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[edit] Academic boosterism – Need your help

Could you please lend your hand with editing some busness schools that I believe completely got out of control when it comes to academic boosterism

I'm not the self-appointed boosterism cop, and I can't do it all by myself. But I'll take a look. If you think Wharton School is bad now, it's a good thing you didn't see it a couple of days ago. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

A particular problem with the above schools is the verifiability!! Most alumni lists are not cited and there is no referenced to any reputable sources before being put on the main page.

  • Well, I've been moving most of those to the talk page. But... it's a little tricky. In point of fact, most of those unreferenced alumni are probably correct. I have no idea where 68.174.15.210 got them, and the source should have been cited, but he probably didn't make them up. Now, I do feel fully justified in removing such entries because of verifiability. And in fact at least one article has had prank and hoax entries added, so the verifiability concern is not just theoretical.The real problem with these lists is that they, too, are boosterism. There's no good reason to have them other than to show off, and a category would do just as well. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Do you think it makes sense to remove unreferenced alumni to the talk page for other schools as well?

[edit] Uh-oh... that Garbage Plate image...

Image:~haut-cuisine in-rochester-n-y is-the-garbage plate.jpg Perhaps, you might be able to assist me in my effort to clear up the licensing issue that you have raised in regards to this image. My goal is to amend the image page to reflect the licensing that this image is being distributed under. I have read the terms of the image's license & it appears to be that there is permission for me to have posted it in Wikipedia. Not being a lawyer, what I have read at both sites appears to be in agreement in the terms of the distribution. What is not clear is how I am to go about adding some notation or posting a clause or just re-editing the image page to reflect the licensing arrangement. Do I have to delete the image & repost it in order to have those licensing options appear again? Cabreet (talk) 17:01, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree with above post. Most of these business schools, for example, have long lists of "alumni" listed with no source or way to verify. Take a look at Kellogg School for example!!

[edit] Uh-oh... that Garbage Plate image...

Image:~haut-cuisine in-rochester-n-y is-the-garbage plate.jpg In regards to the GFDL license. If you may permit, I'd like to check on the source for that image & update the description accordingly. I thought the previous image looked somewhat unappetizing for the dish. If it turns out the image can't be posted on Wikipedia, I will visit the restaurant & see if they have an acceptable image Cabreet (talk) 00:05, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eyeglass prescription

There seems to be a lot of broke image links in Eyeglass prescription. FYI, in case you can help repair that. Samw 15:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

(I responded on my talk page, to your message). I'm continuing that response here. I found copies of all the lost images on answers.com; the article URL is: http://www.answers.com/topic/eyeglass-prescription and the specific images are: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/2/2c/Specrx-letterscamblur.png , etc. As I said on my talk page, I'd be happy to reuplod them for you if you can provide me the needed info - i.e. yes, you created them yourself, and license them under GFDL, or PD if you like. JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ropo vandalism

Hey, no problem. Unfortunately, the dude was editing through a highly-dynamic IP, so I'm taking a ton of flak on my email... :( Titoxd(?!? - help us) 02:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] i'm sorry about newfoundland dog

Heya,

I reverted the puppy-dogs link on newfoundland dog again. I tend to get rid of sites like this every single day from all the dog pages. There are a million puppy picture sites like this, while they don't sell anything - they simply exist to get eyeballs at banner ads and google ads. Site owners seem to be really insistant that they get linked everywhere possible - i think that one has been reverted like 9 times.

Wikipedia is a prime target for banner ad and google adworsd sites because if you get in wikipedia your links get copied to a ton of mirror sites as well and your google numbers go up. Besides If we leave one, we have to leave them all. Suddenly the external links section of every dog article becomes filled with this sort of thing.

I tend to think that wikipedia should be held to a higher standard than to serve as a link farm to sites like that.

The person's motivation behind the site

And they use sitesell.com, which specifically, tell people to add sites to wikipedia

- Trysha (talk) 03:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AfD policy

Thought you might like to take a look at this given your comments on WP:DRV recently: Wikipedia:GNAA deletion policy. —Locke Cole 03:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] newfoundland-puppy-dogs

I do agree, the puppies are cute. We have a newfie/lab service dog cross who looks mostly newfie (huge guide dog!), so I have something of an affinity for them.

There's been a lot of spam that I have been very sad to revert especially when it's breed rescue spam.

- Trysha (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] MIT POV edits

Hi there. You seem like a good contributor, but I wanted to leave you a note on your anti-POV/boosterism edits to MIT. I don't agree with a lot of your edits in this area -- see my note on the talk page comparing our POV to the Encarta article. Noting what is special and unique about a university and distinguishes it from others is not POV -- it's part of the definition of a useful article. And I don't agree that every positive fact needs to be balanced out by a negative or mediocre one -- on balance, MIT has a lot more good things associated with it than bad things, that's what leads to a positive overall reputation. A lot of your "NPOV" edits remind me of a characterization of the media's "objectiveness" on politics in America -- that if one side were to claim the Earth was flat, the media would publish a headline saying "Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point". After all, the earth isn't perfectly spherical. But c'mon, there's a difference between patent boosterism and objectively informing people about why MIT is considered a great university. That's one of the reasons people look up the article! -- BrassRat 17:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Whom

The sentence sort of works as it is, if you conceive of the indented quotation as part of the sentence as a whole ("Hillerman spins a tale of the committeemen, 'made pale from the weak sun...', and who ... became captivated by the Sangre de Christo..."). But I agree that it would be better, both grammatically and stylistically, with the "captivated" clause split into a separate sentence. I'll do the honors. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Your parsing is probably what I was thinking of when I wrote it. If I was thinking when I wrote it. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Public Ivies

Ten Wikibucks says you'll hear cries of "Christmas Massacre" in response to your bold changes at Public Ivies... but I think they were solid edits. Cheers, JDoorjam 02:03, 26 December 2005 (UTC).

[edit] edit summaries

I think it might be to your advantage not to use a link to "Avoid Academic Boosterism" (as here alone as the edit summary. If you think something is academic boosterism, it's better addressed on the talk page of the article in question, as quite clearly the issue of what might constitute "academic boosterism" is not universally agreed to, and discussion of the sam is not much enhanced by that link. - Nunh-huh 01:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Point taken. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
With regard to "does Yale have a special interest in educating government leaders in some way that is distinct from Harvard and Princeton?", it's not something that I have particular interest in/knowledge of, but have always heard rhetoric about expectations that Yale graduates would not simply be but would lead. (E.G. Richard Levin's "As Yale enters its fourth century, our goal is to become a truly global university—educating leaders and advancing the frontiers of knowledge not simply for the United States, but for the entire world." I'm sure all colleges say such things, but it's true for some and not for others. Off the top of my head, I think Harvard has similar expectations, and expect that Princeton has lesser expections. Harvard has certainly made its view of itself as a breeding pool of politicians explicit with the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Yale seems to do similar things through its School of Law, the Center for Corporate Governance, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, and School of Management. - Nunh-huh 17:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm thinking of putting this in (as a direct quotation):
Gilpin, Toni (1995). On Strike for Respect. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252064542. p. 12:
"Yale has long been a training ground for the nation's elite.... Since 1789, Yale men have held some 10% of the United States' major diplomatic posts. Fifteen members of Congress each year, on average, are Yale graduates."
It doesn't speak to the question of whether any more blue than crimson blood flows in U. S. government veins, but at least it's a citable source. It goes on to mention some presidents, though being published in 1995 it doesn't mention the recent run of Yale presidents and candidates.
I also have a very vague idea that Yale has traditionally been a wee bit left of Harvard... does that ring true?
Thoughts? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, Gilpin is a historian, and I suspect her figures are sound. (Though her agenda in the book would, I think, lead her to exaggerate the gulf between the university and its workers.) I'm not sure why every fact about Yale should be "compared" with Harvard (more blue, more crimson): I think simple facts are good enough.

I am in agreement with you on that... the only reason I raised the question is that if it could be shown that training for government service was a traditional Yale "specialty" and was not a traditional Harvard specialty, that might make it the sort of truly-Yale-thing that would justify mentioning it in the lead. On the other hand if (forgive me) number-of-government-careerists who graduate from Yale is just another random metric on which Yale ranks second then it's not article-lead stuff.
(For the record, AFAIK no U.S. presidents at all ever attended my own alma mater. We have to make do with astronauts).

I don't think it's true to say Yale is left of Harvard...I suspect it's varied over time. The founding of Yale was essentially a reaction against the (religious) liberalism of Harvard. And in the 300 years since I think at one time or another Harvard and Yale have swapped left/right positions several times. At present, I think it's true to say Harvard is more conservative/stogy/doctrinaire, and Yale more liberal/diverse/creative but that's just my opinion and just lately. There's a strong faction at Yale that's quite conservative politically (the Political Union has a Tory party!) and even religiously. - Nunh-huh 19:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Your opinion matches my third-hand impression of what I think I remember someone-or-other saying there pretty sure they heard about Yale. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
P. S. This is interesting:
Kabaservice, Geoffrey (2004). The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0805067620. p. 141:
[circa 1959] Stewart recalled that [Yale president Whit Griswold] had been "very disappointed" with what he had found of Yale's alumni around the country: "As he would go from city to city, the Yale graduates would be the heads of the local Red Cross, the community chest, various do-good campaigns... but the Harvard people would be the heads of the symphony orchestras, the museums, and the intellectual things. And he thought that was the difference between Harvard and Yale that he would like to work on changing."
(cited by Kabaservice as "interview with Zeph Stewart, 25 Nov. 1991."
Griswold then went about systematically recruiting Harvard people who had graduated from Yale!
Dpbsmith (talk) 19:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

It's interesting (I think you left out a word between systematically and Harvard?), though I'm not sure Griswold's assessment of what is intellectual and what is not would be universally agreed to at today's Yale (actually, it probably wasn't in the Yale of his day!). Griswold was an educational reformer and his presidency marks the beginning of the "modern" Yale. Brewster certainly fostered a more liberal (political) spirit at Yale, and it may be this period of the 60s that you are thinking of when you think of a more liberal Yale. - Nunh-huh 19:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Prestige

I'm glad someone else agrees that academic boosterism is getting out of hand. I've been watching the Berkeley article since my freshman year (2002), and it's slowly gotten more and more self-congratulatory, to the point where the same claims are repeated multiple times in the article (usually something along the lines of "Berkeley is the bestest in A, B, C, and D-Z"). I'm not particularly interested in getting into arguments about what an "appropriate" level of bragging is, so I've pretty much limited my edits to consolidating claims. But I also agree that, as a student at the university in question, it's outright embarrassing to see such obviously biased editing of questionable informative value wildly mushroom. I always figured that articles for the most "genuinely" prestigious and reputable universities would have a minimum of such boosterism because their students/alumni wouldn't feel the need, but apparently that is not the case. I suppose people need to more clearly realize that articles on Wikipedia are supposed to be informative, not propaganda pieces. - Gku 21:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] love you NPOV work...

I really like what you did with the Cornell article, so I thought I'd point this out to you as badly needing some attention. Best of luck, & keep it up! Cornell Rockey 05:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I'm afraid I rose to your bait... hope it won't get me too badly hooked... actually I didn't think it was too bad unless it was read as implying that private schools are prestigious because they are academically better because they are not public. The NPOV tag refers to the Bob Jone comment, but I don't actually see a problem with that part. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:10, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Psychic surgery

True but just because Psychic surgery is quackerly it doesn't mean it is pseudoscience. I could be argued it is simlar to faith healing in that respect.Geni 02:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudoscience

The category Pseudoscience as written is a pejorative declaring a positive finding that the claims are false. It applies correctly in many cases (phrenology). Because of the pejorative natural of the entry, it does not apply to many articles - precisely the ones you object to - making the reference POV.

