User talk:Christopher Thomas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archives
December 2005 and earlier

Contents 1 Dark star 2 Black hole 3 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Enriched limit 4 Black hole 2 5 Zero 6 Blocked user issue 7 Please consider rendering an opinion 8 Talk:Time travel 9 Anti-gravity 10 m/z is pseudo science 11 The "cycles theory" 12 Vandalism tag at User talk:DV8 2XL 13 The note is already on PNA/Physics 14 RE:Current revision 15 PNA/Physics revision complete 16 Neutronium 17 Pages Needing Attention/Pseudoscience 18 thanks from Wikibooks/ThinkStarship 19 Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Physics 20 Depleted uranium 21 Wearable Critiques 22 Troubling patterns of edits and what to do about them 23 Packistani A-bomb 24 Unsigned 25 Info about Aslan 26 User:Juansempere 27 Edits to quasar 28 adminship 29 Administrators 30 Toronto parks 31 CTMU 32 LinkSpammer/Vandal has returned 33 Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Hillman/Dig 34 Hillman mediation case 35 Biologists and philosophers have the right to have their opinions on time in this encyclopedia 36 those are not my views, biologists and philosophers had those views for centuries. Read this proposal 37 Thanks 38 There's a difference between a sockpuppet and a brother 39 Redshift 40 Reply from Andrew Hamilton 41 WikiProject_Pseudoscience 42 What's Think Starship?

[edit] Dark star

You might want to take a look at Talk:Dark star. I am at the limit of my knowledge in keeping out pseudoscience and you might be able to do better. Ken Arromdee 02:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from a quick read, the article itself is ok as of the time I'm making this comment. What specific points in the talk page did you want me to look at? It appears that discussion has been going on for quite a while. --Christopher Thomas 03:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The article itself is still okay. In November I removed some questionable-sounding material which seemed to be suggesting that new quantum mechanical ideas of black holes are proving the dark star idea right. Among other problems, it claimed that the equations by which a dark star emits radiation are similar to those for Hawking radiation from quantum mechanical black holes, without giving any source.

User:ErkDemon wants the material back and is trying to argue that it's correct. Ken Arromdee 17:22, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I've taken another look at the debate, and it's still as clear as mud. From what I can tell, he's perhaps a bit on the zealous side, but I think you're also misunderstanding a couple of his points. I've offered to provide a third opinion on the talk page, and have requested short lists of contested edits/issues there. --Christopher Thomas 23:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black hole

I've been intermittently active here lately, so I missed most of the black hole discussions. It seems that you did a wonderful job with the explanations, so I'm not sure that much else can be done to help the anon user with his difficulty; it is hard to figure out what he's having trouble with. I will keep track to see if I can add anything Salsb 01:21, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm mostly just worried about making a gaffe that lets some other user come in and say "aha - you're just pretending you know what you're talking about!" for this discussion. The other thing is, my math isn't good enough for me to actually write out a toy problem for a Schwarzschild black hole or to mathematically define coordinate systems with the properties I qualitatively described, and at one point one of the discussion participants had directly requested something along those lines. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though; enjoy your semi-sabbatical! --Christopher Thomas 05:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Enriched limit

Hi Chris. Your vote would be appreciated on the above AfD. Thanks --DV8 2XL 04:26, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. The user who wrote the article appears to have a habit of writing small stub articles without checking for larger articles that already contain relevant content. I've also noticed a few disagreements about dates and so forth, which I've noted on associated talk pages. I'm a bit concerned about this user's activities, though most of them are far enough outside my areas of expertise that I can't check them. --Christopher Thomas 07:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black hole 2

--Sorry about the black hole density v. radius edit. I double-checked, and I guess I did get it wrong. Tony 24.116.16.155 21:55, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Zero

Hi Chris,

Thanks for exposing yourself as interested in what I am interested in. If you are interested in reading the information described in Empty Nest, here is the Chapter that contains the info on zero's significance: [[1]]. Halfway the chapter, you'll find the tables. It did get published and created a stir (but not much more). Naturally, if you are not interested I want to apologize and thank you for your time in which I bothered you. Yes, you may delete this heading.FredrickS

[edit] Blocked user issue

Greetings! Yes, the user appears to be blocked. Blocked users retain the ability to edit their own talk pages (but nothing else) -- the idea was to give them at least one place to leave an unblock request. When the user is an obvious vandal, sometimes we protect the talk page to get them to stop. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 18:47, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. Happy editing, Antandrus (talk) 22:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please consider rendering an opinion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clean safe nuclear energy thank-you --DV8 2XL 09:53, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Time travel

The comments were removed as part of a cleanup after the article the comments referred to was deleted by Jimbo Wales due to legal concerns. There have been complaints. Please leave the comments off the talk page. If you have concerns, please ask on my talk page as I would like to keep the discussion centralized and there are dozens of other pages similarly affected. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-gravity

Thanks. The previous math symbol was square root of 3, which didn't make sense to me. 1 over square root of 3 is exactly the reported figure. -MegaHasher 04:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] m/z is pseudo science

• Christopher: thanks for noticing that I made a good argument. It is too bad that you too want to delete it. You say your hobby is fighting pseudo-science on Wikipedia. So do I. m/z is pure pseudo-science. Please help me fight it. Kehrli 12:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• References: the conclusions in the article are based on very few references: (1) Newtons second and third Law, (2) the Lorenz formula, and (3) the IUPAC green book. There are no other references needed for the conclusions in the article. Reference (3) is mentioned, the other two can be found in any physics book. Kehrli 12:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Again, the problem is that you have to cite sources that make your conclusions for you already. The best way you can do this is to convince a professor or two to write up a document explaining things, and have it hosted by their (reputable) universities. Wikipedia can't host the only document spelling out the conclusions.

