User talk:Joke137

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Contents 1 Yet another... 2 Re:Specialists 3 Your proposed guideline 4 Reference idiots 5 Question about image removal 6 If it's not too much trouble... 7 Re: Classical mechanics 8 Dark Energy 9 Total re-write of the main Physics page is in progess 10 Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience 11 Edits to page on Cosmic Inflation 12 MECO 13 Category move 14 Scientific guidelines 15 Scientific_citation_guidelines: thanks! 16 Thanks for the flowers 17 Pseudososcience ArbCom 18 Peer reviewer js 19 Scientific citation guidelines - ready to declare consensus 20 Featured Article: Vancouver 21 21 centimeter radiation

[edit] Yet another...

in your listing of Licorne accounts, it seems that 66.194.98.242 is not yet listed. Got banned yesterday-or-so.

I do recommend sorting the entries by number - it makes it easier to see if something's already listed. --Alvestrand 05:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It was actually listed, but I agree that page was a mess so I have sorted it with the couple of blocks I've made today. To be honest, I'm not sure it continues to serve much purpose to continue to record every IP address he uses. –Joke 21:40, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

For the 66.194.98.0/24 block (City of Clearwater, according to RIPE), I agree it does not make sense, since he seems to be using most of the range; more numbers is just continuing the same behaviour. Probably a good idea to record others, though. --Alvestrand 06:07, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Specialists

1. You might not be aware of that, but articles on WP that exist over a week or so almost automatically land in one of the top spots in Google searched due to priority given to Wikipedia links by Google.
2. I am not saying that there is no place for articles such as cobordism, but I believe it is not a really Good Article unless it would be accessible to the common reader. We expect people writing articles on technology or even computer games or those Pokemons to write them so that everybody can understand them, so I see no reason why maths or physics articles should be exempt from this criterium. That said, I do believe that creating a universally understandable article on a topic from advanced maths or physics is much harder than on many other topics, but, well, that's just the way life is.
3. Let me reiterate - I am not trying to argue there is no place in WP for articles that are not instantly accessible to all readers (though I believe all articles should ultimately strive for that). I am just trying to argue to turning the entire WIAGA upside down is not a good idea. Not all articles have automatically be Good Articles, and no editor has to strive for this status. So, there is no need to disrupt the work of the Good Articles Project without an actual reason.

I can expand on that more, but I am really tired and I am trying to work on some actually important things in the meantime. This whole discussion consumes almost the entire time I have for WP. Bravada, talk - 02:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Trying to maintain the same numbering as in my talk page:

1. Google has a "link scoring" system in order to have the more valuable and relevant links show up first regardless of how often is the searched word repeated in the page's meta heading and stuff, and Wikipedia has the honor of being one of the highest-scored sites in the system. I think they even have special constraints programmed in for Wiki pages - see how the main GA page would appear if you search for "good articles", but not all other GA pages or talk pages.

2. & 3. I am genuinely very, very happy that we seem to think alike on that! I was trying to make some "hardliners" realize how futile this whole debacle is, but apparently all I have achieved is getting some angry comments in my talk page...

Anyway, I hope we are getting closer to common understanding, or to the understanding that this was a misunderstaning, and we can continue working on both article development and the GA process proceedings further :D Bravada, talk - 16:06, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your proposed guideline

I was only able to give it a brief run through before having to head off to work here but I really like it so far. I think you're onto something. :) Agne 17:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

A masterpiece of trying to keep everyone happy, and I say that in a good way. Would you have any objections to my putting your name forward for Kofi Annan's job? qp10qp 14:37, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reference idiots

I happened to see your (devestatingly apt, and sad) dialog about reference police making it too difficult to do the actual writing, and I just had a comment I wanted to make. I sympathize, a lot - IMO, no one should be required to any more than provide one (or maybe two) references (and by this I mean nothing more than a naked URL at minimum, or a author-title for offline refs). Asking someone who actually adds content to concern themselves with any more than that is idiotic, and anti-wiki, and I'd be very glad to tell off anyone you point out to me who does this. However, I do believe that pedantic, fully cited, templatized, copious references are useful (and I enjoy finding and putting them in), so I also strongly believe that all this complicated structure should be allowed, and authors should be gently reminded of WP:OWN if they complain about wikignomes messing with their deathless prose. But such fixing, detail adding, and polishing, should be left to the WikiGnomes - asking authors to do it (unless they want to) is a terrible idea. Just had to get this off my chest. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you are doing, on-wiki or off. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:11, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about image removal