Suggestion: rewrite Pseudoscience more like Pseudohistory to neutralize it, then add the links back. Farseer 02:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, Quakery in most cases is a pejorative and accordingly inappropriate creating POV. Many articles use it appropriately in noting that skeptics consider the subject of the article to be such. It is not an appropriate use as a category in most cases. Farseer 02:36, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


My comments are here -- Fyslee 19:23, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why the Dabs on Lagniappe and Potpourri?

I keep an eye on BD's talk page and noticed your discussion there, and I googled it a bit, and I really can't find much of anything on Lagniappe/Potpourri online. Is it a big thing? RasputinAXP talk contribs 15:25, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not. I believe It's a fairly big thing at one high school.
An article on Lagniappe/ Potpourri [sic] was just voted for deletion. The acting sysop decided it should be a redirect to New Trier High School. My thinking is that a redirect from that exact spelling is useless, so if we're going to have a redirect at all we should have redirects/links from Lagniappe and Potpourri. Clearly an entire dab page would be silly... ergo...
I don't have very strong feelings about this. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
That's what I was wondering. I didn't know about the AfD. I don't really think we need redirects on Lagniappe and Potpourri, because of the fact that it's a big thing at one high school. I'll probably remove them, though I understand your thinking. RasputinAXP talk contribs 18:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] You might find this interesting

Deletion of "improper comparison" -- Fyslee 00:51, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The MIT of Wikipedia

Thank you for cutting the "MIT of Timbuktu" section down to a decent size. Personally, I tend to regard the whole MIT in popular culture article as a way to cut the Institute and its partisans down to a decent size: in a very encyclopaedic way, it says, "Look, no matter how good you are, the outside world still sees you as nerds at worst and mad scientists at best."

Anville 18:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I like the articles and subtopics such as "MIT in popular culture." I think such material is highly Wikipedic, and can, with care, be dealt with in a neutral way. It has a certain legitimacy precisely because it's not the sort of thing university publicity offices put on "factsheets" ready for wholesale copy-and-paste.
After I trimmed that section down and cast it as evidence supporting MIT having a sort of archetypic status, I actually added a similar paragraph to the Harvard article.
The thing that gripes me the most about boosterism is that, in my perception, it combines several kinds of ugliness into one wretched ball. First, we start with the IMHO objective fact that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and to a lesser degree the other Ivies, have or at least had within living memory a privileged connection to the U. S. power structure, and are truly socially prestigious (e.g. their alumni are overrepresented in the Social Register). Second, we hide the fact that what's being talked about is class, and that "selective" in reference to these schools was/is a code word for using non-academic factors in choosing whom to admit. Third, we then go on to use vague language that deliberately mixes up academic excellence, which the University of Michigan (say) has, with the social prestige which the University of Michigan does not have. Gerald Ford notwithstanding, it is the socially prestigious schools, not the academically excellent ones, that are overrepresented in the list of alma maters of U. S. presidents.
And I agree with you, although I don't want to try to get this into the article in so many words, that the MIT in popular culture supports what I consider to be a truth: MIT has AFAIK always based admission very purely on academic ability and therefore does not have or convey social prestige. I knew a guy (really, I knew him, it was not me) who got in trouble with the police in high school for setting off a homemade pipe bomb—he claimed it was a rocket, but it was sealed at both ends—and blasting a six-foot-deep crater on public land, hurting nobody. I don't know whether it's true or how the person who told me could have known, but I was told that MIT actually considers something like that a positive factor in admissions, that that's the kind of scrape "their kind of student" is apt to get into.
While boosters do continue to insert promotional language into school articles, at the moment I do not seem to be alone in trying to nibble away the worst of it, or at least push it out of the lead section. I've been trying systematically to move Nobel laureate counts and so forth into "people" sections, and rankingcruft into "ranking, reputation, and academics" sections. Gratifyingly, I don't seem to be alone in this. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good work on Morris Bishop!

I hereby award you this Wiki Sprint award for your help bringing Morris Bishop from 0 to Respectable in (land-speed) record time. JDoorjam
Enlarge
I hereby award you this Wiki Sprint award for your help bringing Morris Bishop from 0 to Respectable in (land-speed) record time. JDoorjam

"The words of a living language are like creatures: they are alive. Each word has a physical character, a look and a personality, an ancestry, an expectation of life and death, a hope of posterity." —Morris Bishop [1]

"On Cornell's seal are words attributed to its founder: "I would found an institution where any person can seek instruction in any study"—perhaps an idealized version of what Ezra Cornell, a blunt and down-to-earth businessman may in fact have said. As Morris Bishop, the university's historian, observers, 'possibly Cornell actually said something like "I'd like to start a school where anybody can study anything he's a mind to."'"—The Battleground of the Curriculum, W. B. Carnochan *1994), Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804723648, p. 48

[edit] your Wikipedia:Avoid academic boosterism thanks

I appreciate the note about the boosterism guideline, though of course it's not necessary to thank me. I hope you are right that it represents a consensus, or at least can be used to build one, about the excesses of academic articles. (My own editing time and energy are simply too limited to make much progress on this problem, especially as I find I really enjoy editing Wikipedia only when I wholly avoid contentious Talk-page battles. I respect both the quality and quantity of effort you put into Wikipedia, but can't possibly emulate it.) And, in fact, it's possible we now have a guideline against boosterism at the same time as we have an encyclopedia full to the brim with it -- hasn't the boosterism problem been getting steadily worse since we discussed it the first time, or is that simply my imagination? At any rate, the effort deserving of praise is surely your push to tone down the really ridiculous excesses in the university and college articles. Good luck to you! -- Rbellin|Talk 21:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] McDonald's urban legends

I've cited credible sources for about 2/3rds of the legends, and removed the rest from the page. Hope you'll reconsider your statement on the AfD, as I think it no longer applies. Johnleemk | Talk 13:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Babson Globe

Concern globe and map changes - I stand corrected.

[edit] Bicycle mechanic

Thanks for helping save bicycle mechanic from AfD. --Christopherlin 23:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. Hope I won't be alone in adding content to it, because all I know about repairing bicycles is the location of the local bike shop. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I stuck a Wikipedia:WikiProject Cycling notice on the talk page, so that might attract more eyes and editors. --Christopherlin 04:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Remind me...

Remind me never to send you to the neighbor's to borrow a cup of bile! I would be so disappointed with whatever you brought back!. Bile's much more yellow-green than the pencil in question, which is I-don't-know-what-kind-of-green... hunter green, perhaps? Eberhard-Faber-Regimental-green? - Nunh-huh 00:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Silly me. I guess I assumed bile was the same color as the color that is assumed by certain materials whose color is ascribed to the presence of bile salts. I'm sanguine in my expection that you'll accept my error in good humor. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Certainly not without a bloody war over the presence or absence of the "u" in humor! <g> -Nunh-huh 02:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Yet you phlegmatically let "color" pass without choleraic comment? Dpbsmith (talk) 11:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
How galling! - Nunh-huh 20:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Now don't get vitreous when I'm trying to be aqueous-cent. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Arggghh! Actual groaning. You win!!! - Nunh-huh 21:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm not proud of how I did it, but, you know... winning is everything. By the way... shouldn't there be some suitable image at Bile? Dpbsmith (talk) 21:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
There should. Would you run over to Mrs McGillicuddy's and borrow a cup? Seriously, I think it will be rather hard to find, but I'll have a go. - Nunh-huh 21:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
The Web is fresh out of bile. Who'd have thunk it? Image:bile_substitute.jpg. There are pictures of commercial preparations of ox gall, used in printing, but [1] they don't show the color, and [2] they're not GFDL. Ah well. On Burt L. Standish, I'm wondering if the article shouldn't be at "William G. Patten" (with redirects from William George Patten and William Patten) since it seems to be his real name, and Burt L. Standish seems to be only one of several pseudonyms, including Gilbert Patten, Herbert Bellwood, William West Wilder, Wyoming Will, Julian St. Dare, and Harry Dangerfield. I don't think any of the pseudonyms are famous enough to be a "Mark Twain" case. - Nunh-huh 01:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First university in the United States

Not your article, but your area of interest... This page looks like an essay/workshop/FAQ, rather than as an encyclopedia article. I can't see how this issue can be treated outside a more general article on the history of universities in the United States.

BTW, have you seen Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A History of the University in Europe, in three volumes, partly available on Google Books. It has a couple of chapters on the origin and development of American universities in vol. 2 and 3. Apparently the early North American (English-language) colleges had three sources of influence during the first centuries (before the Humboldtian, German influence in the 19th century): English universities, Scottish universities, and the English dissenter academies, the latter a topic which doesn't even seem to have an article on Wikipedia yet. I'm sure there are more specialized works on the histories of universities in America (I'm not sure the U.S. and the English-speaking Canada shouldn't be treated together) but this work gives a handy overview and puts it in the context of the European tradition, clarifying the reasons for the differences that exist. (Most of our general academia-related articles lack coherence and historical context. I started an offline rewrite of "College" a while ago, but haven't finished it yet.) Tupsharru 11:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Huh. And I never even thought to look for First university in the United States. I thought you had discovered my work-in-progress, User:dpbsmith/firstuniversity.
Re the Ridder-Symoens book: I'm pretty innocent of any actual knowledge of university history, but have gotten intrigued by the "first university" question and am picking up smidgens here and there.
The article you pointed to can, I believe, be transformed from a personal essay into something at least borderline-encyclopedic... like my own draft. The key is to avoid expressing one's own opinion on what should "count" as a university, because (IMHO) that's completely a matter of opinion. It's hard to cite sources as to what the "debate" is, because none of the claimants are particularly interested in laying out the scope of the debate, only in presenting their own case in a way that implies there isn't any debate.
My thought was that this material could be a section under "university."
"First university in the U.S." isn't much of an achievement, because it's not as if the U.S. invented or innovated much of anything. As you note, the important stuff all happened in Europe. It's sort of like "first symphony written in the U.S."
I'm interested to see that First university in the United States doesn't even mention Johns Hopkins. The more I look at things, the more I'm convinced that as far as I'm concerned personally, Johns Hopkins has the best claim to being "the first thing that dpbsmith would count as a 'real' university." I haven't figured it out yet, but I think that on close examination it will turn out that there's something fluky about Yale's early Ph. D.'s. A few websites mention that one of them was for a six-page thesis hand-written in Latin. I suspect that on examination it will turn out that there was one little department at Yale that thought this European Ph. D. thing was cool and decided to use those letters for their degree, or something. It was Johns Hopkins that really got into the Ph. D. business bigtime.
It's either boil down the facts bearing on the claims into one paragraph short enough to be a footnote in the Harvard, Yale, Penn, William and Mary, and Johns Hopkins articles, or find some single article or section of an article that they can all point to. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pachelbel's Canon

Hello! I see that you added the excellent chart of the rise in popularity of Pachelbel's Canon in D in the New York Times. I was wondering if you had a source for that chart - it would be nice to have a reference. Thanks! -Sesquialtera II 21:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great. -Sesquialtera II 16:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LQG