As for it being classed as "pseudoscience", I'd actually just class it as "bizzare nomenclature". Just about every scientist knows how a mass spectrometer works. They're just cheating on the dimensionality of their favourite units, which while annoying, is IMO pretty harmless. Best of luck in your efforts to convince them not to do this. --Christopher Thomas 17:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The "cycles theory"

I don't know what the circumstances of the previous addition of it was, but if it was deleted you can just have it speedily deleted as {{db-repost}}. 68.39.174.238 06:09, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't originally posted in its present form, so I felt going through a proper AfD process was warranted. What happened last time, if memory serves, was that one or two articles were created, but lots of information was stuffed into existing and otherwise-sane articles.--Christopher Thomas 06:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism tag at User talk:DV8 2XL

An action that I disagree with? How am I supposed to know it's not vandalism when a user blanks a page and redirects it to a disambig without an edit summary? I don't investigate every user I warn to see if they might be in good standing. --Rory096 06:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The note is already on PNA/Physics

In case you didn't notice it, the discussion is at Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal. If you would rather the discussions remain centered, we can do that too -- I've been copying things that didn't seem to obviously belong to a talk page to Wikipedia talk:Pages needing attention/Physics, a page that I moved and redirected to a section of Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics' alternate pages. If you want a seperate subpage for the material that was at PNA/Physics that would be fine too. In the meantime, I'm getting a lot of neglected cleanup done on PNA/Physics -- some of those pages had been cleaned up for months or years. That's why we're implementing the automated system -- we need to have attention directed at newly troubled pages, not those that have been fixed for eons. Alba 16:26, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm perfectly willing to accomodate whatever WikiProject maintainers decide. But it's been my observation so far that I get more helpful responses by being bold, making the changes, and then seeing people's opinions of them. We've gotten a bunch of good suggestions that way. Merely suggesting a change tends to be met with apathy, and the whole point of the cleanup sorting project is to draw people's attention to problem articles. Alba 18:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and you're right, the notice should be at the top. Alba 18:14, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE:Current revision

This IP is actually a shared computer at a high school. I didn't do the vandalism but I got on this computer just after someone got off. I would just block this IP from editing if I were you - shared computers at high schools usually spell disaster for Wikipedia unfortunately. 165.234.107.63 13:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PNA/Physics revision complete

Per your request to keep PNA/Physics discussion together, I copied the comments labeled "this month" and "last month" (more like last six months) to Wikipedia talk:Pages needing attention/Physics, and fixed the redirect. If you still think that this discussion doesn't belong in the page it's now embedded in, feel free to move it to the talk page currently containing the redirect. I'm not a fanatic about putting that material literally under a WikiProject -- the point is simply to have something auto-updated so it doesn't go stale (as the PNA/Physics board can do).

I'm putting the transclusions back just so you and others can see what they're intended to look like. The idea is to have an autoupdated list of current needs posted on all relevant WikiProjects so that the immense backlog gets dealt with faster and more effectively. Again, if this is seriously against your aethestic, you can zap it -- it's ya'll's WikiProject, not mine.

As a holder of a B.S. in physics myself, I may try to tackle a couple once I'm done with this massive project. In conclusion, good luck! Alba 16:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutronium

Hi, When I read this article, I can't always tell wheather i'm reading fact or fiction. Tobyk777 21:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• The intro and first paragraph are the confusing parts. Tobyk777 22:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Also in the first paragraph, you use the abbreviation "scil." which I had the darnedest time finding a definition for. The only def I found was that it was short for "scilicet" and I'm still a little confused. Maybe another word could be used that's easier for people to understand. After all, I'm by no means a professor, but I'm hardly a dummy. Thanks. (Not a registered user) 07/14/06. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.112.146.223 (talk • contribs) on 18:03, 14 July 2006.

I'm not the one who added that block of text. Check the "history" tab to see who added it, or better yet, just post on talk:neutronium asking about it. --Christopher Thomas 18:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pages Needing Attention/Pseudoscience

How exactly do you intend to flag articles to go into this category? Most pseudoscience articles don't have a "pseudoscience" category classification, either due to not being found yet or due to being aggressively defended by their enthusiasts. You could get a superset of _potential_ pseudoscience articles by looking for science articles with POV tags or OR tags, but a superset doesn't sound terribly useful for this project. --Christopher Thomas 03:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, about a hundred articles have shown up there on the first run. If the happy day ever comes that these all get fixed, I can have Pearle look for additional problem tags. If there are dubious categories you would like Pearle to scan that not under Category:Pseudoscience, you can add them to the "Categories covered" section. Feel free to drop a line if there are any problems or if you have any suggestions for improvement. Thanks for your interest and your work on improving Wikipedia's scientific accuracy! -- Beland 05:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thanks from Wikibooks/ThinkStarship

Thanks for your thoughts over on my discussion page. I have now answered you, if you are interested, and will probably eventually move some of what you have said to the pages they are apropriate to in the document. I hope you will take the time to stop by again some time. And, Im curious how you found me? (lol.) Thanks again Prometheuspan 21:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC) ping. Thanks for your thoughts and information, i have now answered you. I really do hope that you will see your way clear to make these presentations to the areas of the text that could benefit from them. I am not an expert in physics, just Sociology, Psychology, Psychonautics, Political Science, and Ecology Sciences...(I am covering a lot of bases, but i can't cover them all.) Thanks again. -prometheuspan