Re: Cosmic inflation - was there a particular reason for removing the WMAP image? IMO, while it wasn't directly related to the article, it had enough in common that it provided some pictoral means of interpretation to a reader less familiar with the subject (not to say that the image you added is any less useful to the article, but it's not as accessible - and images are always a good way to entice a reader to continue reading). It certainly needed some formatting/proper positioning, though. I don't particularly have a strong opinion one way or the other, it just seemed that removal of the image (particularly without any justification in the edit summary or on the talk page) seemed a little arbitrary. 192.91.147.34 15:53, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No, there was no strong reason for removing it. My rationale was that (i) it was poorly formatted (ii) it wasn't clear to me exactly what was being communicated with the image (iii) I was a little uncomfortable using a press release image like that (not because there is any problem with the copyright, just because it seems somehow odd to use those graphics...). If you want to reinsert it, or if we can find a good use for it, that would be great. –Joke 16:04, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, the image could probably be cropped a little to cut out the large black border. –Joke 16:06, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] If it's not too much trouble...

Could you go through redshift and remove the citation needed references that you think can be removed and keep the ones you think should stay? I really trust your judgement on these matters. --ScienceApologist 11:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Classical mechanics

{Re: your message on my talk page.) Please, change the quality and importance ratings of articles as you see fit (discussing on the talk page for the article if you think the change will be controversial). The main place the info resides is on the talk page of the article - when a rating is changed there, it will be automatically picked up and updated on the list of articles. My main aim on WP at the moment is to tag all physics articles with Template:Physics, mostly unclassified, in the hope that people will then classify them (and re-classify them as appropriate in the future). Mike Peel 16:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dark Energy

On March 4 2005 you did a major rewrite on this topic. Under the heading of Comological Constant you inserted a reference to the anthropic principle (something unscientific) but the real problem was that you said Steven Weinberg was a physicist who supports the anthropic principle as an explanation for the cosmological constant. Do you have any proof that Weinberg is a supporter of the anthropic principle since the man is actually a famous athiest and critic of both religion and the anthropic principle? When I read this I thought it was a joke, especially because the only supporter of the anthropic principle listed was actually a sworn enemy of it. Then I researched this and found that it started with you and your user name happnes to be Joke137. It was sad to see that so many editors failed to notice this from March to October. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.233.154.132 (talk • contribs).

It would be sad to see that so many editors failed to notice it from March to October, except that it happens to be true. Read the reference I inserted if you don't believe me. –Joke 15:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Total re-write of the main Physics page is in progess

You might like to join us at Physics/wip where a total re-write of the main Physics page is in progess. At present we're discussing the lead paragraphs for the new version, and how Physics should be defined. I've posted here because you are on the Physics Project participant list. --MichaelMaggs 08:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience

Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. Please add any evidence you may wish the arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Thatcher131 11:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to page on Cosmic Inflation

Howdy,

Thanks for correcting what was awkward, in first paragraph, and trying to make it better. That article could use some streamlining, for sure, as many parts are confusing. One edit you made was to remove my word believed (probably mis-spelled) and I made some commentary on the Talk page, which I copied below. In my opinion,it might make sense to insert some conditional, but I invite your comment. People coming to this subject from Astrophysics background might differ with String Theory and Particle Physics guys on the subject, about what is proven fact, and what's still just theory. I see you are frequent contributor and ardent editor. Keep up the good work! JonathanD 16:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I agree that the article can use some streamlining. I am in the midst of a rather large rewrite of the article, which means I am improving the referencing, content and organization but probably not always producing the most lucid prose. Hopefully that will come in time, and when I submit the article to peer review and eventually as a featured article candidate. See my comments on the Talk:Cosmic inflation page. –Joke 19:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MECO