I hate to bring up a near-year-old-vfd, but the LQG article is presently trying to reform itself. Have you thought of any new way of including the objections? I don't personally feel that a "delete" is a way to say "keep until we find something better," but I realize the vfd is closed. I would like to wikify somewhat and neutralize somewhat the objections (which were subsequently moved to a talk archive), and then include them in the article under the "problems" section. While I have a superficial understanding of some of the things stated in the objetions, I don't know that I could find a verifiable source. My understanding is based upon my knowledge of QM and GR, but it isn't deep enough to seek out articles on LQG (or refuting said) and provide meaningful sources. Ideas? Avriette 17:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't think I can help. My personal knowledge of physics is hazy and shallow, I wasn't even a physics major... and hasn't been updated since I was an undergraduate. Which was... um... decades ago. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't have the time to tackle this whole thing myself, but I'd be happy to provide as much input as I can. In the past, I've been able to sort through this sort of material, to some extent, and "popularize" the science—or at least get it explained at, say, the undergraduate level. (I was a beneficiary of the world's first ever undergraduate string theory class, and helped just a little in making the world's first undergraduate string theory textbook. My real name is in the acknowledgements—preen, preen.) On a first read-through, some of the objections listed in the Talk page archive look like reasonable things to include, though they could do with a metric asimov of skillful exposition. Certainly, this looks easier than straightening out the Bogdanov Affair mess. Anville 20:01, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Auspices"

Well, it sounded right... :-) android79 15:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Holy Father article

Does this mean TCC cannot revert because of the AfD anymore? "Csernica (rv. This page is a redirect to Pope based on the results of an AfD discussion. Please do not replace the old contents)", "Csernica (rv per AfD: [2])"

*Comment This isn't a matter for discussion here. Nothing was deleted. Everything is still in the history. It was turned into a dab by regular editing and it can be restored, recreated in a different form, turned back into a dab, etc. by regular editing. No sysop intervention is needed and there is nothing to discuss here. It would be extremely unwise to re-create this in anything resembling its previous without discussing it at Talk:Holy Father and gaining consensus for the change, and it would be considerate to invite people who participated in the AfD discussion to participate in that discussion. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:57, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

No.

Jeolmeun can revert and so can Csernica and so can anyone else. People can edit-war to their heart's content (and as limited by the three-revert rule) over whether Holy Father should be an article or a dab or a redirect. That's all just ordinary editing all the usual Wikipedia policies and customs apply.

All that an AfD decides... in this case, all that the AfD on Holy Father decided... is whether or not there should be an article under the heading Holy Father. The AfD also expressed strong consensus among the participants that the content of the article at the time it was considered by AfD was nonfactual and invalid. That's good justification for reverting any re-creation of the article that is similar to the one that was taken to AfD. If Jeolmeun or anyone else tries to re-create the article with inappropriate content, they should be reverted, taken to RfC, etc. via the dispute resolution process.

If someone honestly feels that the problems in the article can be repaired they're entitled to present their case and try to re-create the article. The forum for this would be Talk:Holy Father. But it is a really bad idea to do this by replace the dab content with article content. It would be a really good idea to create a draft of the improved article somewhere, in user space for example, and discuss it in Talk:Holy Father and get consensus before trying to put it into article space.

My point is that none of this is a topic for AfD or DVR. AfD only determines whether an article is deleted. It does not make any kind of final binding decision on what should be the content of an article that is not deleted. And DRV is not a suitable venue for discussing the content of articles that have not been deleted. Holy Father has not been. You wouldn't go to DRV to discuss a sentence removed from an article. DRV is only for discussion of cases where the article itself has been deleted, not cases where material within an article has been deleted. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University founding dates

I had to laugh at your comments on the Princeton page. I really liked your reasoning on the topic. I went to the University of Florida, which claims 1853 as its founding date. Well, that was the founding date of the East Florida Seminary, which was the predecessor of one of the schools folded together to create the University in 1905. -- Dalbury(Talk) 20:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vocabulary

I learned a new word today (tendentious), thanks to you!  :) -Bindingtheory 14:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lend a hand?

... or a scalpel... or a battle axe, to Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It escaped my attention because I hadn't been trying to de-puff individual units of colleges and universities. JDoorjam Talk 19:54, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't have a big problem with "one of the world's leading business schools," but it sure goes downhill from there. Gak! Did you see that "CEO framework?" Sure, I'll help nibble away at this. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How the heck could they have published the world's first business textbooks when Wharton School Publishing appears to have been launched in 2004? Just wondering. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

- That because first text books were published in 1889 by university press that later was closed in 1934. It took Wharton 80 years to launch WSP again...

[edit] Colony 5 on WP:DRV

You said in the discussion of this undeletion:

Our current procedure is a response to previous abuse by users who discovered they could game the previous system.

I'm very puzzled by this. What previous system are you referring to, who were the abusive users, and how did they game the system? Maybe this was a bit before my time. --Tony Sidaway 05:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

As with all personal issues, individual perceptions will vary. Being a skilled troll everything he did was so borderline-legitimate that it would be difficult to prove bad faith, but eventually he was banned for a long period of time for similar behavior elsewhere.
This user discovered that under the previous system he could turn Articles for Undeletion effectively into "permanent undeletion, without discussion, on request," by requesting undeletion "for purposes of viewing," which was routinely granted on request, and then using a combination of creative techniques and Wikilawyering to keep the article undeleted and visible in main namespace with no notice on it. Snowspinner devised the present techniques in response. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:57, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see that I'm treading on some very sensitive ground, here. Thanks for this. --Tony Sidaway 20:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] If you're up for a real challenge

... and I don't mean de-puffing, which is really a pretty standard de-lousing project, once you get the hang of it. This article, however, is perhaps the saddest academia stub I've ever seen. I'm going to try to make it my pet project, even to get a couple paragraphs in; I'd greatly appreciate your input. JDoorjam Talk 03:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Uark Article

Hey there. Thanks for the suggestions! I did indeed used to attend the University of Arkansas, but I no longer live anywhere near it, so talking to any of the historians would be difficult. I think that the user "The stuart" is a student there (but I am not sure). I will pass on your advice to him, seeing as he is the one that recommended the article to be a featured one and all. Thanks again! (Cardsplayer4life 19:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Page name for temperature articles

To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 23:18, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rhapsody in Blue references

Thanks for adding the references

Bcem2 01:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

  • You're welcome. And you were right to tag the page. Could still use more, but it's a start.... Dpbsmith (talk) 02:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article for Deletion

Greetings. You may be interested in voting on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse (image free). Thanks. --Descendall 01:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Little Ivies

I notice that at Little Ivies you changed the following:

...known for being small institutions that are as academically competitive as the members of the Ivy League.

under the pretext that there is no authoritative definition of the term. While I agree that no one holds the Gospel definition on it, can we not surely derive some characters from the title of "Little" "Ivies" -- Ivy-like schools that are little? I mean, surely Middlebury does not belong to the Southern Ivies, nor the Public Ivies, as it is neither southern nor public; but it seems your logic for removing the above could be extended to promote the idea that Southern Ivies are not necessarily in the South. Dylan 18:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Find a source that says that this is what the phrase "Little Ivies" means, and cite it. I'm not saying no such source exists. What I'm saying is that when you find such a source I'll accept its inclusion in the article. Please reread the verifiability policy. This can go in the article as a quotation from a cited source; it can't go in as your opinion or mine.
I voted to delete Southern Ivies, by the way. In the case of Southern Ivies, the problem is not with the meaning of "Southern," but with the meaning of "Ivies," in which "Ivy" means "any school the speaker thinks is good." That article was and is not much more than a subjective list of "good Southern schools."
I'm not closed-minded about this; I gave three different sourced meanings for the term, and stretched a point in making the observation that the schools listed by one of these sources have some common characteristics.
IMHO the big problem is that there is a tendency for college guides, etc. to pussyfoot. Just like the schools of the Big Three, the schools of the Little Three are not defined by their academic excellence, although they are indeed excellent, but by their historic connection to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant power structure, and with privilege, and with the social elite in the United States. it's no coincidence that two U. S. Presidents graduated from the Little Three, but none from Haverford or Swarthmore—or, for that matter, Tufts. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:01, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
But you replaced it with:
"ivies" implying some comparison to the Ivy League.
I understand the desire to not necessarily imply academic similarity to Ivies, just some similarity to Ivies defined by the speaker. So it seems that our only issue is the word "little." I understand the verifiability policy, but this seems like a simple and fundamental thing: the "Little Ivies" are little. Why does this fact need verification? You said that there was no problem in the meaning of Southern at Southern Ivies; why, then, is the word "little" in contention? Dylan 19:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Cite a source. Cite a source. Cite a source.
The phrase "Ivy League" does not mean any group of schools that compete with each other in athletic events and have ivy growing on their walls. It has a specific meaning that is not just the meaning of the words that comprise the phrase. The Little Ivies does not mean all of the excellent small liberal arts colleges in the nation.
The meaning of the phrases "Ivy League" and "little Ivies" are idiomatic, not logical. Find good citable sources where people refer to the "little Ivies" and give a definition of what they think the phrase means. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
On the contrary, the entire family of "Ivies" (Southern Ivies, Jesuit Ivy, Public Ivy) is very logical: what separates each group from just being "like the Ivies" is the adjective that distinguishes that begins the phrase. The Southern Ivies are in the South. The Public Ivies are public. The Jesuit Ivy is a Jesuit school. These are fairly easy to identify as being logically constructed phrases: I don't see anything to suggest that "Little Ivy" is suddenly taking a detour and and randomly meaning anything other than what it literally suggests. If, for whatever reason, "Little Ivy" means expressly the opposite ("'Ivies' of any size" ?), it seems that the burden would be on you to provide a source explaining why. Otherwise, I see no reason why it is inappropriate to conclude that the name is a method or defining the term: indeed, the name is most likely the source for the classificiation of a school as a little Ivy. No one's arguing that Southern Ivies might not all be in the South.
I agree that "the Little Ivies does not mean all of the excellent small liberal arts colleges in the nation"; however, the Little Ivies must be, by definition, only excellent small colleges. Membership therein can later be determined through the sources currently cited in the article, as can what constitutes "like an Ivy" and "little." The facts of being little and of being in some way comparable to the Ivies do not need citing because they are self-evident conditions. Dylan 22:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
EDIT: I found and added a note supporting this idea [3] so that the article won't be lacking, but I still support on principle that it is not necessary. Dylan 22:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
First, references are needed "on principle" and it says so under every edit box ("content must be... verifiable. Second, no, the Encarta entry does not define "little Ivies" as small, it defines the term as referring specifically to the "Little Three," which are indeed small. It is one of (at least) three different definitions, and I'm not convinced that Encarta's has more validity than the others. You cannot say "One definition of the little Ivies is Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams, all of these are small, therefore the competing definitions must be wrong." Dpbsmith (talk) 23:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm sick of the argument about verifiability, because we obviously have irreconcilable views, so let's leave that alone. I found you another source (scroll down) supporting "small" and "selective." Secondly, I only just realized that you probably think I'm pushing "small" so that I can argue against Tufts, which is not my motive. Thirdly, the Encarta definiton first defines Little Ivies as "small exclusive colleges," (not three specific small exclusive colleges) and only thereafter names the Little Three as the members, although I can see how this is ambiguous. Finally, it seems like you made the same fallacious argument for which you criticized me by including ...which are old, small, exclusive, academically superior liberal arts colleges located in the northeastern United States following the list of the little three. Either this is all superfluous and irrelevant information, or you were implying that those characteristics must be shared by every Little Ivy, which as you pointed out is not a valid way to define it. Dylan 00:50, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I thought I was making a concession by including it... the Business Times citation is good, I like it... Dpbsmith (talk) 01:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of movie appearances of the Statue of Liberty

How exactly does one reference an object in a movie? I can vouch for many of them having seen the movie but beyond that....please do inform. You aren't going to find a book or an interview of someone to reference that list. That pretty much leaves screenshots, but that seems pretty extreme. Cburnett 13:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Having read your note on the talk page, I guess minutes in is better than a screenshot. Cburnett 13:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, we need to have verifiability somehow. I mean, I could say "The Statue of Liberty appears in Episode 5 of the first season of Sex and the City," and even if you have that DVD I don't think it's reasonable for you to have to watch the whole episode to verify that the statement is correct. I'm hoping to get a discussion of this going at Wikipedia:Citing sources#Movies, etc. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MRGO

Shome mishtake... My edit was to make the bolded headings into real headings, wikify a few dates and remove a redundant phrase. Well done for improving the layout a good bit more, as to content, although I read one of the references, I don't feel qualified to make substantive changes. Rich Farmbrough. 00:38, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Oops, my apologies... the material I'm concerned about was added by 24.252.127.38, not you. Sorry. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair go!

