Abd-William M. Connolley, The Cabal strikes back Options

[Milton Roe]

The Wikipedia isn't the place to decide ANY issue, if you take that attitude.

Quite so. It is a fundamentally misguided project.

Yes, and all could have been avoided if somebody at WMF had just sat down and had a college student philosophy bull session for an hour.

"This is really great idea. We have non-experts do a lot of editing, but we keep them in line because we don't let them put in original research, but make them cite only published stuff."

"Okay, how do we tell, or how do they tell, what published stuff to cite on WP?"

"We have our volunteer non-expert people represent the viewpoints on subjects in proportion to number of citations in the literature. Jimbo thought of that."

"Fine, but you have to know the literature to figure that out! How are these guys supposed to know what that proportion is? Even experts argue about that, and you aready said these wouldn't all be experts. And without identifying anybody, you have no way to know who is a subject-matter-expert, who knows 'the literature' and can fairly make this judgement, and who isn't."

"Uhhhh......."







"Are there any other items on the agenda....?"

[Abd]

Abd, can you believe that we are soon arriving at the first anniversary of that drama fest when Iridescent stupidly indef blocked you for “repeated posting of untrue attacks on another editor after multiple warnings,” while Xeno did his Mighty Mouse routine and unblocked you because “consensus seems to be that the block has served its purpose.” What are your thoughts on that piece of ancient history? And do you think Xeno deserves a big Horsey kiss for unblocking you?

Yes, next month. Some little known facts about that block, my first true block.

(1) Iridescent was in error to block me, but it was not "stupid." I understood the appearance, and for me to describe the nature of the error would be a waste of time. Given her good-faith opinion, she was correct to block me. Administrators do not have the time to figure out the nuances, often. She did it right, she wrote "indef" as in until we sort this out and not as in "infinite," and she immediately recused herself from further consideration. This is why I raised no fuss at all about her.

(2) The target of my alleged incivility was Fritzpoll. Check my user rights log and see who granted me rollback. Fritzpoll later wrote that it was all a misunderstanding. Fritzpoll eventually did what I'd been asking him to do, lift the ban on Wilhelmina Will. You might notice that some charges in the RfAr have used long posts on Fritzpoll Talk, but he explicitly welcomed that and apparently actually reads them.

(3) The warning preceding the block was issued by Jehochman. Jehochman's view of me was much the same as WMC's current opinion, only perhaps even more extreme. However, I went through DR with Jehochman, very efficiently and very effectively, and Jehochman became an ally, generally. And then he invited me to meet him in RL, which happened once, hence his comments in the filing of this RfAr.

I didn't put up an unblock template for quite some time, I wanted to see what would happen. When I did, it was immediately denied, and then, with no further action on my part, I was unblocked.

As to Xeno, it could have been any of a number of administrators. Certainly I didn't blame him, even though the unblock didn't exonerate me! I'd say Xeno made the right decision. Isn't that normal for adminstrators?

Consider the difference with the unfortunate case of Bishonen.

This post has been edited by Abd: Fri 24th July 2009, 2:14am

[Abd]

Yes, and all could have been avoided if somebody at WMF had just sat down and had a college student philosophy bull session for an hour.

Lots of WP problems could be resolved, quickly, this way. Then the participants would go back and convince the rest of the community. We might call that a cabal, but if it's open, and if some other discussions can take place that present any POVs that were missing at the start, it can be very efficient.

"This is really great idea. We have non-experts do a lot of editing, but we keep them in line because we don't let them put in original research, but make them cite only published stuff."

"Okay, how do we tell, or how do they tell, what published stuff to cite on WP?"

"We have our volunteer non-expert people represent the viewpoints on subjects in proportion to number of citations in the literature. Jimbo thought of that."

"Fine, but you have to know the literature to figure that out! How are these guys supposed to know what that proportion is? Even experts argue about that, and you aready said these wouldn't all be experts. And without identifying anybody, you have no way to know who is a subject-matter-expert, who knows 'the literature' and can fairly make this judgement, and who isn't."

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. If a fact is present in RS, which is, in itself, reasonably objective, it belongs in the project. It is to be included. The cabal relies, instead, on arguments about source quality to exclude, making it black-and-white. The key is consensus, based on thorough and careful consensus-building, which happens best in small groups of people who are relatively congenial, at first. Then it expands through the most trusted of these editors, who are able to expand the consensus.

When editors understand consensus process, editors who even strongly disagree can work it out, given that the debate, once it is RS, is over framing and attribution, not over inclusion.