Do you have Magnetospheric eternally collapsing object on your watchlist? What's your opinion on this article? --Pjacobi 17:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I had never seen the article before. It is the usual kind of science-cruft. Non-peer reviewed papers from the arXiv or papers published in third-rate journals somehow get long Wikipedia articles, despite getting little attention in the scientific community. Their authors – or cultish followers intent on fringe theories they found in New Scientist – work up extensive Wikipedia articles, which nobody can be bothered to fact-check or bring in conformance with NPOV because there is so much work to be done writing real articles about subjects of actual prominence. Usually their authors cite the fact that nobody has bothered to refute the (n^th iteration of the) particular pet theory as evidence that it is correct, or at the very least that the NPOV, NOR and V policies don't permit us to label the article as the kind of fringe science it manifestly is. (Sadly, they may be correct.)

This is one of the biggest problems facing science writing on Wikipedia today, and I'm not really sure how to deal with it. Probably you wanted an opinion about the actual article, though, not ruminations on the deficiencies of Wikipedia. One of the pests that keeps coming up again and again on black hole, general relativity and even in the scientific literature is the confusion of the tautological statement "it is not possible to send a signal from inside a black hole to an observer outside" with the manifestly false statement "black holes never actually form." As far as I can tell, this comes from people's inability to understand the causal structure of the simple Penrose diagram of a Schwarzschild black hole. Quantum mechanically, things are a little different. The recent work by Hawking has to do with how unitarity is preserved in the Euclidean path integral because the path integral has zero measure on worldsheets in which a black hole forms compared to worldsheets on which no black hole forms. This is a quantum mechanical statement, which he has argued only for anti-de Sitter space, and classically it is probably best to go about our lives as if black holes actually exist. –Joke 18:33, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

As I feared.

Now I recall I first stumbled over this some months back, when User:Nichalp created Abhas Mitra. Nichalp a really nice, valueable contributor but AFAIK without domain knowledge took the article on rediff.com for face value.

So now we have one more of those articles. At least be it should be OK to refuse mentioning the subject in other articles?

Would you consider it more or less notable than e.g. Gravastar? I assume less, as the Gravastar often gets mentioned in passing in populare science magazines and websites.

To show my lack of knowledge of the subject matter, isn't it the case that whether or nor you can observe the completion of black hole forming depends on your frame of refence and of the global geometry of space time? At least I read this Baez essay that way and even voiced the opinion at Talk:Black_hole#Danras_edits_and_the_three-revert_rule.

Back to the MECO article: Do you see any chance (or even motiviation) to sanitize the article?

And heck, there's also Twin Quasar. And the obligatory New Scientist article.

Pjacobi 18:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say that it is less notable than gravastar, although the concept of a gravastar seems to be one that is mainly communicated in the popular press. Thanks for the Baez link – that is exactly the sort of thing I was intent on saying, plus it includes the useful observation that the last photon coming from the nascent black hole emerges in finite time. Of course I agree with everything Baez says; my point is that although in theory (if not in practice) the signals of the hole forming take arbitrarily long to reach you, that doesn't mean the hole hasn't yet formed because there exists a time after which it would be causally impossible for you to go and prevent the hole from forming.

Yes, I think the best thing to do is to avoid mentioning this in, say, the black hole article. The article as it is is long and so difficult to understand that it would be hard to fix, short of cutting it down to a stub. Sentences like

The observational and theoretical arguments which actually proved that the Galactic Black Hole Candidates (GBHC) are Eternally Collapsing Objects containing strong intrinsic equipartition magnetic field in lieu of an Event Horizon (EH) was first shown in an important paper published by two American astrophysicists, Robertson and Leiter.

are, aside from being some of the most tortured English I've read in weeks, not an opinion held by very many people. –Joke 20:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category move

As per the comments you made on Ageo020's talk page, I just wanted to let you know that I moved all 41 articles from Category:String theory physicists to Category:String theorists. Nishkid64 21:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific guidelines