[edit] Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Physics

Hello. A bit more than a week ago, you removed all listings from this page in preparation for a new bot run. When can we expect it to be maintained again? --Christopher Thomas 03:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

The bot has already run; the content has just been moved to different subpages because the unified listing was getting too long for some purposes. You may now choose to transclude or visit, in addition to the above-mentioned "overview" subpage, any or all of:

• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Modern physics
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Classical physics
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Other physics topics

It sounds like not all of the using pages have been updated to take this into account? Please do let me know if the PNA pages themselves need to be changed, so I can keep the bot in sync. Thanks, Beland 03:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers to the sub-pages. They're now on my watchlist. --Christopher Thomas 04:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Depleted uranium

My rewrite of the Legal issues section of depleted uranium is being reverted. please look it over and judge if it should stay. I trust your opinion please don't if you don't think it warrants it. Thanks --DV8 2XL 20:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I think User:Badagnani has rather strongly-held views, and that if the current dispute continues, he'll provoke you into being uncivil and we'll end up with both of you in dispute resolution. I've proposed a hopefully-more-tractable approach to handling article rewrites on Talk:Depleted uranium. Even if the two of you still end up disagreeing, it'll still produce as an endpoint a version of the article that's demonstrably endorsed by the community, and I'm pretty sure you have the highest chance of having your proposed version accepted. --Christopher Thomas

Hello, it's nice of you to provide suggestions in this dispute. Perhaps it would be a good idea if you might also suggest that the "health effects" and "legal status" sections (the huge deletions of factual and properly cited material) first be restored, then we'll proceed from there? Otherwise nothing really will have changed and the article will continue to be dismantled selectively, bit by bit, until it fits a single editor's view of which facts are (most) important. Thanks again. Badagnani 03:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

From what I can see, part of the problem is that you and User:DV8 2XL have very different opinions on the validity of these sources (among other things). Placing hardlinks to the article versions in question on the talk page would definitely be a good idea, at minimum, so that nobody has to sift through the article history to find references that may or may not be in the main article. I'm going to abstain from giving an opinion on what should be in the article itself while negotiations are going on, though, as I'm not presently in a position to devote enough research time to give a well-informed opinion (work deadline approaching). --Christopher Thomas 03:56, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, again I appreciate your time and attention. But the way it stands, this provides tacit approval for the blanking huge sections of articles. You should know that the references in the blanked sections are and were not in dispute; they are the way the article stood after the process which you describe (hammering out differences between editors with different views of what the article should be) had already taken place over a period of months. Now that a certain editor is now banned from the article, the "majority editors" (primarily pro-nuclear industry people, I suppose, from the selective deletions I've watched these editors make over the past half year or so) seem to be seizing the opportunity to remove all his contributions, believing that there remains no significant "opposition" to their view. I did my best to stem this whittling process, which I believe not to be in the best interests of Wikipedia and complete knowledge about this material (depleted uranium), but if I will have no support, I guess I have to say it doesn't say much for our process; it is personally disappointing to see so much factual, sourced material thrown out the window through such unilateral moves, with no real remedy. Best of luck with your work. Badagnani 04:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wearable Critiques

Hi Chris, I appreciate you commentary on Mann's stuff. There are a lot of extremely inflated reports on him (implants etc.), that I think he propogates. I worked in his lab for my final year too; I did my best to bring some his actions on Wikipedia to light, but I eventaully abstained from comment as my views could only come across as biased at that point.Maneesh 04:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Troubling patterns of edits and what to do about them

Hi, can you drop by my user talk page? User:ObsidianOrder and User:Omegatron are very upset over my recent activity in correlating anon edits (in some cases, suggesting real life identities). Obsidian is threatening to ArbCom me, and Omegatron seems to believe (quite incorrectly) that I posted personal contact information of individuals I suspect of editing anonymously, which is absolutely not true. ---CH 22:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I took a brief look at it earlier, and took a longer look now. Short version is that I'm not touching it until discussion cools down further :). The good news is, people seem to be calming down now.

My best recommendation for how to proceed is to continue to point out conflicts of interest for which there is direct evidence (owner of a web site is known to be biased, making that site a biased source), but avoiding posting about most conjectures that are based on indirect evidence (anon X from server Y is potentially person Z, who is biased). Even if these are likely to be correct, they won't stand up as evidence in RFCs or ArbCom cases, and will draw flack (as you've found), so I'm not sure posting them publically performs a useful function. My suggestion is to keep any anon-tracking records in your own offline repository, and instead take issue with any objectionable actions performed by the anons in question.

But, that's just a suggestion. I don't think accusations of posting personal information would stick; I just don't think posting the IP information produces enough benefit to be worth the flack you'll receive over it. --Christopher Thomas 23:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Packistani A-bomb

I have put this article up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Packistani A-bomb. Your opinion on this matter would be appreciated. --DV8 2XL 01:45, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unsigned

Hi Christopher! I wanted to say that I thank you for adding those "unsigned" templates to all of the various folks who leave messages on my talk page. Do you have it on your watchlist for some reason? I am not weirded out by it, but I find it somewhat curious that you do it so consistently without being asked. Thank you for it, regardless! --Fastfission 16:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist. I'd added it when we were having a conversation at one point, and never un-added it. I add unsigned templates to most unsigned comments that come across my watchlist, partly as a public service and partly because I'm a detail-freak ;). I've thought about making a bot to add unsigned templates, but that probably falls into the "spend a few days making a script to do a few hours work in a few seconds" category. --Christopher Thomas 16:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Info about Aslan

Aslan appears The Horse and His Boy in the last half of Chapter 9. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jobongo (talk • contribs) on 19:16, 14 June 2006.