What happened at Cold fusion is that sources which by any reasonable standard were RS (independent publisher is the basic requirement, and in many cases, the publisher was actually highly reputable) would be excluded because the views expressed were "fringe." That's circular.

If there is a reliable source that says that Cold fusion is "pseudoscience," we don't decide that it is or that it is not, we include the opinion if there is no notable dispute, as a fact. If there is dispute, we include it as a position, generally with attribution.

It is far simpler than some think, because the matter is clouded by some entrenched Majority POV-pushers who do not agree with the inclusiveness of the RS guidelines. They want to including only material from sources they consider strong, but that turns, indeed, every disputed subject into a battleground over what "strong" means.

[Mathsci]

Mathsi is an arrogant asshole.

Act I, Scene V,

An American suburban home in Springfield, Massachusetts.
It is early afternoon. Dennis is nibbling a Hershey bar on a stool in the corner
Enter Joyce Grenfell

Oh dear, Dennis, are you upset again?

No I didn't say have you spilt your tea, I said, ARE YOU UPSET AGAIN?

Have you been tinkering around with that boxy thing in the corner - next to your zimmer frame?

You know nursey told you not to touch it.

Have you been typing those horrible naughty things on it that we talked about yesterday?

We'll have to to put you back down in the basement like last time.

Well yes, we know, Adolf and Genghis are down there, but you'll just have to make do.

This post has been edited by Mathsci: Thu 23rd July 2009, 11:13pm

[EricBarbour]

Yes, little men: instead of carrying this on forever, like the Hatfield-McCoy feud,
why don't you come to some kind of compromise? You can ignore me, and return
to sniping at each other. (And these new witnesses you have, on WR, will sit here
and chuckle at your highly erudite cluelessness.) Or you could come to some kind
of mutual agreement, and implement it on-wiki.

Compromise was tried. With JzG, I tried for about three months. With WMC, much less, because it was quickly plain that WMC wasn't interested in any compromise at all. What compromise? Got one to suggest?
Take a look at the RfAr in a week or two. You will see me suggesting compromise. It might surprise you. However, you want my summary of the Wikipedia problem. It's you, Eric, and everyone else like you, quick to judge, slow to investigate, unwilling to work to find compromise, blaming everyone else for "feuding." And unwilling to consider how that problem could be addressed, because, of course, it would involve looking at ourselves.

Sorry, but I have looked at various WP pages and WR threads on this, so blaming me for "the Wikipedia problem" doesn't wash. In fact, I'm sick of reading about Connelley going around slapping people for pressing something he considers "unscientific". It's been going on for years.

Yes, I agree, they are pigheaded and unreasonable. But then, your long, long rants aren't helping. If you can't secure a compromise from Connelley and friends, ask someone who outranks them for help. You might (okay, will) have to modify some of what you want from cold-fusion articles.

Go back and do some research on Connelley's history of abuse. Try here, here, here.
Work with other people who have had disputes with Connelley. Plenty of them fought with him over global warming. He's a total bastard, has enemies all over the world, and you cannot reason with him. Do you have a solid idea of who you're fighting with?

Learn to be a proper victim, it garners more sympathy.

[Abd]

I figured that with a modest investment of about $100,000, mostly for the palladium, I could run a cold fusion hot water heater in my house. Is that "free"?

No, but suppose this works. It requires us to now believe in human beings acting stupidly or crazily. Any non-crazy physicist who could do this, would make up a dozen or so preps in inert material cylinders (like little CO2 gas cartridges) and just send them to skeptics with a note:

This contains no radioisotope. You don't believe in cold fusion? Put this on your desk for a month or carry it in your front pants pocket, and then do ordinary calorimetry on it every week for the next few months. When you get to total heat outputs greater than 30 kcal/gram or so (i.e., clearly beyond chemistry), let me know, and we'll talk.

Mmmm... I don't have figures on the heat output off the top of my head, and I don't do research into sources for Wikipedia Review, but I do know that there are sufficient reports showing energy output greater than known chemical processes can explain. According to the chemists who are experts in measuring heat. The Arata experiments are not intended as commercial applications and what they show doesn't show commercial application. From the heat of formation of palladium deuteride, and the heat profile, assuming the initial heat is from p-d formation, one could estimate the conductivity of the capsule to the environment. The photographs show the capsule insulated with styrofoam, but the heat of formation and the capsule construction (double layer, three temperatures are recorded: inner chamber, isolating chamber, and ambient; basically the two temperature differentials are about equal, 2 degrees C each).