Do you know how many covers we have? We still have over 200 in the category! I'm looking at each one in turn, then deciding whether to delete or not. When I get to the cover, I'll make a decision. - Ta bu shi da yu 20:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding your comments in the talk page of The Harvard Crimson

First, there is no need to disparage editors of The Crimson. There are numerous Wikipedia articles in much worse shape.

Second, you say that there is a "severe lack of source citations", yet in your edits, you only inserted two [citation needed] notes. Were there other examples you saw that needed source citations?

With regard to the two statements that you feel need citations, what, exactly, would qualify as a "source" to cite?

If you do a Google search on "oldest continuously-published daily college newspaper" you'll find several official harvard.edu sites that say the Crimson is such a paper, but the overall content of the pages do not exactly qualify them as definitive sources to cite. You'll also find that the Crimson's website states it as well, but citing the Crimson's own website as a source on an article about the Crimson itself is not exactly ideal either. I doubt there is an authority out there that is able to say definitively that the Harvard Crimson is the "oldest continuously-published daily college", nor is there any authority that could justify the claims of any newspaper in the world to certain notes of pride; no one can comb through archives of the thousands of papers that exist to determine if a paper is indeed the "oldest" or the "oldest daily". The Harvard Crimson has publically claimed to be the "oldest continuously-published daily college newspaper" for a long, long time, and as yet, no one else had made the same claim.

The phrase "semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine" is just the established phrase that the Crimson uses whenever describing the Harvard Lampoon in its articles. Search the archives of the website or Google with a part of the phrase, and you'll find numerous examples of the phrase being used. Which one of these articles should be cited? I fail to even see why it should be cited, as it is a general, fecetious phrase that is unique to the Harvard Crimson, not a quotation lifted from a single article.

But in general, what exactly would need a citation in a Wikipedia article? Would the list of previous editors need a citation for each person? Would any claim of fact about the Harvard Crimson need a citation? If so, almost every sentence of the article would need a citation; generalize that sentiment, and almost every sentence in each article of Wikipedia would need a citation (regretably, some articles are approaching such foolishness). If not, how are those cases different from the case of the phrases "oldest continuously-published daily college" and "semi-secret Sorrento Square..."? My view is that if Wikipedia strives to be an encyclopedia, it needs to be viewed as a reference, not a collection of facts that must have every sentence cited with examples to numerous webpages (which themselves may not be reliable).

And finally (completely unrelated and to satiate my own curiousity), is there a reason why in Wikipedia talk pages, the most recent entries are at the bottom, and not at the top? Seems to me most people would be interested in reading recent discussion first. Perhaps this is some Wikipedia ettiquete I'm not familiar with?

--128.103.29.10 06:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

In general, read the verifiability policy. Seriously. Do it now.
With regard to specifics, I'm not trying to be too much of a nuisance so I only tagged ones that I thought were particularly egregious. But the article must contain a couple of dozen specific facts, none of which are referenced.
Speaking for myself, the principle here is that any fact in Wikipedia ought to be traceable to a source that is a) outside Wikipedia, that b) can easily be verified to contain a statement of that fact, which c) is a source whose reliability the reader can judge. Remember, the standard is "verifiability, not truth." Although the policy talks of "reliable" sources, any source is better than none.
The obvious sources, such as specific links the Crimson's own website, should be used. The Crimson even qualifies as a print publication, but in any case the reader can judge how much credence to put in the Crimson's own statements about itself. I'd judge that it's reasonably reliable but likely to be occasionally self-serving. I wouldn't necessarily accept the University of Pennsylvania's own claims to have been "founded in 1740" and to be "America's first university" as gospel truth, but if they're referenced to Penn's website I know that at least Penn itself makes these claims.
Similarly "semi-secret Sorrento square..." Being in quotes, it's reasonable to wonder who said it and where. As to which instance to cite, the easy answer is "any." If you can find one that actually says "'semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine,' the Crimson's traditional jocular reference to the Lampoon" that would be good, but any is better than none.
Just do a good-faith effort to reference the important facts in the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:22, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
P. S. OK, I'll remove the criticism, although I think it is fair. The issue isn't that other articles are in worse shape, but that Wikipedia's verifiability policy is, I believe, very similar to ordinary journalism and therefore one might have expected it to be in better shape. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:25, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


In general, read the verifiability policy. Seriously. Do it now.
...I had already...multiple times. Is there a way you can post responses without adopting an air of superiority?
Just do a good-faith effort to reference the important facts in the article.
What are the "important facts"? It seems arbitrary that those two you picked are the "particularly eggregious" ones. If we are to follow your interpretation of Wikipedia's verifiability policy, the article would look something like this:
The Harvard Crimson is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts[citation needed] , and is run entirely by Harvard undergraduates[citation needed] . Many Crimson alumni have gone on to careers in journalism and some have won Pulitzer Prizes[citation needed] . Its alumni include Presidents John F. Kennedy of the Class of 1940 and Franklin D. Roosevelt (who served as president of the newspaper), Class of 1904[citation needed] .
Any student who volunteers and completes a series of requirements known as the "comp" is elected an "editor" of the newspaper[citation needed] . Thus, all staff members of the Crimson—including writers, photographers, graphic designers, and business staff—are technically "editors"[citation needed] . Editorial power rests in a board of executives, collectively called a "guard," who are chosen for one-year terms each November in a highly competitive process[citation needed] .
The Crimson is one of the few college newspapers in the U.S. that own their own printing presses[citation needed] . At the beginning of 2004 the Crimson began publishing with a full-color front and back page, in conjunction with the launch of a major redesign[citation needed] .
Every sentence in the above example is a fact that could be challenged. Thus, would all of them require a citation? Seems rather silly to me. What about other articles? Should biographical articles cite the source for the date and place of birth of their subjects?
If they did, Wikipedia wouldn't have looked so foolish a year ago when an outside reviewer noticed some problems with inaccuracies in, IIRC, John Adams' dates.
"The issue isn't that other articles are in worse shape, but that Wikipedia's verifiability policy is, I believe, very similar to ordinary journalism and therefore one might have expected it to be in better shape."
I don't know about you, but I have yet to see a newspaper that actively cites sources of all the facts of a story. If a newspaper were to write a story about the Harvard Crimson, it would most likely just state something along the lines of "The Harvard Crimson, the nation's oldest continuously-published college daily, ..." or "According to the president of the Harvard Crimson, the paper is the oldest continuously-published college daily", neither of which satisfy Wikipedia's current verifiability policy. Wikipedia strives to be an encyclopedia, not a journalistic venture. Perhaps this discussion can be continued on the verifiability talk page, as I think it would be good for the larger Wikipedia community to discuss this issue. The Harvard Crimson article is a good example of the thorny issues of applying a strong interpretation of the verifiability policy.
--128.103.29.10 01:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Of course, judgement is needed, and of course, reasonable people may differ in their judgement of what is required in a particular case. Can the two of us not agree that the Harvard Crimson article a) ought to have more references than a single reference to the home page of the Crimson's website? But, b) fewer than one per sentence? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
P. S. I imagine the reason why new entries get added at the bottom of talk pages is because that's where the "+" tab puts them. They don't always get added at the bottom; some people do add them at the top... I don't have strong feelings on the matter and I reply to them wherever they have been placed. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFD Jessamyn West article

Hi. Just thought that you might like to know that the Jessamyn West (librarian) article was AFDed by the same user again. I don't see it in the AFD list (and I thought that AFD was only for controversial nominations nowadays) so it might just be a mistake, but you might want to poke your head in if it turns into a full-blown AFD and say howdy. If this AFD is in error maybe you could help me figure out what the proper procedure is for dealing with it. Jessamyn 18:39, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JDoorjam's RfA

 Thank you!
Dpbsmith/Archive07, thank you for your support in my RfA: it passed with a final tally of 55/1/2. Your stalwart resolve to make encyclopedic the college and university articles on Wikipedia is what really got me thinking about how much work it takes to maintain the encyclopedia, so I'm really honored that you gave your support to my adminship. If you want a hand with anything, please gimme a shout. Again, thanks! – JDoorjam Talk 22:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bill Tilden photo

Hi again -- hope that John O'Hara is now under control! I've got a question that maybe you can answer without too much effort. I'm the guy who wrote most of the Bill Tilden article. I also found some old photos that I put in. Both of them came from the archives of the Chicago Historical Society or some such. At the time I did a fair of amount of research into what was the Wiki attitude to photos and it appeared to me that these photos could be used as long as I attributed them to the Society. I wrote this up under the photos, or in the history or some place. Both photos remained there for a year or so. Then, a couple of days ago the top-most photo, of Tilden hitting a backhand, vanished. The photo just below it, however, of Big Bill and Little Bill Johnston, remained in place. Both have the same source and the same info about that source. So why should one be deleted and not the other? The backhand picture has also been deleted from other articles, while the other picture remains. (I also translated both the Tilden article and the Johnston article into French for the French Wiki and put in the same photos. The backhand photo is still in place in the French Wiki....) Any help or advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Hayford Peirce 18:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

In brief... I'm not very au courant with what's going on, but quite likely the other photo will eventually be deleted, too. You are not experiencing inconsistency of policy, just the usual result of not being able to apply policy instantaneously across all of Wikipedia.
I don't remember the details but a year or so ago Jimbo decided that Wikipedia needed to get serious about removing any "non-free" images, that is images that are not public domain OR licensed under the GFDL OR licensed under one of the other licenses that Wikipedia deems to be "free." Two categories in particular are indeed now considered verboten: "Used-by-permission" images, which is to say images for which the rights holder is willing to allow use in Wikipedia only, and "fair-use" images, which are those which the uploader asserts or believes to fall under fair use. There has been a project under way for some time to tag every image and remove those that don't comply.
In order to put these images back in, from a mechanical point of view you need to re-upload them _and apply a tag listed on the popup for one of the free licenses_. From a good-faith point-of-view, you need to supply a valid reason for asserting that the stated license actually applies.
Other WIkipedias may be doing different things, both because they may feel that their local laws are different and/or because the process of systematically enforcing policy may not be taking place or may be moving more slowly or hitting other things first.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:17, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for all the info so kindly transmitted. Geez, what a can of worms all this is! And, just after writing my note to you, someone wrote me in the French Tilden discussion asking (I guess) for verification for the three Tilden photos I have there (one of them came from the *Hebrew* Tilden article, which, of course, I can't read). Well, thanks for the tip on what to *try* to do get a tag applied that might save the pix. I'll play around with it a little and see what happens. And I suppose that the French Wiki must have the equivalent tags, etc. Thanks again! Hayford Peirce 18:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Where did you attend university or college? I am assuming Cornell or Boston or MIT. Thanks and best wishes. -- User:Mcorcoran

Good guess. I'm assuming "Boston" means BU. Your list of three does include a school that I have attended. (If "Boston" means BC that statement might or might not still be true.) I hope I haven't displayed any obvious bias toward my alma mater; do you think I have?
By the way, I was annoyed to notice Cornell's saying on a web page that it has been called "the first American university." Perhaps it has been, but IMHO they should have had the good taste and judgement not to mention it; it would seem to be an exercise in pure opinion, but I haven't bothered to try to dig up Frederick Rudolph's book. I admire Yale for not claiming to be the first university in the United States.
Thanks for the article on E. Digby Baltzell, nice work. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I did mean Boston College. Great school and most of the students are hard working and smart. If I had to choose another school other than Penn it would be Boston College or Princeton.