Hi, Joke: thanks for the note. I don't yet have any pre-conceived notions about the proposal, other than the misleading title. They *may* (I'll study them in more detail later today) describe good practices for math or physics articles, but they need to be exposed to the broader community before they are labeled as "scientific" or as a guideline. For example, they might be problematic in biology, medicine, etcetera. I'll look at them in greater detail as soon as I have time; I just thought that adding them as a guideline and under such a broad title, with so little community exposure, was premature. Another thought: if they do become a math- or physics-specific guideline, then perhaps they would be better handled in Project, for example, as WP:MEDMOS handles medical articles — just an idea (that might not work, though, because MedMos adds to broader Wiki policies, rather than subtracting from them, prescribing additional items for medical articles). If they result in less stringent citations than are generally required in Wiki, I imagine you've all considered that articles won't meet FA requirements? Sandy (Talk) 15:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry not to respond in the last day, Joke. With the dangerous and devastating fire and deaths in California, I just don't have the focus right now; I put TS up at WP:FAC to keep distracted. I'm sure it will get sorted out. What about making use of a construct similar to Wikipedia:Manual of style (mathematics), as we've done at Medical? We just brought some of the citation/sourcing info from WP:RS into there ... Sandy (Talk) 16:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific_citation_guidelines: thanks!

Hi Joke, I was struggling with how to deal with the need for making a distinction between for example a reference to an article that states "science is crap" purley for fact verification on the one hand, and worthwhile references for consultation on the other hand.

Thus I find your advice Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines very useful.

In order to avoid confusion with official guidelines, you might consider to rename it "Scientific_citation_tutorial", similar to Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial.

Thanks! Harald88 21:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Quite welcome! –Joke 03:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the flowers

Gee, I have a fan! We've all got to have a thick skin, ideals, and irrational optimism to keep going here, but a bit of praise now and then helps, too. Thanks. --Art Carlson 08:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

You're most welcome! –Joke 04:02, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudososcience ArbCom

My apologies for including you in you my ArCom request for evidence, you are correct that the diffs do not show it, and I must've read it too quickly. Thanks for explaining your point of view. I have a couple of comments. I respect you opinion that I promote pseudoscientific theories, the question is whether I do it inappropriately. The Electric Universe, for example, I describe nowhere else, other than in the article on the subject, and I've never tried to include it in even "fringe" scientific subjects. And I agree that I give a more sympathetic point of view of such subjects, as (a) NPOV suggests:

"refuting opposing views as one goes along makes them look a lot worse than collecting them in an opinions-of-opponents section .. We should, instead, write articles with the tone that all positions presented are at least plausible"(Fairness_of_tone)"

and (b)

"A minority of Wikipedians feels so strongly about this problem that they believe Wikipedia should adopt a "scientific point of view" rather than a "neutral point of view." However, it has not been established that there is really a need for such a policy"Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ#Pseudoscience

--Iantresman 10:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer reviewer js

Whoops, sorry, I didn't mean to revert that. (If you look through the [ridiculously long] history, you're the first person besides me to edit the page, which is why I didn't really monitor the history of the page) Thanks, AZ _t 02:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

• I do both, though whenever I edit the script on other software and copy+paste it into Wikipedia I usually make a lot of careless typos (then again, same when I edit directly). Most of the times though, for longer and more important fixes I don't work on the edit window, but to make small quick changes I just edit it directly. AZ _t 21:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific citation guidelines - ready to declare consensus

There have been no comments for over two weeks at Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines. Do you think it might be time to make one more post on the math and physics talk pages and then edit the header to say consensus has been reached? CMummert 19:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Article: Vancouver

Thank you for your recommendations in regards to Vancouver on its FAC. On November 22, 2006 the article became a featured article thanks to helpful tips and suggestions by users like you. Thank you again on behalf of the editors and members of the WikiProject Vancovuer. Mkdw^talk 00:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 21 centimeter radiation

I've proposed that 21 centimeter radiation be merged into Hydrogen line, on the basis that they discuss applications of the same physical effect. I'm mentioning this here because you opposed this the last time it was proposed. Please let me know your thoughts over at Talk:Hydrogen line (and please don't bite me...). Thanks. Mike Peel 21:37, 23 November 2006 (UTC)