut-être un autre va être plus vite. Hans Adler 18:15, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Merci pour le travail accompli. A lire tes modifications, je me dis que l'article vaut le coup. Comme j'améliore peu à peu la version française, certaines affirmations du texte anglais deviennent parfois obsolètes, car trop tranchées. J'ai ajouté des images sur Wpfr, et aussi un passage sur l'astronomie. Mais il est possible- voire souhaitable- de faire des textes différents, qui se nourrissent de l'histoire propre de chaque nation et de sa vision de l'histoire. La remarque de Classicalecon était peut-être constructive, mais très brutale, d'autant qu'il avait aussitôt fermé son compte. Ça faisait bureaucrate pas courageux et hautain. C'est pourquoi j'ai piqué une colère. Mais grâce à toi et à JamesB, tout est réparé. J'ai mis une traduction de mon cru d'un article de Dhombres (point 8 des notes) afin de faciliter la lecture du document en français. Il faudrait peut-être le nettoyer et l'insérer dans le texte ; mais c'est à vous de voir tout ça désormais... FriendlyJean de Parthenay (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Classicalecon n'était pas brutal d'après les règles normales de ce wiki-ci, et je ne comprends pas pourquoi tu dis qu'il aurait fermé son compte. Si tu parles du fait qu'il n'avait pas de page d'utilisateur – c'est le cas pour une minorité pas négligeable. Normalement ça ne signifie rien, surtout dans le cas d'un utilisateur qui n'est par très actif. (Il n'a que 500 contributions.) C'est toujours une bonne idée de supposer la bonne foi et de ne pas être trop attaché à un article même si on a de bons raisons de l'être.

Je ne comprends pas ce que tu dis de la traduction de Dhombres. En tout cas des références en français sont acceptables ici, surtout dans le cas d'un sujet français, même si évidemment il y une préférence pour les références en anglais. Hans Adler 15:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

A propos de Classicalecon : tout ceci est oublié. Pour la traduction de Dhombres (dans le talk) : elle n'est pas parfaite... c'est tout. Je regrette de ne pas pouvoir fournir mieux (sur l'aspect : viète était-il protestant, indifférent, politique, catholique ?). Pour le reste, sache que j'apprecie hautement tous les efforts de ceux qui ont réussi à rendre propre un travail précipité par l'approche des vacances. Disons quand même que dans l'ensemble, tout cela me refroidit un peu. La prochaine fois que je voudrais enrichir Wpen, je donnerai une première version dans mes brouillons, dont je te ferais part, ainsi qu'aux autres collaborateurs du projet de traduction franco-anglais. Cela évitera de surcharger l'article de corrections. A bientôt. Jean de Parthenay (talk) 16:57, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Bavarian Pigeon Corps

I have found a report of a scientific experiment that casts doubt on whether pigeons could carry 70 grams. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Bavarian_Pigeon_Corps#Was_this_even_feasible.3F Albatross2147 (talk) 07:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Cross posting

Hello. I did not know cross posting was against Misplaced Pages guidelines. If it is I apologize.Ti-30X (talk) 23:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It's against the rules almost everywhere on the internet. In the case of Misplaced Pages, attention by other editors is a valuable resource. Hans Adler 23:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

My original intent was to get the word out to the science community. I wasn't thinking of it as cross posting, unitl I saw your post on one or two of the talk pages. And you are right, attention, by other editors is a valuable resource and I will have to be more prudent in the future. Thanks.Ti-30X (talk) 00:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia request for comment

Since you have in the past taken part in related discussions, this comes as a notification that the Centralized discussion page set up to decide on a comprehensive naming convention about Macedonia-related naming practices is now inviting comments on a number of competing proposals from the community. Please register your opinions on the RfC subpages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, done. Good work, it was much easier to go through the various proposals and make up my mind than I thought it would be. Hans Adler 12:02, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You must have done something right. You're the only person who signed Misplaced Pages:Centralized_discussion/Macedonia/main_articles#Users_who_endorse_Proposal_B who wasn't subsequently contacted by ChrisO and asked to change their mind and/or justify their position. SHEFFIELDSTEEL 18:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Pigeons in aerial photography

Congratulations. Your hard work has turned a dodgey article into one that is shining example to us all. The only other comments I have to make is that I am still worried about the weight of the cameras but that has been addressed and the sad waste of all that effort in to what was always going to be a dead end. JN is certainly worth an article all on his own. Albatross2147 (talk) 13:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope you won't revise your opinion once I have added a section on actual military use. I think the fact that it crops up in various places should be mentioned in the article. The problem is to make it clear that it's all very dubious when the most reliable sources don't even talk about it and merely suggest through omission of the topic that it never happened. And then there is the Bundesarchiv photo; in connection with the duck caricature this suggests that the German army at least claimed to use pigeons with cameras during World War I. Perhaps they experimented with them but stopped after the war.

I have just paid 50 pence / page for JN's autobiography. Can't await its delivery. Hans Adler 13:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

RFC moved

Discussion moved to Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/User_page_indexing. Gigs (talk) 18:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)