[edit] Latin and Greek at HYP

In my research for the article on the Yale Report of 1828, I found out a lot more about why Greek and Latin remained at the center of the curriculum of the U.S. college for so long and even came across this tidbit: "A century and a quarter later, after Yale dropped its Latin and Greek admission requirement, the University embarked on another review" [4]. At first I thought this meant that Yale didn't drop it's Latin and Greek requirement until the 1950s, but upon a closer reading, I realize that it was probably dropped long before this second review of the curriculum.

I think that the report, although rather lengthy, will provide a few answers to some of the things you seem to have a particular interest in (perhaps even a few hints about Yale's social prestige and it's ability to produce public serivce leaders). It describes what it sees as the essential foundations of a liberal education, what a college place in higher education and how it can serve the American people; it describes the place of the U.S. colleges relative to Oxford and Cambridge and to the great German universities; and it will give you an solid understanding of why the elective system didn't take off until the land grant movement decades later. (The document made a powerful and idealistic argument about the need for a prescribed curriculum.)

BTW, I'm working to get my hands on a copy of each of Rudolph's two major books on this matter, as well as some books on American higher education that came later. If I can get them, they'll be useful for this article as well as first university in the United States. btm talk 08:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

  • What teasers! I'm sold... will read soon... BTW, how does St. John's College, U. S. and the Great Books movement fit into this picture? Dpbsmith (talk) 10:47, 22 March 2006 (UTC) BTW that "particular interest" is a recent development, and a direct result of my involvement in Wikipedia. It has occurred in several steps. Originally, it was a simple interest in trying to de-peacock and de-boosterize the MIT article. It soon became clear that boosterism is a competitive sport and that as long as other articles lead off with statements about "prestige," the MIT article would, too, so I started to try to trim down the worst excesses in other articles... this then led logically to curiosity about the whole nature of college status.
One common facet of boosterism is a desire to assert that other colleges are, ought to be, soon will, etc. join the Big Three or replace one of the current members. Thus, the Penn article had a contributor who was quite insistent on inserting language saying that Penn is "one of the Big Four," while there's an MIT contributor who asserts that the "meme" is no longer "Harvard, Yale and Princeton" but "Harvard, MIT, and Stanford." Now, you could make a case that if the issue were academic excellence then perhaps that ought to be true (I don't say it is, I say you could make a case for it). So that naturally led me to look for objective evidence that Harvard, Yale and Princeton is still the meme, and curiosity as to exactly why that is true. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:59, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I think that the Great Books program (which I had heard about, but didn't really know much about until I just pulled up our article on it), Harvard's 1945 Report "General Education in a Free Society," core curricula at universities around the U.S. today and Yale's 1828 curriculum are all about the same educational ideals; they just offer implementations for different times. (I can't say that I know enough to give a clear picture of how it all fits together, but I'm sure that the later movements were all inspired by Yale 1828.)
One thing I find really interesting about Yale's original stance is how they wanted to ensure that Yale men would leave the college equipped with all of the knowledge that a "well-educated" man should have as a solid foundation (albeit a rather rough foundation, as well-educated men were expected to know much more than could be taught in four years alone), and the capability to expand on that knowledge after Yale. It wasn't about making their graduates particularly useful right after graduating; it was to put them into a certain social stratus that in the end could make them not just successful, but also very prominent. Keeping the classics at the center of the curriculum indeed had to do with maintaining Yale's social prestige. although I'm sure that providing the right education for its students was, in fact, the real motivation behind Yale's stance.
As for HYP-comparison boosterism (anywhere, not just on Wikipedia), I think it's usually pretty easy to see beyond it and spot the real motivation behind it, but usually there is also some truth to it. I've noticed this trend of latching on to other universities' prestige for boosterism as well. I suppose it's only natural. btm talk 09:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Academic boosterism

Glad to hear that you see it as a problem, too. best, jdb ❋ (talk) 17:32, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Islamophilia

Greetings, Having just read your comments on the re-list discussion for Islamophilia, I couldn't help but do my own search of NyTimes.com and here's what I came up with. Based upon the logic of the test you proposed in your first comment in that discussion I've voted for Overturn (and noted my reasoning on the discussion page). Netscott 18:40, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Mslogohistorical.png

Hi Dpbsmith - do you think the image description and source of this is still valid? If not is there a way to revert it to an earlier version (I tried but all I appeared to get was a smaller version of the current one). Thanks! Just another star in the night T | @ | C 18:46, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't know where the 600x100 pixel version is from, other than Tyomitch's edit comment that it was ftp'ed from microsoft.com. I can vouch for the 200x50 pixel version. I don't know how to revert an image other than by downloading and re-uploading an older version. Because of multiple levels of caching, it often appears that image changes didn't "take" when, in fact, they did. Also, when the servers are other than lightly loaded, there can be a lag between changing an image and having the change appear in an article. In other words, after re-uploading the image: clear your browser's cache; it may possible be necessary to clear the server's cache, and the only way I know off hand to do this is to pretend to edit a page, then edit the line in the browser's address field to change "action=edit" to "action=purge." And in some cases it may be advisable to wait ten minutes before jumping to any conclusions. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Charles Simonyi

Sources added. There was also a particular version of Multiplan that had to be recalled, leading to a shareholder lawsuit, but I can't find any sources for that. Gazpacho 03:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I never would of thunk it. Multiplan was a very good product and I liked it a lot... Dpbsmith (talk) 09:58, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually, looking at your edits, I'm confused. Do I take it that although you said it was actually unprofitable in the edit comments, you now think that it may actually have been profitable... just not very, and just that Simonyi's portability strategy may have been misguided in hindsight?
Actually I think there was a very similar misjudgement in the PC world as a whole, in which companies were taken by surprise by the rather rapid dominance of the IBM PC compatible, i.e. the machines that mimicked the PC closely at a low-level hardware level. Microsoft had been suggesting/hoping that all that would be needed was MS-DOS compatibility. Xerox, Digital, and Wang all instroduced machines that ran MS-DOS but weren't IBM PC compatible at a low level; in Digital's case it ran either MS-DOS, or a special version of CP/M that would run both CP/M-86 and CP/M programs seamlessly. In the history books all of them have been treated rather unkindly for a decision which looked very stupid in retrospect--say, by 1983 or 1984--but which was perfectly sensible at the time when the decision was made...
Multiplan was at least successful enough for Word to have been originally promoted as part of a "MultiTools" suite... I think the original name was Microsoft MultiTools Word or something like that. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hans Nusslein (obscure German tennis player) category question

Hi, again. I've run across a weird little problem that baffles me. I wrote a brief article some time ago about Hans Nusslein, a totally forgotten old player who, to my surprise, has just been inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in spite of his total obscurity. I then noticed that in the articles about Boris Becker and Gottfried von Cramm there was a little box at the bottom of the article that says German members of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has three names. I've been trying futilely to get Nusslein's name in there also.

The obvious thing to do, was to add

{{T["e" omitted]nnis hall of fame germany}}

which gives:

German members of the International Tennis Hall of Fame
Boris Becker (2003) | Steffi Graf (2004) | Hans Nüsslein (2006) | Gottfried von Cramm (1977)

to the Nusslein article, as that is in the articles about the three other players. The box now appears in the Nusslein article, but not his name, nor does his name appear in that box anywhere else. I then went to the three different sites that list Hall of Fame members and inserted Nusslein's name and info correctly into the appropriate players. He is now listed in all three. But his name still stubbornly refuses to appear in the box that I want to see it in. Any ideas? Thanks, Hayford

Hayford Peirce 19:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have any clues. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:49, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Fixed it --GringoInChile 16:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] London and Riis

Hello Dpbsmith. Yes, I had a hard source for that at the time but (characteristically) didn't make a notation of it (especially as it was early days in Wikipedia, and strict sourcing was not an outright requirement as it is today). I believe it was in a book of critical essays now sitting in a relative's house. If I can remember the book enough to describe it to them, I'll call and ask them to look up the reference. JDG 21:24, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Yeah, I know. A couple of years ago I was reasonably punctilious about actually having some kind of source for anything I added, but it was so hard to deal with footnotes and references that I rarely added actual references. And now when I try to go back and find them, I find that the same Web searches that I used to turn up at least a half-decent reference now turn up nothing but the Wikipedia article and mirrored copies of it. I wish I'd at least put my sources in as html comments, but I didn't. See what you can do, though. It's an interesting point, particularly since in my personal opinion it is fair to say that Jack London was not at all averse to borrowing ideas... he more than half acknowledged that what he was was a reteller (in vastly improved form) of tales he heard from others... and I can easily imagine he and his publisher could well have described it between themselves as "Can you do a 'How the Other Half Lives,' but about London?" The other point I'd like to know is whether H. G. Wells coined the phrase "The People of the Abyss" or whether it was just current, and whether Jack London had read Anticipations before settling on the title of his book... Dpbsmith (talk) 10:39, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Groucho Club

I saw your comments on Cornell's talk page about Groucho Marx's quip about not wanting to join a club that would have him as a member. I had run across Groucho Club a while ago and thought it might amuse you. (The article is unfortunately anemic but the idea is pretty cute.) I hope you're well, JDoorjam Talk 20:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latest on List of people known as father or mother of something

Hello Dan,
Just to elaborate on my most recent edits to the above:

  • Removed Harry George Armstrong; if his entry isn't spurious, someone will replace it (hopefully with source/s).
  • Removed Johann Sebastian Bach; Beethoven, though significant, is but one person. However, I thought the quote you'd unearthed too interesting to discard, so I've inserted it here. Hope that's okay.
  • Removed mention of other Wikipedia articles in your (otherwise useful) comments; hopefully not too many people will need directing to "Links to other Wikipedia articles do not qualify..." in the preamble.