Your theory as to what the physicist would do assumes that he gives a fuck about other's opinions. You don't know this guy. He's the grand old man of Japanese physics, about 86 years old. Everything he does is being published under peer review in Japan. Yoshiaka Arata, small Wikipedia article on him.

The work described is recent, something like 2008. I wouldn't necessarily put this in a Wikipedia article, but, there are other gas-loading reports. One of the problems with cold fusion research is that there is little exact replication. Most researchers are trying to figure out how to get reliable heat output, or some new and conclusive finding, there is no money and no glory in doing what someone else did. To change that would require substantial academic funding, which was almost completely cut off by 1990. The U.S. Navy continued working quietly on cold fusion, publishing papers under peer review, with very little funding, the researchers worked on their own time, but they did get departmental support, and it appears that funding through the Navy is being ramped up, probably because of some of the recent relatively spectacular findings.

What's much more interesting to me is correlation between excess heat and helium. There is plenty of confirmation that measurement of helium is correlated with excess heat at what Storms (2007) reports as 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4. That's a magic number, Milton, as I'm sure you might recognize. It's what you get if deuterium is converted to helium, mechanism unknown (23.8 MeV, actually).

Now, I'm sure there are stories about why this isn't happening. The guy isn't sending them out because he's about to commercialize it (I've heard this one for nearly 20 years). Or he claims he sends them out and the warm cylinders are returned by scientists who have their fingers in their ears and eyes tightly closed (but no names are given of people who've returned samples). All very conspiratorial, and with nobody acting like *I* would act, no matter which side of this debate I was on (whether I could make these things, or whether I was to be the recipient).

That is how you know this is a crazy story.

No, it's not crazy, it's simply pure speculation posing as sensible analysis, and is possibly a little higher quality than the usual I see on physics blogs. I have no idea what it costs him to produce that 7 grams of nanoparticle palladium. But I do know someone who knows Arata, and basically the guy just does his work and publishes it, and when I said he doesn't give a fuck what others think, that wasn't just speculation. Lots of people in the cold fusion community would like more details, for sure. Remember, this is recent work. What he does is to send the cylinders off for helium analysis when he's done. He hasn't published those results, AFAIK, but he's known for earlier helium results, using other CF techniques.

Would this Arata guy send ME one of these things? No. There will be all kinds of complicated reasons why not. But ultimately, I predict, no. Perhaps it has to be in a special glass and is specially fragile and they can't move it. Whatever. For some reason, no.

I'll take one. I have access to a calorimeter. I have the perfect right to call "bullshit" until he's willing to send me one. Pass this along, and if he agrees, I'll send contact info.

You imagine I have influence with Arata? In a few months, I have developed enough trust with the people in the field that I can ask questions and get answers from experts, but .... Arata is in a category of his own.

You have the right to call anything bullshit, but ... that means nothing on Wikipedia, if we were following the sourcing guidelines. Perhaps you should watch the recent CBS Sixty Minutes documentary, if you haven't, and check out the seminar Robert Duncan ran at the U. Michigan, I think it was April or so.

The documentary featured the work of Energetics Technologies in Israel, where Duncan, a skeptic, was sent to study what was being done. Duncan turned around. The American Chemical Society published a peer-reviewed Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook in 2008, and in it is Michael McKubre's paper on an exact replication of some ET work. Apparently it works. Reliable source, Milton.

Sure, bullshit. Peer-reviewed, independently published, carefully researched and written, bullshit. Published by the well-known fringe lunatic publishers, the American Chemical Society and Oxford University Press. At this point, I'd say, we start looking how to use this bullshit.

If we look at the overall body of research, it's starting to look like the skeptical position is becoming fringe, with the weird situation that the "fringe opinion" is quite possibly the opinion of the "majority of scientists." Not the majority opinion of the peer reviewers, nor of experts who have actually gone over the research in detail, instead of just sitting back and

bullshitting.

I'm telling you what I know, not what I'd put in an article, what I know is, as usual, when I've spent some time with a field, ahead of what is in RS. This is the case with many subjects, sometimes it takes the peer-reviewed publications years to catch up with what is common knowledge in on-line discussion among experts. And that's the breaks. Wikipedia as it is depends on reliable sources for notability decisions; the basic non-negotiable policy, WP:V, is actually much more easily satisfied, but not notability.

This post has been edited by Abd: Fri 24th July 2009, 2:21am

[A Horse With No Name]

Yes, next month. Some little known facts about that block, my first true block.

Wow, you recalled that incident with grace and charm. I am impressed. You're a good guy, Abd.

[Abd]

Mathsi is an arrogant asshole.

