User talk:JzG/ATren

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Jeez! Where to begin...

First of all, I have to start with JzG, since he is an admin, and so should be held to a higher standard. Even though JzG makes changes to PRT as if he was just another editor, he acts in all capacities simultaneously from editor to admin. He is not a disinterested editor, and so throwing his weight as admin around seems inappropriate. I think most of his edit comments lack adequate detail and often might as well be blank. In several cases, I think his edits demonstrate an anti-PRT bias, not just a balance between anti-PRT and pro-PRT.

For example, a recent edit borders on original research: here he added "Barriers to wider deployment include lack of existing systems, proprietary technology, technically unproven, evacuation concerns. (ref)http://www.oki.org/pdf/loopfinalreport.pdf Ohio / Kentucky / Indiana Central Area Loop study] final report (PDF)(/ref)" I can't find any such conclusion in the cited material. The cited material contains the recommendation to the OKI Regional Council of Governments that PRT not be chosen as an alternative for their particular need citing several factors, some of which stem from the fact that there has never been a PRT system in service. But they did not reach the broader conclusion about barriers to wider PRT deployment in general. That, I feel, is original research on JzG's part. In addition, there seems to be a logical fallacy of some kind in the statement, or maybe it's just axiomatic that the lack of such technology is itself a barrier to the implementation of the technology. Either way, the entire sentence seems like contrived anti-PRT rhetoric.

But now, let me address several of JzG's bullet points. (This does not imply that I concur with bullet points that I do not address.):

• "Avidor's bias was obvious, openly declared and easily discounted." Avidor has more than a bias. Avidor is a foaming-at-the-mouth, indict-any-PRT-proponent-for-criminal-conspiracy, fanatic. In a debate between him and an average human being, the middle ground is NOT the true middle ground. It is not fair, balanced, or unbiased to simply remove Avidor's extreme POV from one of his edits. A balance might be somewhere between Ed Anderson's belief, based on research, that it can work and another engineer's belief, based on evaluation of the research or independent research, that it can not. Balance is not midway between a lunatic fringe and Ed Anderson.

• "None of the other parties ever admitted to any bias whatsoever, although the article was clearly badly skewed in favour of proponents of PRT, including being illustrated with artists' impressions of a system which does not even exist in prototype." You make it seem like aside from you and Avidor, the other editors are marching on city hall demanding PRT and going door-to-door proselytizing. Take a look at the article for space elevator. It's riddled with "artists' impressions", and I dare say, "badly skewed" in favor of a system which does not even exist in prototype. Thankfully for that article, Avidor hasn't fixated on how stupid a space elevator is. Do you consider every editor of the space elevator article biased if they did not end each edit with "but this is unproven since no such system yet exists"?

• "The article was being edited by both sides of a dispute about a controversial PRT proposal in Minnesota." This should not be allowed in the main body of the article, because a local controversy itself is irrelevant to the subject. It deserves editing to keep the local controversy constrained to a lower heading.

• "Above all, the article did not explain why after around four decades of promotion no real-world system yet exists." "Above all"? That was the most important missing aspect of the PRT article when you arrived? According to the space elevator article, the concept was first mentioned in 1895. Over a century since conception and still no real development? There also seems to be little explanation explaining why our skys are not full of the long promised flying car. Maybe all these non-existant systems should just have a sub-heading called, "Why this doesn't exist in the real-world".

• "User:Stephen B Streater took over, his edits were much the same as mine but encountered less resistance" Do you wonder why that is? Was it the wording of the edits or the wording of his comments and debate? There was bias in the wording of your edits (that remains today) and your edit comments and debate left me feeling like there was an admin thumb poised to drop the boom.

• "I quite likely made a few minor mistakes. I am human, and hadn't been an admin long." But readers of this debate should still implicitly trust your view because you are "an admin of some standing" with "over 12,000 pages" in your watchlist?