Meanwhile, thanks for your work!  Best wishes, David Kernow 17:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

PS Just come to your "Good. Try not to remove my HTML comments in future though." request; sorry not to see it before the above, but hope you agree mentioning other Wikipedia articles in the comments not as useful as (say) Google Books. David 18:07, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Really. I'm pleased that at least two of us are working on this. The reason I wanted to leave in those particular comments was so that I can clean out the the sentences in various articles which say "so-and-so is called the father of X"... but give no references, and merely link back to List of people known as father or mother of something. But I can do that easily enough with the "what links here" feature. The HTML comments are not intended for readers, but for myself and other editors (i.e. you). I'm glad you reformatted the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Henry Chadwick

There are many websites that make this assertion. This article does also. It also has a different but still unreadable photo of the monument. [5] Wahkeenah 23:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Well, the New York Times is a reliable source as far as I'm concerned. And it's an excellent article... and best of all, it names three other "Fathers of Baseball" and one other monument to a different Father of Baseball in the same cemetery. Thanks! Dpbsmith (talk) 23:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm fairly certain I've seen it in a book someplace also, but I can't recall which one. But the Times article has at least the appearance of being written by someone who was actually their (we're assuming Jayson Blair didn't write it under a pseudonym). Wahkeenah 01:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

Hi, just thought I'd let you know I liked your poem so much I put it on my user page. Hope you don't mind.  :-) dbtfztalk 17:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

... giving you proper credit, of course. dbtfztalk 17:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Flattery will get you everywhere. Thanks! Dpbsmith (talk) 17:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Porcellian Club

There seems to be a lot of subtle vandalism going on at this article, but I don't know enough about it to know exactly what is correct and what is not. I added the short paragraph on FDR a while ago (from a book available on Google Books), but other than that it lacks good references and I don't have access to any, as far as I know. Since I know that you read up a bit on Harvard and its significance in U.S. society, I suppose you may have come across this club somewhere. Tupsharru 04:53, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Well, I know of Harvard etc. only indirectly, and all I know about the Porcellian Club—haven't glanced at the article yet—is that it is to Harvard as Harvard is to colleges: the one that is known to outsiders as the creme de la creme, the ne plus ultra, etc.
  • OK, I've looked at it. I'll keep an eye on it. IMHO Porcellian might be probably borderline-deletable as I believe it is theoretically a secret society and so there may not be much verifiable information on in. On the other hand, it's so famous that whole books might have been written about it, as with Skull and Bones. At present the article is pretty innocent of any source citations... which, as you'll see, I've now complained about. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:35, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I see no problems with articles on societies which are nominally secret, if there is enough about them that is not, and that can be verified. And a Google Books search shows that the Porcellian figures prominently in memoirs and biographies. Tupsharru 14:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Anything in Google Books is good enough for me. Books 1 - 100 with 592 pages on Porcellian, woo-hoo! Wow, there's a lot of potential material for the article there, too. What, by the way, does "Porcellian" mean? Dpbsmith (talk) 15:31, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Seems to have something to do with dead pigs, "...Harvard's still extant Porcellian Club, which arose out of a legendary dinner of roast pig (hence the club's name) in 1794 at Moore's Tavern." (Shand-Tucci, Harvard University, p. 89 - I'm not sure how to make a reasonably brief link to Google Books. George Caspar Homans, Coming to My Senses: The Autobiography of a Sociologist, p. 205, calls it "the Pork" rather than the "the Porc", as the article currently has it. Tupsharru 16:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I seem to have beat you to it... I'm puzzled by linking to Google Books, too. Sometimes trimming it down works, but I'm never sure the links will work for everyone or whether they're Google-account specific. Could you see if this one works for you?
http://books.google.com/books?vid=LCCNrc01001531&id=AzhNeh9Mv8cC&pg=PA354
I get the page on Rae's book, but with a note saying that "Your search did not match any documents. Try this search over all volumes". Tupsharru 16:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


Good work on the Pork Club! If you make a Google image search on Porcellian, you will find a Theodore Roosevelt fan page with a group portrait (supposedly) including Theodore Roosevelt (the info that it is the Porcellian is in the meta tag at that page and linked from here, so it's not obvious from the webpage who the people in the picture are). The image itself is presumably in the public domain, but it would probably be better to find it in some authoritative biography and scan it from there. (Many other image hits seem simply to be misspellings of "porcelaine".) Tupsharru 08:43, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IAALBOAHL

... was very funny on WikiEN-L. (I don't think Michael Snow got the joke, as he sent a very somber response.) Cheers, JDoorjam Talk 21:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation of disruptive behavior by User:GO WHARTON - please help

You seem to have expressed an interest in mediating the dispute over the promotion and reversion of NPOV edits to Ivy League business schools. If you're still interested, I'm writing to request that you help out, as it's taking just way too much of my time, and my frustration is showing. Thanks. MBAguy 04:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

On another note, I wonder if you'd be interested in certifying the current RfC. I am not choosing sides here, but it's obvious that some sort of mediation is required. Isopropyl 14:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

GO WHARTON is now blanking the RFC.. you may want to step in here. [6] [7] Rhobite 03:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Nuvistors & DEC....

Well, my source for the DEC tidbit (regarding dairy equipment) was actually from a website about the history of Digital Equipment Co. that I remember reading a while back. I can't remember what the site's URL was, although I should google it. But then again, it's source might be iffy as well, so I'll just go ahead and revert that edit I did for now until I can get a guaranteed source for this, much like you are seeking for as well...

And that's cool that you know about nuvistors too ;)...

-misternuvistor 09:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a little dangerous... it _does_ happen that mistakes in Wikipedia get picked up by other websites, then removed from Wikipedia, then reinserted into Wikipedia by people who saw them elsewhere. Also, since Wikipedia is freely copiable, there are a number of commercial websites ("Wikipedia mirrors") that basically copy all of Wikipedia but present it under some other name. Probably half the websites that claim to be "encyclopedias" are copies. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cheesesteak

I'll see if I can find some sources to cite, but I'm a native Philadelphian who no longer lives there myself, and these opinions reflect my view as well as the view of a number of other native Philadelphians who no longer live in the area. I don't know of any way to cite that, though :)--Caliga10 12:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not challenging your veracity, but I am trying to noodge people to adhere to the verifiability policy, which applies to articles on popular culture as well as high culture. If large numbers of native Philadelphians believe this, most likely one of them has published their opinion somewhere. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Perfectly reasonable. If I cannot find a source to cite, would you suggest that my comments be deleted, or noted as unverifiable?--Caliga10 14:18, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Just leave it there with the [citation needed] tag for a week or too, keep an eye out for a source, and eventually you or I or someone else ought to delete it if nobody can source it. Try a Google Books search, by the way, or a www.a9.com search on "books." If you don't actually plan to look for a source at all, then I'd say remove it, possibly paste it into Talk and say you think there should be something in the article about their not being made right anywhere else. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GO WHARTON AND MBAguy

Is it possible that they are the same person? Has that thought occurred to you? Just wondering... Dpbsmith (talk) 10:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't know which is the more depressing. Either way, you did the right thing to block them. If they can't get along on pages they understand perfectly, heaven knows what would happen elsewhere. --Duncan 15:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JDoorjam fails to take you literally

It only occurred to me in the figurative sense: here you have two people whose pride in their MBA is so strong that they chose their wiki handle based on it, and now unabashedly and systematically edit based on that pride. GO WHARTON is proud of his affiliation with UPenn excuse me, Penn, both because of its high-caliber business school and its membership with the Ivy League. MBAguy is proud of his school, too, and is tired of the sheep-like and not-always-so-accurate "Ivy means best, right?" mentality pervasive in American culture. So in a lot of ways, they are the same guy who has made a personal decision that his feelings on the issue are so strong (Ivies have/don't have great business schools) that they're NPOV fact.
In a slightly more literal sense of their being the same person, I blocked an IP which was performing the same sorts of edits that GO WHARTON would perform if he hadn't been recently blocked for 3RR. I'm pretty confident the IP was dodging a block, but I don't think it was GO WHARTON who was doing it. The edits were way too over-the-top. They weren't just the name-dropping GO WHARTON usually puts in; they were full-blown, "______ University has a business school which is a member of the fantastic super amazing Ivy League business schools." Part of me suspects that MBAguy might have been putting these edits in in an attempt to cause a backlash against Ivy League business schools being included in any articles, so in this instance, I do think they were the same person.
MBAguy has a (weird) theory that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/GO WHARTON is connected with the Yale School of Management and is trying to overcome feelings of inferiority about attending what is merely a top twenty business school by "wrap[ping] his school in the Ivy garb." I don't think I'm ready to buy that.
OK, I just wondered whether we had someone who enjoyed sparring with himself and attracting attention... Dpbsmith (talk) 13:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JDoorjam violates WP:BEANS

If they are literally the same individual and have been this entire time, it's an awfully bizarre method of trolling/vandalism, and frankly one I prefer to the alternatives. Considering the amount of energy this individual would have put into reverting himself and screaming at himself on multiple talk pages, if they'd really wanted to be directly counter-productive or even destructive, they would have been a much more significant headache. And if they're not the same person, part of me still prefers this situation. I'm glad it hasn't occurred to them that if they just get past this quibble about Ivy League business schools, they could join forces and engage in a reign of general business-school boosterism terror. We'd have to constantly comb through education in the United States, business school, all the individual b-school articles, and other places I haven't thought of where the idea of going to business school is touted as the best decision one could make in life, akin to buying a winning lotto ticket when you know the winning numbers, or some other delightful hyperbole. Considering that alternative, the more they bang their heads together, the less I have to bang mine against a wall. JDoorjam Talk 13:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Giving up on Wikipedia

I've decided to sign off Wikipedia because of this incident, and specifically your handling of it. The 3RR rule is supposed to exclude vandalism, which is what I was fighting with User:GO WHARTON. When Wikipedia admins refuse to spend enough time to sort out legitimate users (who have contributed in the past) from trolls whose handles were created to perpetuate a single POV (and now advance theories that perhaps we were the same person!) it makes me lose faith entirely in this system. Wikipedia will degenerate into a mass of completely biased, untrustworthy information. Good luck with that. MBAguy 17:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
OK. Sorry to have given offense, sorry to see you go. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi. Sorry you and the other admins were unfortunate enough to get stuck in the middle of this. MBAguy's final action when he filed his RfC was to spray-paint over 20 wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and the RfC itself with his crystal-ball speculations about my supposed "motives" and where I hypothetically go to school (cornell, penn - grad or undergrad, yale, dartmouth ....). I would appreciate it if you or another admin would remove such witch-hunting messages; I could provide a list of his messages. As for MBAguy's RfC, I'd prefer to let it go away on its own, since only one person has certified it. Won't it disappear automatically if it doesn't soon get two certifications? If necessary, I will insert a response. Brief point about the disagreement's origin: After MBAguy's AfD was voted down, I made an edit to "tone down rankings emphasis" in the article because it seemed wikipedia school articles generally included little or no mention of rankings. He reverted - without discussion - my edit. My response was to rv his reversion and constructively suggest to him a more elegant way to add rankings information to the article, which he ignored. Earlier, many people, including I, gave MBAguy a number of constructive suggestions during the Afd, each of which he ignored. Although the conflict was practically useless, it did show that MBAguy was on a witch-hunt and was uninterested in engaging in civil discussion with anyone. But most importantly, when will you lift the plague o' my house? GO WHARTON 17:42, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{encourage}}

Dpbsmith, for some reason I thought there was an {{encourage}} template to deal with people who want to quit Wikipedia. In any case, do we have a responsibility to try to encourage those users who feel discouraged enough to hang up their editing hats forever? I realize many of us have gotten into similar tussles in the past and yet still make valuable contributions today. Perhaps a simple case of newbies feeling bitten but it might be worthwhile to try to mentor these folk. Just my two cents. Isopropyl 16:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] KaavyaGate