Act I, Scene V,

An American suburban home in Springfield, Massachusetts.
It is early afternoon. Dennis is nibbling a Hershey bar on a stool in the corner
Enter Joyce Grenfell

Oh dear, Dennis, are you upset again?

No I didn't say have you spilt your tea, I said, ARE YOU UPSET AGAIN?

Have you been tinkering around with that boxy thing in the corner - next to your zimmer frame?

You know nursey told you not to touch it.

Have you been typing those horrible naughty things on it that we talked about yesterday?

We'll have to to put you back down in the basement like last time.

Well yes, we know, Adolf and Genghis are down there, but you'll just have to make do.

Quite an imagination, the imagination of an asshole, with his vision only able to see his own interior, and make guesses about what's outside. Bad guesses.

My legal name is Dennis. Nobody knows me by that name except the state and the police.
Springfield? Nah, that's just the data center. Suburban home? Definitely not. Hershey bar? Absolutely not. With the prostate cancer, no carbs for me, VLC diet, great stuff. You could call it a vegetarian diet, because I only eat vegetarians. With coffee and heavy cream. Upset? Well, with over twenty years of on-line flame war experience, and with successful meditation on WP:DGAF, it takes quite a bit to get me upset. I get angry, different thing. I get angry when I see good-faith editors being abused by people like Mathsci and his enablers and the rest of the cabal. But it's still just a fucking wiki. I do what I do because it's there. And if it isn't there, I'll do something else.

Adolf and Genghis, eh? Is Mathsci trying to imply that I'm a ... bad person? Shocked, I'm shocked.

If he only knew how visible he is.

I've used my real name on my user page because what you see is what you get. I don't hide. Mathsci, care to let us know more about your real self?

Let's see what I know already, let me put on my psychic hat, the one with the propeller.

Hmmm..... I can see an academic who may know his field in a narrow sort of way, but whose knowledge of life is shallow, and who is disliked by most of those who have to work closely with him, in person; some of them pretend to like him because they want something from him. He believes that he is a person of high culture, and he certainly has the trappings of it, but he does not have the fundamental humility that is necessary to approach true depth, either in culture or in science. He's contemptuous of others and full of praise for himself and his accomplishments, which he will tell you at the slightest excuse. He has no concept of how to communicate with ordinary people, he writes for himself and a small circle, and he will be soon forgotten, and nobody will miss him.

And if not for the grace of God, dear readers, there go you and I.

[Abd]

Sorry, but I have looked at various WP pages and WR threads on this, so blaming me for "the Wikipedia problem" doesn't wash. In fact, I'm sick of reading about Connelley going around slapping people for pressing something he considers "unscientific". It's been going on for years.

Obviously not sick enough to do something about it, though the links you provided could be useful, I'm still weighing how much to go on the offensive with. See, problem. If it's just me, it's not likely to succeed. By raising the cabal issue, I bit off quite a lot, but it's done, I can't stuff the cat back in the bag. You know it's true, many others know it too, but only only a few have had the courage to confront the lies. But many will complain about it here. Did I whine here about how WMC was abusing me?

Yes, I agree, they are pigheaded and unreasonable. But then, your long, long rants aren't helping. If you can't secure a compromise from Connelley and friends, ask someone who outranks them for help. You might (okay, will) have to modify some of what you want from cold-fusion articles.

I am asking "someone who outranks them for help." Or, more accurately, I've opened the door so that the community can, if it chooses, deal with the problem. If it doesn't, well, it's not time for it.

Every so often, I drop a seed crystal in the pond, to see if the concentration of connectivity has become high enough for intelligence to crystalize. Pouring yoghurt in the lake is the Nasrudin story.

Thanks for the links. I was aware of the media coverage of WMC, I needed to research much of this more than a year ago for RfC/GoRight.

Learn to be a proper victim, it garners more sympathy.

Sympathy is nice, but it's not what I'm seeking. Don't cry for me, I'm not a victim, I am fully blessed in my life, I could die tomorrow and that would be the sum of it.

I win, regardless of the outcome, and I lose only if I violate my own guidance and forget my position as a servant.

^abdun min ^ibaadur-Rahmaan.

one servant among the servants of the merciful.

[Mathsci]

Mathsci, care to let us know more about your real self?

Somey knows my identity already but I trust him not to disclose private emails here (I had to disclose my identity to register because the address mathsci@free.fr was disallowed).

Now in response to your question.

My favourite colour is blue.

My operating system is kubuntu.

Timmy the cat used to sleep on my bed when I was little.