[edit] User:Juansempere

Hi, I am approaching burnout re cruft control in gtr-related pages, but I just saw the message on my talk page from Juansempere (talk • contribs). Checking his most recent edits I was pretty appalled; it almost seems like he might be trying to create a whole bunch of hoax articles. See Talk:Introduction to general relativity. I guess Sempere might also be editing as the Jazztel triple play services anon from near Madrid, e.g 87.217.88.42 (talk • contribs). I might have to take a wikibreak pretty soon, but just wanted to try to let you (also Ed S) know that Sempere's edits need to be monitored (and probably reverted). ---CH 00:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It's probably best to bring this to the attention of the WikiProject:Physics crew, as I don't have enough SR/GR expertise to tell invalid from valid-but-poorly-phrased contributions. Thanks for the heads-up, though. Enjoy your break! --Christopher Thomas 01:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to quasar

I added a comment to the entry on Quasars with two objects in mind. One was to explore this strange encyclopedia and how it works, the other to float out a little controversy to see if there was a reaction.

You removed it.

I see you are against pseudo science, so am I, I am also against consensual opinion remaining unchallenged. For instance:

"This mechanism is also believed to explain why quasars were more common in the early universe" from the current entry. There is not a shred of evidence that quasars were more common in the early universe and yet this is stated as a fact.

Keith Matthews

I removed your comment because it appeared to violate WP:NOR. This was the correct action to take regardless of the state of the rest of the article. If you feel something in the article is insufficiently referenced, place a comment on the talk page asking for a reference, or put a {{fact}} template after the article statement in question.

As for the statement you take issue with, quasars are all at high redshifts. Interpreting this as meaning anything other than that quasars were common only in the early universe requires throwing out the big bang model. Interpretations of quasar observations under non-standard cosmologies are already mentioned in the article.--Christopher Thomas 16:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] adminship

Hi Chris. I think you ought to be trusted with the responsibilities of adminship. Would you be willing to take them? -lethe ^{talk +} 20:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the nomination, but I don't think I'd be able to effectively fill the role. One of the questions that's usually asked is "what would you do with admin powers that you don't do now?". My answer to that would be, "not much". I wouldn't patrol the AfD queue, I would be unlikely to protect/unprotect pages, and I'd stay as far away as possible from most of the drama on AN/I. About the only thing I might do is block repeated IP vandals, and that seems to be done quickly enough without my help.

I certainly appreciate the thought, though. --Christopher Thomas 20:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

AN/I is certainly an ugly drama pit. I can appreciate the sentiment. Cheers. -lethe ^{talk +} 21:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Administrators

Over the years of the evolution of this Wikipedia, I have had some runins with administrators and editors, I am not impressed by their resume's and backgrounds to judge who is correct in disputes, so they sometimes use their own biases and gut feelings in my opinion. What experiences have you had to counter my experiences, I would like to better trust them rather than disputing them all the time when they revert peer reviewed articles that support my improvements. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.12.116.197 (talk • contribs) on 20:03, 11 July 2006.

My own experience has been that administrators aren't always right, but are usually objecting to actions for valid reasons. They're also usually open to good-faith attempts at talking over the dispute. Failing that, see WP:DR for guidelines on how to proceed. That's about the extent of the advice I can give you, so please continue this with whatever admins you're having difficulties with, rather than on my talk page. --Christopher Thomas 20:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but as you were offering unsolicited advise on others talk pages, some thought you to be an expert or official of Wikis. Our mistake. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.10.168.145 (talk • contribs) on 20:58, 15 July 2006.

[edit] Toronto parks

Hi Christopher. Note also Daloonik2 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log). I've speedily deleted a couple of those park articles for having no actual content and simply restating the title. Random note, a quick look over your work tells me I think you'd make a good admin too (as lethe said above). Best, Proto///type 06:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CTMU

Hello, Christopher. Thanks for letting me know about the bot/clean-up thing, and apologies if I caused inconvenience. I'm still very new to Wikipedia, so all the intricacies of its inner workings are still setting into my skull. Like you seem to, I am very concerned about the pseudoscience that proliferates around here, particularly because I have seen students get taken in by it, thinking that if it is in an encyclopaedia it must be true. I am having a time of it trying to fix an article on the "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe, which is something like a Sokal hoax with genuine good intentions behind it (i.e. the author seems to believe his theory). It's all terminology, no predictions, and some of the terminology isn't even used correctly. However, there are two ardent defenders of this theory, who keep reverting my edits, and make life very difficult for me (I think one of them may even be the author of the idea, just an impression I got). Anyway, matters are made more difficult because there is no published paper debunking the idea (why would us real academics bother?), but the theory itself has been published in an Intelligent Design journal, and yet they won't even let me put some of the doubts, with references, that the scientific community has about the journal in the article! Any change I make just gets reverted, even if it is to place tags like "disputed", "NPOV" etc. on the article: the proponents of this theory just remove them and accuse me of being a vandal. What can I do? I'm beginning to wonder if outright deletion isn't an option: the theory is hardly notable (it has seemingly not been cited in scientific literature, at least according to citebase.org and Google scholar). Most of its "notability" seems to ride on the claims of the author to have an astronomical IQ and the few articles in the popular press which have been written about him...which Wikipedia's policy on sources for scientific articles says isn't quite good enough. You seem to have more experience at this sort of thing, so while I am happy to do the work myself, what advice can you give me so I can work effectively?--Byrgenwulf 06:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. How can I help your Project Pseudoscience? --Byrgenwulf 06:51, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

You seem to have a reasonable grasp of how to edit, and that's the main thing. It looks like you've also been attempting to look up relevant policies before taking actions, and that's _much_ better than most new users, so I think you're already contributing usefully. If you're going to list articles for deletion, check the "how to list articles for deletion" section of WP:AFD for the details, but you seem to have gotten enough of it right for the AfD you started to be in progress.