Have you been following the Kaavya Viswanathan debacle? I've been catching bits and pieces overseas from blogs and whatnot (mostly Language Log), and to me the affair seems to reflect the whole Ivy mythos—"reflect" as if in a mirror from Salvador Dali's studio. Anville 14:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Only vaguely. I read a review in today's Globe that's headlined "Teen Troubles: Plagiarism reports overshadows fact that Opal's story lacked more than originality." My main feeling is that I really feel very sorry for the poor young woman. I can't imagine the pain of that degree of public humiliation at that age, just when you're trying to step forward and become recognized and respected as an adult. And then to get slammed as a phony...
I don't know what a "book packager" is, but they're the ones that ought to get their names dragged through the mud. It sounds as if a committee of writers took something that had integrity but wasn't quite publishable and reworked it into a bland, saleable commodity... it's not even where the borrowed passages originated. You'd think someone would have made original MS available to reporters. I'm not saying that she didn't lift them herself, I'm just saying that even the authorship of this work seems to me to be in question. Worst of all, the taint of the word "plagiarism" might even possibly impact her future academic career, should she be headed in that direction.
I haven't read the book, have you?
The worst outcome, and a likely one, is huge sales of the book sparked by the controversy.
BTW you might keep an eye on Ivy League... Dpbsmith (talk) 15:08, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I haven't read Opal Mehta, and with the book being pulled off the shelves, it looks like neither I nor anybody else will have the chance to form an independent opinion. The genetic imperative of cynicism within me keeps screaming out, "A chick-lit book is unoriginal? Gee, what are the odds!" but, on a level more elevated from the reptile brain, I feel pretty sympathetic for the young woman at the middle of it all. It's just a horrible thing to have happen. . . and I have to wonder: what motive on Earth would anybody have to lift a handful of phrases like that? None of the excerpts involved sound like the lines which would make or break a novel; why would anyone consciously appropriate them from somewhere else?
Even in a pulp detective story, the P.I. has to establish motive, means and opportunity. The "means" here is pretty straightforward, but the motive is completely up in the air, and everybody involved in the "packaging" seems to have had the opportunity.
Rather than go on at great length (and risk parroting someone else's words I dimly recall reading), I'll just provide a handy-dandy external hyperlink. And vis-a-vis "book packagers", see this in the New York Times and this in the Harvard Independent. (I'll say this for Harvard: the Independent seems much more like journalism than the Tech. If a plagiarism scandal broke out concerning an MIT student, the only readable coverage would be coming out of Voo Doo. Half-joke.) What makes me think of the Ivy-League mythology is another piece in the Independent, "Kaavya's Expensive Inner Circle" (28 April 2006). Here are three paragraphs:
In the acknowledgements page of Opal Mehta, Viswanathan calls Katherine Cohen "a helping hand from beginning to end." In fact, the college consultant was much more than that; Cohen became Viswanathan's entrée into a publishing world greased by personal relationships and shared connections with elite institutions—Ivy League colleges foremost among them.
Cohen is the founder and CEO of IvyWise, a private college-counseling firm perhaps best known for charging prices that would be exorbitant for all but a tiny sliver of Ivy-ambitioned parents. According to a 2005 New York Times article posted on the company's website, a top-of-the-line two-year counseling package with Cohen herself costs $33,000, or about 75 percent of the American median household income.
In an interview with CollegeConfidential.com, Cohen insisted that her services are worth every penny. "I really look," she said, "at everything going on in a student's life and plan everything from courses for four years to summers to outside activities and focus on strengthening whatever weaknesses (academic and personal) may come up."
At which point I'm torn: do I burst out laughing or do I let my blood run cold? So much seems wrong with this that I'm not even sure where I should start picking the practice apart.
I'll try to watch Ivy League, along with a few other trouble spots I've noticed recently, though it looks like I won't be able to dive into any big developments until the middle of next month. (Travel, project deadline, big move, start new project, etc.) Anville 17:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
You've given me many links to click, which I'll do... IvyWise sounds ugly. The saving grace is that it can't possibly deliver what it promises and I betcha that it self-destructs in due course. Dare I say that "Cohen" doesn't sound like a name that would have opened Ivy League sesames half a century ago?
Plagiarism is always puzzling, although I certainly have unconsciously lifted felicitous turns of phrase myself. I learned a new word for this, Cryptomnesia, from Wikipedia. I can never figure out why people lie on resumes about easily checked facts, either.
Ambitious self-promoters looking for every edge have always been with us. I remember a novel in which the novelist has a character drop a quarter in a news vending box and take out two newspapers, because "it was an edge, and he was always looking for an edge." The sad thing of course is that one supposes that in Miss Viswanathan's case, it is probably vicarious ambition rather than her own. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Ha ha. That little irony about Cohen had slipped me by. Perhaps it says something positive about my upbringing that I was well into teenagerhood before I ever heard that there were things called "Jewish names". And where did I learn this? Why, from Isaac Asimov's autobiography, naturally. (For a while when he was a child—late-1920s Brooklyn, this would've been—his mother wanted to change his name to Irving. This was before enough Israels and Isaacs had changed over to Irvings and Isidores to give those Anglo-Saxon names the old stigma. In Nabokov's Lolita, even Humbert Humbert is sorry for Irving Flashman, the only Jewish child on Dolores Haze's class roster. . . .)
You're lucky you said "I remember a novel in which" thus-and-so happens, because if you had only said "It is as if a man drops a quarter in a news vending box and takes out two newspapers," we'd have to start inquiring into DpbsmithGate. I'm sure I've been a cryptomnesiac myself a time or two, hopefully only in places like Wikipedia Talk pages where the strictures are not quite so tight-laced. Anville 19:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thomas Jefferson

I noticed you made some changes to the Thomas Jefferson article, namely, removing a bunch of links that you say are not relevant to Jefferson because they don't directly lead to information that relates to him. However, I don't think that all those links necessarily needed to go. Specifically, I think that U.S. Constitution and John F. Kennedy at least deserve links. The page WP:CONTEXT isn't totally clear about this. There is a lot of grey area. I'd like to hear your side of this before I change it back. Bonus Onus 13:00, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and change back a few of them, selectively. This is all a matter of judgement. I probably overdid it. U.S. Constitution certainly makes sense. I'm not so sure about John F. Kennedy, but I won't revert. But we certainly don't need individual links to author, lawyer, etc. Basically, the question to ask yourself is: if I were reading about Jefferson, and I clicked on this link, would I find it pleasing (as deepening or broadening or extending the material I'm reading) or irritating (because it's irrelevant or distracting). Dpbsmith (talk) 13:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Result of Disagreement

Hi again. MBAguy's last action was to dump witch-hunting messages in about 10-20 talk pages. His messages included his crystal-ball speculations about what he alleges are my "motives" and my hypothetical background. I requested in my previous message above dated April 30, that you or other admins please delete them for me, since I don't think wikipedia is about such things. Since I didn't hear anything back, I started removing MBAguy's witch-hunting messages. What is the fair alternative? GO WHARTON 15:26, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Leave them in and don't worry about them. Nobody else cares much. Make a brief response if you like if you think his messages need them. IMHO they do not rise to the level of personal attack. I think both you and MBAguy were wildly overstating the seriousness of what the other was doing. In at least one case you blanked a talk page and removed a legitimate remark on the article content. My reaction... which may be overreaction on my part... is that I very much dislike attempts to rewrite history or remove background.
Rather than blanking talk pages, my own suggestion would be that, if you feel you must do something, try adding a single line of comment saying something like "For the record, I reject this characterization and regard it as verging on a personal attack." (Don't say that it is a personal attack. People can disagree about that. Just say that's the way you feel.)
My advice... and it's just advice, others may advise you differently is: with respect to MBAguy, try to develop a thicker skin. Shrug it off. Water off a duck's back. There's no need to spend a lot of effort tracking down and responding to everything he may have said about you.
By all means, continue to work on Ivy League business schools. I would, however, opine that did go overboard in planting links to that article in other articles and that you should back off on that. And consider working on some other things. All of our articles on universities (and business schools) tend to suffer from "recentism" and are heavy on the current state of the school, its programs, rankings, college-guide stuff... and light on history, how particular business schools have influenced business.
I'm thinking of Amory Lovins' complaint during the 1970s, when he was trying to promote conservation and "soft energy paths," that at the time (when inflation was high]], business schools trained their MBAs to calculate the present value of any future benefit, and that because of high inflation rates, the calculations tended to discount any long-term future energy savings virtually to zero. Thus corporations refused to take energy-conserving measures because their B-school-trained executives' spreadsheets showed that it wouldn't pay. I vaguely remember him complaining specifically about Harvard MBA's, but I may have that wrong. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
You may be right, maybe it's not a big deal. But you say I removed a "legitimate remark" from a talk page. I haven't done that but if you think so, when did that happen? I'll take your advice and add a response to his witch-hunting messages, even though I disagree with that approach. Users should be disallowed from adding messages that speculate about other users' motives and background, and that assume bad faith on the part of other users, especially to the extent MBAguy did. MBAguy scattered such messages across like 10-20 wikipedia talk pages, user talk pages, the AfD discussion page, admin talk pages, and the RfC page. His level of personal vendetta seems unprecedented on wikipedia, that's why I asked admins to expunge his personal speculations about other users. I don't think admins should preserve such message content anywhere on wikipedia; it sets a bad precedent in my view.
Agreed, the conflict was practically useless, but it did show that MBAguy had no interest in civil discussion with anyone. I and others could have likewise speculated about MBAguy's background and motives but we refrained from doing that. Next time though, we won't engage someone like MBAguy, it will be time to call in the admin cavalcade. Lesson learned. At the very least, I finally backed down from the scuffle. MBAguy seemed ready to continue his war forever. That's in the past, movin' on. On another point, I did include some stuff in ILBS article about Wharton's mission of changing business management from a trade to a profession, how Wharton influenced business. I haven't had the time though to research more of that. I know, then how did I have the time for MBAguy's war? Good question, guess I kinda got sucked in to the conflict, won't happen again, lesson learned. Never before dealt with someone who acts like he did. Thanks for your advice. GO WHARTON 17:27, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia! I'm afraid that, like USENET flamewars, there is something about Wikipedia that brings out the worst in people. You're not the first person to get overly emotionally involved in an edit war and you won't be the last.
To respond to some of your points: "when did I remove a legitimate remark?" here, accidentally I'm sure, you removed "Shouldn't this article mention the Johnson School's affiliation with Cornell University? Zizzybaluba"
"Users should be disallowed from adding messages that speculate about other users' motives and background." They are. This is covered by No personal attacks, a policy, and Assume good faith, a guideline. These behaviors are in fact "disallowed." However, there can be legitimate disagreement about what constitutes a personal attack... and there is no godlike entity ready to reach down and instantly enforce policy.
By the way, starting an RFC was a sensible thing to try, even though in this case you should have tried to work things out on your own first... probably by leaving remarks on talk pages, and allowing MBAguy's edits to go unreverted while waiting for third parties to express opinions on the talk pages. There should probably have been an RFC on the article long before there was an RFC on the user.
There is, by the way, scope for legitimate disagreement—between you and me in this case—about removing MBAguy's material from the talk pages. If it is a personal attack, it is reasonable to remove it. If it is just a spirited discussion, probably not. "Personal attack" usually means something rather more personal. I don't think speculating that someone attends the Yale School of Management qualifies! (But of course that last remark is spin, too. Accusations of sockpuppetry do verge on personal attack). If you'd like to get a second opinion on this, you might ask User:Isopropyl what he thinks.
You might also read WP:NPA#Examples, then read WP:NPA#Examples_that_are_not_personal_attacks, then readTalk:S.C._Johnson_Graduate_School_of_Management and see which category MBAguy's comment falls in.
"His level of personal vendetta seems unprecedented on wikipedia..." I am sorry to say that any longtime Wikipedian's reaction to that is likely to be laughter. However, it is not usual.
"Good question, guess I kinda got sucked in to the conflict, won't happen again, lesson learned. Never before dealt with someone who acts like he did. Thanks for your advice." Well, I've gotten sucked into such conflicts. I hope I won't let it happen again, but there are people out there who are skilled at "trolling" who could probably do it again.
By the way, don't worry. There isn't any Black Mark On Your Permanent Record or anything like that. Stuff like this happens all the time and it's not a big deal. The big thing is never to engage in a revert war. If you change something and someone reverts, never just re-revert. Always add something new to the mix. Explain carefully. Engage with the other user on their Talk page. Start a discussion on the article's Talk page. Revert partially. Wordsmith something in between. Add notes on talk pages. Cite sources for your views. Whatever. In the case of linking to Ivy League business schools, re-inserting the link but in a less prominent place on the page would have been one possible way to accomplish a partial or compromise revert.
Also, but for some reason carrying on discussions in edit comments doesn't work very well. The pressure to keep the comment short results in distortions, presents a curt and dismissive "tone of voice, etc." That's a clear example of "do as I say, not as I do" for conversational edit comments are a bad habit of my own.
For the record, MBAguy is also welcome back should he decide to return. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Correct, I mistakenly deleted that message - my edit description explains I tried to keep the message by reverting to Brholden's edit. My bad. Funny, MBAguy never showed interest in civil discussion with those who had a different editorial view - the word "negotiation" didn't seem to be in his vocabulary. He liked to steamroll anyone who got in his edits' way. Examples are MBAguy's edit wars against the Wharton and Harvard University articles. It's almost like he searches out Wharton and Ivy League references and when he finds them, watch out!
BTW, I didn't know users can RfC an article. I also wasn't aware of the AfD, POV tag, User RfC, all the stuff MBAguy utilized in his war against me. As for his "sockpuppet for other schools" accusation, I'm not too thrilled with that. If he posted only one of those messages, wouldn't bother me. But he scattered like 20 copies of that accusatory message throughout wikipedia. That was uncalled for. On a concluding up note, thanks for the nuggets of editorial wisdom. GO WHARTON 20:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Some of the first salvos in your edit war with MBAguy were in fact against me, accusing ME of being a sockpuppet of MBAguy. But if you're willing to let it go, so am I. I hope you'll blank/edit your comments about me the same way you wanted to blank MBAguy's comment about you? Gekko 22:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Do you really need to rehash this again, Gekko, but if you do, recall you were the first user to revert other users' edits when the AfD closed, without discussion or consensus. Your first interaction with that article was a salvo that you instigated. I made a conciliatory edit prior to your rv but you reverted my edit without discussion or consensus. Let's say we drop this, ok? It's not worth it. GO WHARTON 19:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Starting the thread over again to conserve your : key. GO WHARTON, you mention that MBAguy made no attempt at civil discussion with you, and lump RfCs into the broad category of "weapons". You should know that an RfC is a forum for exactly the civilized discussion that you seem to call for. As this forum involves the input of neutral third parties, the accusations of vandalism and personal attacks that the two of you were so fond of would be greatly discouraged. I agree that MBAguy greatly exaggerated the severity of the conflict, and the RfC is definitely biased, but it was a start.