• "Of the few genuinely neutral sources which have been found for that article, one is a literature review (a secondary source, exactly what we need for an encyclopaedia) and notes that the literature lacks self-criticism." Is self-criticism important to understanding the concept? I wonder if Burt Rutan would have created the Voyager plane that flew around the world without refueling if his research would have been more self-critical. I wonder if the 1960-ish Encyclodaedia Brittanica had an entry for "manned space flight" that included something like, "of course humans will probably die from the G load upon reentering the earth's atmosphere, so this technology will never amount to much more than men risking their lives for nothing."

• "I do not think I have any particular bias on this subject, I am confident I will travel on the first production PRT system in Heathrow airport car park, but I don't think we should have a large article stating that this is a wide-scale urban transport mode when the only systems ordered so far are in car parks!" You don't see bias in the exclamation point? I do. Maybe an admin with no "particular bias" would say the same thing without the exclamation.

• "ATren invented a new theory that I was a "mediator" when I should have recused..." His diffs seem to support his theory.

• "The PRT article is still skewed by virtue of the fact that almost all the sources are uncritical, as identified by the cited literature review, and by excessive reliance on a small number of enthusiasts (Anderson, Schneider) for much of the content." Should we depend more on the anti-Supersonic Flight crowd for the entry on Supersonic Flight?

• "And still the article documents a proposed wide-scale urban transportation system, not a people mover for car parks, which is the only thing that's yet been ordered (there are no completed systems at all). And yes, that does concern me. In fact, it grates. I hate articles which document something people wish would be rather than what verifiably is. So sue me." I sincerely would like to see you balance the very lengthy and very one-sided space elevator article. Of course, you have an established rule regarding the supremacy of NASA, which is cited as a reference in the space elevator article, so I doubt you will make any attempt to balance the fantasy with reality. But there is a cornucopia of other fanciful and fantastic concepts in WP that could really use a dose of reality.

As far as this squabble goes, I also feel that as an admin, JzG should take the higher ground, not just be held to a higher standard. I think JzG has occasionally inserted language that gets changed by another editor, but changes the meaning only slightly, yet JzG will engage in an RV war instead of seeking concensus or a happy medium. For example, the recent bicker over the difference between something like, "The obstacles faced by any wider PRT implementation have been described as "formidable", though not "unsolvable"" and "One researcher states the obstacles faced by any wider PRT implementation are "formidable", though not "unsolvable"". The POV difference between these 2 phrases seems pretty scant, and I think both phrases are substantially neutral. I think JzG's phrase, the former, describes a concensus amongst transit engineers with which even Ed Anderson would agree. But, I think ATren's phrase, the latter, is pedantically more accurate because both phrases use quotes and cite a single source and so it avoids any possible over-representation. I prefer JzG's broader version because I personally think it is a true representation of the state of PRT development and doesn't seem controversial in the least. I would like to see a concensus amongst the editors for the broader phrase, but if it's going to be challenged, JzG should be willing to allow the more restricted and still accurate phrase.

I think JzG uses over-broadly interpretted, or misinterpretted, WP guidelines to argue against anything he doesn't like. For example, in the recent debate over the edit that analogizes PRT to lean manufacturing, JzG used the WP guideline against neologisms. As I stated in the PRT Talk page, WP:NEO says that neologisms should not be used because, "they may not be well understood, may not be clearly definable, and may even have different meanings to different people". If the entry in the PRT article said, "PRT is lean transit", then clearly it would be a neologism because few people would understand "lean transit", "lean transit" is not clearly definable, and "lean transit" might even have different meanings to different people. But, the source of the analogy is attempting to map certain attributes of the fairly well defined term, "lean production", to certain attributes claimed for PRT. By saying that someone has proposed an analogy between PRT and lean production, Wikipedia is not perpetuating a neologism. Others have drawn analogies for PRT to packet switched networks. That doesn't imply neologism. So, in my opinion, JzG was misusing this WP guideline simply to prevent a disliked edit from surviving. Personally, I find the analogy weak and the edit uninsightful, so I probably would have supported a removal on those grounds.

phew! Did I pepper that with too many "I think"'s and "in my opinion"'s? --JJLatWiki 17:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)