As for dealing with pseudoscience articles, you can flag specific articles needing urgent attention at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics, and by all means make corrections yourself if the articles are in your area of expertise. I've already noted your AfD on the WikiProject Physics talk page, so a few more people should review it shortly. --Christopher Thomas 15:44, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LinkSpammer/Vandal has returned

The indefinitely blocked Wayne Smith has returned with a new IP address and a long list of new re-direct domain names. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=202.137.162.250

yale

Already noticed, and posted about it to WikiProject Physics. If this is a _banned_ user, post to WP:AN/I to get an administrator's attention (I am not an administrator). --Christopher Thomas 02:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Hillman/Dig

Hi, I think you will be interested in this MfD, which is a consequence of threats by User:Tim Smith and User:DrL to have me blocked for violating the privacy of DrL (talk • contribs) and Asmodeus (talk • contribs) by virtue of my documentation at User:Hillman/Dig/Langan. ---CH 23:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Vote added. While I believe you're acting in the best interests of Wikipedia, you're also coming off as a bit of a crusader. I think your stress would be lower if you picked your battles more carefully. --Christopher Thomas 02:44, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Christopher, I noticed that you reverted Hillman's page which is, IMO, in violation of WP. We are not talking about just tracking edits. Hillman has conjecture regarding my identity, including links to my job and other personal information completely irrelevant and very invasive. Is this a violation of WP or isn't it? I would really like to know, so if you can clarify, I would really appreciate it. DrL 18:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

If you have questions about policy as it applies to these pages, ask administrators (for example, on WP:AN/I). However, the pages in question have already been looked over by administrators. If you have problems with User:Hillman's actions, go through the steps described in Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. Except for vandalism reversion, altering pages in others' user space is generally frowned upon. I'm frankly puzzled why you both haven't gone into dispute resolution already, as grandstanding isn't benefitting either you or Hillman. --Christopher Thomas 18:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't realize that but since the page is about DrL, I don't think that should apply. I haven't done much editing on Wikipedia and don't really know how to use the system. I did just put in a request for an advocate and I think I did it correctly after several edits. I am trying to make a place on the admin incident page now because this is really a totally different issue than simple tracking that had been discussed. I do appreciate your advice. I did try to put some kind of a warning in Hillman's user area but had no luck in formatting it yet. DrL 19:06, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hillman mediation case

I don't really have much to contribute there but this might be something: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Iloveminun/Proposed_decision#Keeping_notes to add to your statement. rootology 20:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I've already seen the other references to this link, but thanks for the note. This isn't an arbitration case yet, so I've altered the section heading. It wouldn't surprise me if it went to arbitration eventually, though. --Christopher Thomas 21:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Christopher I just thought I'd let you know that DrL only created the "Mega Foundation" and two "Ultranet" articles, but she edited the "Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe" article extensively (particularly during the AfD fiasco). Asmodeus has created no articles, but has edited all of them in this "genre", including a very unflattering edit to the "Mega Society". Tim Smith created the CTMU article initially. It's hard to keep track, I know.

You may wish to update your statement accordingly. Byrgenwulf 21:06, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

My statement was that DrL and a small number of others created and promoted the pages in question. This still appears to be correct. Asmodeus was only mentioned in reference to the "Hillman is an AI program/Hillman is several people" thread, which he directly participated in.

Thanks for the concern, though. --Christopher Thomas 21:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Christopher T, I have asked Jitse and/or Lethe to forward an email to you which I hope you recieve! ---CH 22:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

No email received as-yet. I'd offer to serve as escrow/witness for your RL identity if I thought either you or DrL would spring for that, but I suspect that you would find that an unacceptable violation of your privacy, and that DrL would consider me too biased to serve as a reliable escrow agent. --Christopher Thomas 01:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Not at all, in fact this sounds exactly like something I suggested to DrL waaaaay back when the CTMU deletion review was still going on. In temporal order, I recall that I:

1. Dropped by DrL's user talk page to ask her directly but politely if she is (name elided) (apparently now (name elided)) IRL (she has simply deleted these messages, but you can find them by looking at the history page),
2. When she evaded the question four times, I said (probably in the deletion review and probably also on my user talk page or her user talk page) that if she really is not (name elided) I urgently desired correction, but noted that I need to believe her denial,
3. I said I was willing to discuss creative alternatives with her, and I specifically suggested agreeing upon a mutually trusted third party, to whom she could establish her true identity. I wrote in the CTMU deletion debate "Under the circumstances, I wish you would not stand upon principle and that you and Dr L would simply provide some convincing evidence that you do not have any personal connection with the subjects of the articles you have edited, particularly CTMU. If you don't wish to divulge your identities to me, is there perhaps some third party whom you would trust to verify your IRL identity, but to not tell me what it is, just that it is not (name elided) or (name elided)? Someone whom I would trust to verify your IRL id? Barring this, would you and Dr L at least be willing to state outright that you are not the person known to me as (name elided) or the person known to me as (name elided), the confounders of (organization elided) and ((name elided)) the author of (work elided)?" (arghghghg, just noticed that I forgot to wikisign that comment, but of course I meant to wikisign it; see [2] about 2/3 down the page; I am pretty sure I suggested this twice and that she ignored it both times, but the discusion has become so fragemented that I can't locate the other comment)