If you're curious, you should know that I recommended that MBAguy file an RfC. My suggestion was to take the next step in the dispute resolution process, as obviously your attempts at "talking" to one another weren't helping much at all. In the future, you should make sure to adhere to that first step of the dispute resolution process: talking to the other party.

Let's look at an example. In the archives of my talk page, you'll find a dispute between myself and another editor. I had merged some articles and another user felt that my actions were in error, and thus accused me of "vandalism" across a dozen or so talk pages. Instead of blanking or retaliation, I contacted a third party for another opinion, in this case the esteemed MONGO. With MONGO's assistance, we succeeded in talking out the issue and resolving it peacefully.

Notice that this description does not include accounts of edit warring or personal attacks. This should be how every dispute is resolved: the involved parties discussing the issues and agreeing to a compromise. Ideally, nothing should ever make it to RfC, unless it has to. Your situation definitely called for an RfC. When I stumbled upon the Talk:Ivy League business schools article, I tried to resolve the dispute, but clearly neither of you would have it. So I recommended an RfC. In closing, I'd like to remind you that content on talk pages should be preserved as a record of past discussions, including user talk pages. Just because it's not favorable is not a good enough reason to remove it. Isopropyl 22:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand that you feel strongly about the pages that you edit, which is probably why you cite the AfD of a page you created as one of MBAguy's weapons. You should probably remember that you do not own the pages you create. Other than that, we can always use knowledgeable editors such as yourself. Minor tussles such as these happen to everyone now and again, and even the most experienced editors have been known to lose their cool. Just remember not to piss off Jimbo lest you find yourself permabanned :) Isopropyl 22:53, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say a RfC is a weapon. You may be right, his RfC may have finally been a sort of start. You may notice MBAguy didn't give his own RfC a chance. MBAguy complained about several admins and took off, leaving his RfC blowing in the wind. You seem to frown on my attempts at "talking" to MBAguy. Why aren't any admins still "talking" to MBAguy? Because admins didn't fully agree with MBAguy's version of things, so he had no time for admins, or anyone else, let alone civil discussion.
At the start, I and others tried compromise, negotiation, constructive suggestions, and other conciliatory steps with MBAguy during voting on his AfD. MBAguy showed no interest in civil discussion or compromise.
About the preservation of user talk page content: MBAguy called me a "sockpuppet" for other users or other schools, whatever his exact wording. He distributed that insult in like 10-20 messages in user talk pages, article discussion pages, even in his RfC. I think admins should permanently delete that kind of mass-marketing insult. Otherwise, users reading this discussion may think, fantastic, if someone has a different editorial view, I'll just mass-distribute personal jabs about him across wikipedia. Not a good precedent in my view.
BTW, I realize nobody "owns" any content on wikipedia. I am also not aware of "pissing off Jimbo." That user name (?) doesn't ring a bell, unless Jimbo is MBAguy.
You say I was not interested in "resolving the dispute" when you tried to mediate. If you review that portion of the discussion, you will notice MBAguy immediately argued with you. You told him to "let it go." He refused. Then I responded that it's a shame MBAguy refuses any sort of discussion or compromise. I said if he was "open to discussion, we could easily settle the 'situation' in a few minutes, ..." He should have taken me up on my offer and said, I'm calling your bluff GO WHARTON, let's hear your compromise offer, while the admin is listening in. But MBAguy refused discussion. In lieu of discussion or compromise, MBAguy responded with a new attack over "changing of section headings". Then he returned to deleting my comments. You seem to think each of us exhibited the same behavior during the conflict. If so, we see things very differently. At least I know about the RfC mechanism for the future. Given our different views of what transpired, I still appreciate your attempt to mediate. Thanks, and sorry you got roped into the tussle. GO WHARTON 18:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I admit that I sort of lumped the behaviors of both you and MBAguy together, as I saw a lot of arguing and reverting and didn't really dissect the conflict. Things get out of hand pretty quickly; even admins get sucked into debates like this, and some even get blocked (!) The reference to "Jimbo" is about the founder of Wikipedia; his decisions are final and overruling. Admins that go against Jimbo's decree face severe penalties, including the revocation of sysop status. Scary, huh? Isopropyl 20:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
As the first user to revert GO WHARTON's deleting of rankings content, I'm having a hard time being convinced of his pure intentions here. He immediately accused me of being a sockpuppet and vandal and re-reverted to his version without any discussion - all while maintaining in talk pages that he was the only one interested in discussion. I blame both he and MBAguy for getting sucked into their conflict, but if I had to pick a side, I think MBAguy seems the more legitimate of the two. Gekko 00:21, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
"I like the Walrus best," said Alice: "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters."
"He ate more than the Carpenter, though," said Tweedledee. "You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise."
"That was mean!" Alice said indignantly. "Then I like the Carpenter best--if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus."
"But he ate as many as he could get," said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, "Well! They were BOTH very unpleasant characters—"
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass. I don't think GO WHARTON and MBAguy are unpleasant characters, but I do think their behavior in this matter was remarkably symmetrical and I don't think there's much point in trying to pick sides in this particular argument. Dpbsmith (talk) 09:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course I disagree with your view but I won't complain about admins' behavior or views, unlike some people.
I hoped we could drop this issue, but Gekko is bringing it up again. At least Gekko starts by admitting he was the "first user to revert" edits after the AfD's conclusion. That is, he reverted my edit attempt to "tone down rankings emphasis" right after the AfD closed. And Gekko reverted my edit without discussion or consensus. The purpose of my edit was to reduce the rankings emphasis that MBAguy inserted. He put rankings stuff at the top, middle and bottom of the article. Rankings overkill. Most wikipedia school articles include minimal or no rankings information. In one of Gekko's rv's (without discussion of course), he called the article a "mess!" yet his POV tag was removed by another user after a slight modification. Why the exclamatory nature of the revert from Gekko? Of course Gekko ignored requests to discuss content changes regarding rankings in that article. Wondering why Gekko wants to rehash this now? GO WHARTON 19:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
This is not accurate. Your edit was in fact the first "reversion", I was the first editor to revert your edits, which deleted recently added content without discussion. The reason I bring this up again is because I find your comments dubious since the first thing you did was call me a sockpuppet, and are now complaining about being called a sockpuppet yourself. I'm still waiting for your demonstration of good faith in removing your insults against me. I see no interest on your part in demonstrating that good faith thus far, but I'm hoping to be proven wrong. Gekko 20:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but he did it first! AriseYeSonsOfMIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Did not! Noble CIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Did too! AriseYeSonsOfMIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Noble CIT is a poopy-head! AriseYeSonsOfMIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I know you are, but what am I? Noble CIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I know you are, but what am I? AriseYeSonsOfMIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Stop repeating me! Noble CIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Stop repeating me! AriseYeSonsOfMIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
MOMMY! HE'S IS PICKING ON ME AGAIN! Noble CIT 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
  • You know, it occurs to me that it might be nice to declare a moratorium on the word "war" to describe these sorts of things. Let's not overdramatize. What occurred between MBAguy and GO WHARTON? An altercation? A quarrel? An argument? Nobody was killed, nobody was wounded, and nothing was injured—except feelings. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brandeis University

Nice work on Origins. Please check your quote from NYTimes, "and and," and maybe other typos? -- Perspective 00:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I like it and believe it should be up top in the article. Discussion on that should be on Talk there. -- Perspective 16:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doonesbury on education

Alex Doonesbury shares her experience of visiting R.I.T., Rensselaer, Harvard and of course MIT.

  • Dare I reveal my stupidity by saying that the "black box" question and answer seem wrong to me... or garbled? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to respond to combative user Gekko

Hi. User Gekko just put what he called a "Warning" section on my user talk page calling me a troll and sockpuppet, the same personal tactic MBAguy used. Gekko did this today, even though I asked Gekko several times above, on your talk page, to please drop the AfD issue, as the admins have suggested: get over it, and move on. Gekko refuses to drop it, and now seems to be quickly escalating his campaign to the next level. This seems to be another MBAguy type situation all over again. Any suggestion on what should be done? Thanks. GO WHARTON 00:13, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Added response below. Gekko 00:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GO WHARTON trolling

As you can see here [8], this user has instigated a conflict with me and so I looked into some of the allegations regarding his handle and detailed them on a warning on his talk page here [9]. I believe this user is basically behaving badly under a sockpuppet handle and trying to get Wharton students blamed for it. Gekko 00:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

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