Yesterday I ate a salade italienne and two boules of sorbet - citron and fruit de la passion - for lunch, washed down by a carafe of excellent Aix water and a café glacé. After a performance of suites 1, 3 and 5 for solo violoncello by Heinrich Schiff in the Jeu de Paumes (constructed 1660) I had a small plate of cheese with a glass of red wine. In the afternoon I played movements from the Handel organ concertos Op.4 HWV 289, 292 and 294 with a friend. She also accompanied me on the digital harpsichord in two Bach sonatas for flute in the version for alto recorder. Afterwards on my terrasse we each had a little tartelette aux framboises, a confection made in Celony on the outskirts of Aix, washed down with a glass of orange juice.

Update: write email to Victoria and Albert Museum checking on uploading a second image of Roubiliac sculpture of Handel showing his left arm resting on a leather bound copy of Alexander's Feast.

I'll stop here

This post has been edited by Mathsci: Fri 24th July 2009, 11:08am

[Enric_Naval]

Reading this thread in its enterity ranges among the stupidiest wastes of time that I have had in my life. Now I'm gonna write some evidence for the case.

P.D.: Well, I need to clarify that:

* I have nothing against the people posting here
* I have a problem with WR becoming a place to export petty disputes so you can insult each other, instead of being a meaningful insightful review of wikipedia
* Somey tried to inject some sense, but it got diluted quickly

This post has been edited by Enric_Naval: Sat 25th July 2009, 1:03am

[Grep]

Reading this thread in its enterity ranges among the stupidiest wastes of time that I have had in my life. Now I'm gonna write some evidence for the case.

I think we have a candidate for the third member of the Mathsci team ...

[Mathsci]

What team?

This post has been edited by Mathsci: Fri 24th July 2009, 11:38pm

[Milton Roe]

What team?

The Bourbaki Mathsci team. We're trying to improve it by replacing all parts. We asked Alain Connes who we figured could handle the French and math part (non-commutating differential geometry ), but he was busy on a theory of everything. Egyptology and cold fusion skepticism should be easier to find people for.

Did you once know there was once a WP user:Aconnes who appeared just long enough to upload the Alain Connes photo on his bio, then was made to disappear (apparently oversighted)? Shocking. That photo has no attribution. The photographer Jérôme Chatin never released it to Commons formally. We don't know who uploaded it. But we can take guesses.

Probably it's headed for deletion. More interesting is what happened to user:Aconnes who exercised his right to disappear. Apparently. At some time....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alain_Connes_in_2004.jpg

Here's your chance if you know the man. Put up a snapshot. Now, back to your Aix water.

[Enric_Naval]

Reading this thread in its enterity ranges among the stupidiest wastes of time that I have had in my life. Now I'm gonna write some evidence for the case.

I think we have a candidate for the third member of the Mathsci team ...

I clarified my message above. I was a bit angry when I wrote that.

This post has been edited by Enric_Naval: Sat 25th July 2009, 1:03am

[A Horse With No Name]

* I have a problem with WR becoming a place to export petty disputes so you can insult each other, instead of being a meaningful insightful review of wikipedia

Don't knock it until you've tried it.

[Milton Roe]

* I have a problem with WR becoming a place to export petty disputes so you can insult each other, instead of being a meaningful insightful review of wikipedia

Don't knock it until you've tried it.

Yes. Wikipedia itself perhaps needs an uncivil maladiction page. Where you can say to some pestiferous and pretentious functionary:

You know, you might PRETEND you're a feared and respected tenured professor of canon law at a university, but your behavior suggests that in real life you're more of a nervous lagomorphic little cecotrope-eating hindgut-fementer who needs to go back to the bottom of the social food-chain where you actually came from...

Some things just need to be pointed out. Saves on red-faces later, when the emperor is found to have no clothes in a much larger auditorium. Run, rabbit, run.

[EricBarbour]

My favourite colour is blue.
My operating system is kubuntu.

KDE is for Euro-trash.

You know, you might PRETEND you're a feared and respected tenured professor of canon law at a university, but your behavior suggests that in real life you're more of a nervous lagomorphic little cecotrope-eating hindgut-fementer who needs to go back to the bottom of the social food-chain where you actually came from...

I'll drink to that. Tommy Gavin will drink to that, also.

[Grep]

To be honest, the hilarity value is certainly on the wane, but it looks to me as if Hersfold is getting a little involved for a supposedly neutral clerk.

[Enric_Naval]

So, back to reviewing wikipedia. Is there really an anti Cold Fusion cabal in wikipedia that purposefully wants to paint CF in a bad light? Or is it all in Abd's mind? And what the arbs will do about this one?