Anyway, thanks for your offer. When you get my email we can discuss the details by email.---CH 03:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Email received. Not much to say in response that I haven't already added to the mediation page. --Christopher Thomas 03:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Email: excellent! Can you explore with DrL whether she (?) and Asmodeus still claim not to be (name elided) or (name elided), and if so, whether DrL and Asmodeus would be willing to establish their IRL identities to you to your satisfaction, so that you can tell me that you believe that I guessed wrong? In that case, of course, I think much of this furor would become moot, although I'd still like their cooperation in helping me figure out what went wrong (if indeed this particular "dig" really did employ misleading methodology). ---CH 03:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Staying *way* clear of this for now. It's also very different from what I'm proposing to do with you. For you, I need to verify that there's someone (anyone) at the terminal, and get a non-identification-related verbal statement from you ("I'm the only one editing this account"). You're proposing that I ask a question these two have already refused to answer, and that they have the right to withhold: "Are you (specific RL person)?". Further discussion directly related to the mediation case should probably be done on the mediation case's page. --Christopher Thomas 03:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Now I am confused, but please email me. ---CH 04:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

My proposal, as stated on the mediation page, is to 1) establish that the person on the other end of your user account has a verifiable identity, and 2) obtain a statement from this verified person that the account is used by only one human. This information would be held in escrow by me: i.e., I would attest to its existence, but not provide the information itself (your identity). The purpose of this exercise is to attempt to resolve any allegations regarding improper use of the User:Hillman Wikipedia account.

The statement in the email you had relayed to me in theory does this, but in practice if you and DrL indicate that the proposal is acceptable to you on the mediation page, I'll go through the whole due-dilligence song and dance and actually track you down in the manner described in my proposal.

What you appear to be proposing above is that DrL and Asmodeus reveal their identities, in escrow, to someone (me). The problem is that this doesn't accomplish anything useful. The only possible things I can say after receiving the escrow information are that they aren't the people you think they are, or nothing at all. In both cases, you know whether or not they're who you suspect they are, so the escrow is pointless. Similarly, me reporting on whether or not they have a conflict of interest, rather than their identities, ends up revealing the same information.

Per previous requests, please put any compromise proposals you like on the mediation page, as opposed to suggesting them here. However, discussion of the proposals should probably go in the "discussion" sections, to avoid clutter (I'm just looking for "accept"/"reject" bullets in my own proposals). --Christopher Thomas 04:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, well I agree to your validating my IRL identity. I just left a message in User talk:Hillman explaining my proposal that DrL and I both take a break to await the result of the MfD and the ArbCom ruling which may bear upon this affair, and if DrL and her advocate agree, the Mediation proceeding may become moot by the middle of next week. However, feel free to email me to explain what you would need me to do. ---CH 23:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Per previous requests, place a statement that you are willing to accept the compromise proposal, with minimal extra discussion, in the appropriate subsection of the mediation request page. I'll proceed with one or both of the offered courses of action if and only if I get an explicit acceptance statement on that page in the appropriate location. So far, instead, you've been replying here and DrL has been starting discussion threads. --Christopher Thomas 23:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biologists and philosophers have the right to have their opinions on time in this encyclopedia

Ok i guess this is the page to explain myself to you. everything i have written is deleted including my father's autobiography, this is the world these days... of course in the mean time i was blocked not to be able to respnd by mr. Connolley who called 'junk' all those articles so i called him Mr. Junk in ironic reply, no vandalism, the same word and sorry about that. But the matter is time and the different views of pysicists and biologists. To delete everything and maintain the point of view of physics about time which so deeply difers from the point of view of biology and philosophy and eastern cultures as the dogmatic truth is called censorship. I planned to work 'discontnuously'this week to edit in better english the ideas about time i bring here from those other traditions... , from classic sources including the work of that Luis Sancho (google luis sancho soto and the books on his deleted biography to get hits, these themes are on 'Ciclos del tiempo'). Other errors come from the fact i am learning to edit this wiki thing. But the matter here is time. Do physicists have the absolute right to know truth? Why? Every biologist know there are infinite clocks int eh Universe, ahve we to stick to Mr. Galileo definition? Why? Are science a religion with a single point of view? Why? It will take me a time to find the exact quotes of Boltzmann, Sancho, Einstein, Lao Tse, etc. as i am in holidays, ok? Just be patient. But of course, if you delete again the article i repost i just will abandon the encyclopedia. But i again quote einstein 'those who seek to impose the truth through power are the laughs of gods'the nature of time is still an ongoing discussion and the works i quoted here are all printed works from more than 15 years, if they are not translated or common knowledge in american universities is not my fault. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.166.110.253 (talk • contribs) , aka Alvatros (talk • contribs), on 00:32, 2 August 2006.

What I've been trying to point out to you, repeatedly, is that neither you nor anyone else has a "right" to have your views shown in Wikipedia. The only material that belongs in Wikipedia articles is material published elsewhere in sources that meet the criteria listed in WP:RS. You can either play by Wikipedia's rules, or you can leave. --Christopher Thomas 00:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] those are not my views, biologists and philosophers had those views for centuries. Read this proposal

So this is my question to the 5 people (including me) who have been in this argument. I wont repose the articles. Howevery if you 5 give me a vote (mine is yes) on this question and we get majority yes, i will go on with this interesting effort: i am going to prepare int eh sand box a few articles on the other visions of time, the philosophical vision who deals with past, present and future, the 3 temporal verbs, and the biological vision who deals with feedbacks, multiple cycles and the arrows of informative evolution and derviates. I will quote and search for that before putting them, i will use many authors not only my father work (who writes in basque, but if you google his translations to spanish come out luis sancho soto), so again he is as authorized to be quoted as mr. smolin, mr. penrose or whoever writes in english. Still i will qote mainly biologists, eastern philosophers and system scientists. And the question is, since it is going to be a big effort: are you going to give a chance to those articles or just bring the dogmatic vision of physicists that 'time is what a clock measures' (einstein) as oppossed to philosophers: 'time is all forms of change'Aristotle, and biologists with his arrow of information and life? Please do respond me to my talk, i have spent the entire week end on those articles and you just erase it in seconds. And that is not fair. I ask yo u to forget any argument or cultural bashing i had done, (apologize for that) and put an objective pov on this. Respect to sources: quoting the article yo send me to: 'For example, do not use a foreign-language newspaper as a source unless there is no equivalent article in an English-language newspaper. However, foreign-language sources are acceptable in terms of verifiability, subject to the same criteria as English-language sources.' Now the matter i guess is about the books of 'Luis Sancho', his first book on basque on quantic space-time appeared in 1983, when Mr Smolin had not even ended his grade. His classic thesis on quantic Riemannian Geometries (The Error of Einstein) is from 1992... etc. Why Mr. Smolin, to put an example, of a one of his friends from whom he has the utmost respect, is however an authorized author and he cannot. We are all aware that if your are a monk in Austria called Mendel you wont be an authorized source for 100 years... it is that fair? I have never quote something wrong. The ideas were from taoist and budist writers, from leibniz, from boltzmann, from penrose, smolin and yes that sancho too. All published writers, some better known than others for non-objetive reasons... But if so you wish i will even scrap all references to his work, and merely express the common views of systemic and biologic sciences. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alvatros (talk • contribs) on 01:59, 2 August 2006.

A better place to create sandbox articles of this type would be in your userpage space (for example, at "User:Alvatros/sandbox_article"). The Wikipedia:Sandbox article is blanked regularly. Regarding voting, you still seem to be missing the point. Articles that are properly sourced, conforming to both WP:NOR and WP:RS, generally stay. Articles that aren't properly sourced get deleted. It is your responsibility to make sure that any article you write is in compliance with Wikipedia policies (which you should read). You should also make sure that the information you are trying to present isn't already presented elsewhere (the idea of spacetime being quantized, for example, is well-known and is discussed at quantum gravity and elsewhere).

Lastly, please add comments at the _bottom_ of talk pages, and sign by putting "~~~~" at the end of your comment. This is automatically expanded into a datestamped signature. --Christopher Thomas 02:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok but quantized 'space' with 'time'as a 'geometrical dimension' dependant on space since galileo's formula (V+S/T), what aristotles calls 'time- change as translation of space' is not what i want to tal about. That is physical time and indeed it is perfectly written in quantum gravity. What i want to talk is about quantic time, since time is change and aristotle already defined translation in space (physical time) as only one of the 4 types of time-change. The others, morphological change, and time-evolution, and philosophical time, are hardly studied by american physicists, but around people like my father there is an entire bad known i admit but very interesting new school of thought, with enough resources and that and the precedents since lao tzu and aristotle is what i will try to introduce... you seem to vote a mildly ýes. I am translating his works and there is a lot of well reserached references there so if he gives me the copyright i will go ahead. I really like this encyclopedia, i think it will be time permited superior to the britannica It is all very well understood and i do appreciate your time correcting me, youth has little reflexion (-: —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alvatros (talk • contribs) on 03:52, 2 August 2006.

I am not "voting" anything. I am trying to tell you that, no matter how interesting or innovative or well-researched any essay you write is, it can only be a Wikipedia article if someone else said it in print, and this previous publication is cited as a reference. That's the whole point of WP:NOR, which I've been pointing you to for a while now. The purpose of Wikipedia is not to be a clearinghouse for ideas - it's to give a description of all entities (people, objects, ideas) that have been published about and that are noteworthy, more or less. --Christopher Thomas 04:10, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

THE CORE MATTER HERE IS THAT TIME IS A VARIABLE THAT AFFECT ALL SCIENCES AND CANNOT BE REVIEWED ONLY BY PHYSICISTS.

aLL right i got the point but again this is not my work or unpublished it is just coming from a small culture that doesnt have all his work translated to english. I will do howeve a far bette researched article when i can, since everybody seems to be fair and so are the policies i have read, i trust you and te rest will do you job fairly ok. Im not so sure about mr. Connolley who erased the articles blocked me, call my work junk, garbase or nonsense and insist on censoring it. In his page it still goes on our \'heated'conversatin for the record if you want o see it. I only ask when those articles are put that the vote on deletion waits for a while so some people besides mr. connolley do the job>

CONNOLLEY You need to read up on the the "original reseach" WP:OR and no-autobiography policies (within which a biog of your father would probably be discouraged). At the least, you need to make your relation to the subject clear by a note on the talk page. Every biologist know there are infinite clocks int eh Universe is either wrong, garbled or meaningless - probably the latter. I certainly don't know what you mean by it. Wiki isn't here for you to expond your personal theories William M. Connolley 07:51, 2 August 2006 (UTC) SANCHO Ok, i just dont believe you have not heard of circadian cycles, non linear dynamics, the different speeds of times affected by relativity, the arrow of information (or biological arrow of time), system sciences, the relativism of clock-time as a measure of translational change (Aristotle's metaphysics) and how the pioneers Galileo and Descartes ('the world'), defined physical time as only one of the aspects of Time-Change. I want to expand those concepts of time. Respect to my father's work, IT IS NOT MINE AND IT IS PUBLISHED. he is considered in my country (the basque country) and increasingly spain where his books were translated (google luis sancho soto, ciclos del tiempo), an scholar an authority in time philosophy. All the quotes that will be introduced here will be from his published books and University papers, since the 80s, when quantic space-time was an oddity. His work however is complementary to the one of Smolin and others in as much as quantum gravity concentrates in quantic space and the work i will bring here concentrates in quantic time, i imagine you have a strong physics background but not a strong biological, systemic and philosophical background and so i think you should not mae the knd of heavy statements you keep doing on the work of those other scientists, like junk, garbled, wrong or meaningless but stick to your matter and let censor whatever i write here with proper fonts by biologists and philosophers. And again, certainly whatever relationship i have with luis sancho, a leading time philosopher from the latin culture that has given to mankind some of the best writers on that field from greece, italy, france and spain, fro aristotle to bergson from galileo to the existentialist movement deserves respect. The fact that basque is a 200000 people language and there is a very limited translation of foreign books in the english speakign millieu doesnt make those fonts unreliable, i have read all the policies and writing about a university scholar, with reputation and 30 years of books and publishing is deserved. But my aim is to bring back the entire philosophical and biological tradition on time, which is far more compelx than the reduccionist aproach of physics, which is only a form of time-change, translational time change. Ok?

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:William_M._Connolley"

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alvatros (talk • contribs) on 20:26, 2 August 2006.

[edit] Thanks

Yeah it looks like I somehow cut out the whole point on baryo, and on anti, I tried to be... eloquent, and wound up mischaracterising what that introduction stated. :) Yes, the talk pages are better places to rewrite. Thanks again.-Ste|vertigo 21:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There's a difference between a sockpuppet and a brother

And the fact that you seem to want to follow us around is kinda sad after the discussion ended a few days ago. Malamockq 15:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redshift

Can you look over the inserted {{fact}} tags in the redshift article and remove those you think should be removed? I would do so, but since I was in a dispute with another editor over whether every section needed a citation, it might be better if a third party did it. --ScienceApologist 20:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I honestly think it would be better to just add a couple dozen citations to one or two appropriate textbooks. That will remove all objections to the article, reasonable or unreasonable. The specific experimental results discussed actually do need to be cited, too. I don't have access to a suitable paper database, so I can't handle that part. --Christopher Thomas 21:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply from Andrew Hamilton

I sent a letter about the wormhole to the website author, and here is the reply I got. I asked him if I could quote it, and he said "no problem", but I still thought it was best to put it on your user page rather than the talk page. Besides, nobody else is joining in.

I think we misinterpreted his remarks, at least he seems to agree that one-way traversable wormholes do exist. His point was that Schwarzschild wormholes were not traversable, with which I definitely agree.

We didn't really get into the details of the "one-way traversable wormhole with exotic matter", but if you give him the metric, I think he'll agree that it's an example of a one-way traversable wormhole, which he agrees exists. If you want to correspond more with him on the manner, feel free. I'm pretty much convinced that we both just misunderstood his point.

Pervect 21:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

While the contents of this letter seem quite reasonable, he should probably update his web page, then, as the objections we'd noted with its text and figures appear to still hold. You have a much stronger GR background than I do; I wouldn't be able to intelligently discuss wormhole metrics in detail with Mr. (Dr.?) Hamilton, though I'm pleased to see that he's willing to talk about them. On the other hand, we could just stick a note on the article talk page saying that your modifications were confirmed as accurate despite the apparent conflict, and leave it at that.--Christopher Thomas 05:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject_Pseudoscience

Hi I think you started that project page; please comment on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pseudoscience#Decision_criteria, thanks in advance!

Harald88 22:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I am on sabbatical due to work commitments. This will continue until roughly February. I'll take a look at changes when I get back, but I seem to recall some changes being made unilaterally a while back. Please make sure you get consensus from all of the regulars before any change to the project page is made. --Christopher Thomas 18:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's Think Starship?

Hello, just wondering what think starship is, thanks.100110100 00:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It was a project started on WikiBooks, that's now defunct. If I understand correctly, the intention was to produce a set of manuals covering everything that a space colonizing team would need to know about building and maintaining their infrastructure. The rationale for this was that they could use the manuals to look up the solution to any maintenance problem while out there, and to train up new engineers, social scientists, civil servants, and so forth.

The part that I was interested in is the discussion of how the colonization would technically be accomplished. I disagreed with some of the assumptions the author made, but found other parts of the discussion quite interesting and thought-provoking.

The project was removed from WikiBooks when it became clear that it wasn't going to develop into the intended "book" form, and so wasn't appropriate for that wiki. Suggestions were made that it be moved elsewhere, but as far as I know the author just disappeared. --Christopher Thomas 02:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)