User talk:Alunsalt

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Welcome!

Hello, Alunsalt, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --Myles Long 23:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Re:

Oh, I just happened to see it on Special:Newpages. Cheers! Chubbles (talk) 21:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pan-American Quartering

Alun,

I think the paper you mean on Cosmic Quartering in the Americas is Stephen C. McCluskey, "Native American Cosmologies" pp. 427-436 in Norriss S. Hetherington, ed., Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology, (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1993) ISBN 0-8240-7213-8. It was later reprinted but I don't have a copy of that version at hand. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 03:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Marmes Rockshelter

Hey there, thanks for doing the review, and for avoiding the pedantics of asking someone to change one little thing! Cheers, Murderbike (talk) 17:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Encouragement, etc.

I just wanted to thank and encourage you for your work on the Falun Gong articles. I had watchlisted the Falun Gong draft page you made originally, so I saw when you made Alunsalt/sandbox just recently. I don't know the end product of what you are cooking up, but I generally wanted to encourage a sincere time and intellectual engagement with this issue. This is something the topic has lacked, in a broad sense, for a while. Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you'll come up with. Let me know if I can help in any way, too.--Asdfg12345 02:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] templates on Archaeoastronomy

Thanks for finishing that! I wanted to do it all in one go, but it is rather slow work, especially when you're ready for sleep. 14:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] reply: Some editing guidelines

First of all, the precedent for my insertion of my link to my work within this article was set by you, Alun, in your major rewrite of April 29, 2006. At that time you inserted what is now Note 78 referring to a co-authored work of yours. In the past week or so, as Talk and the article's history demonstrates, Steve McClusky and you have closely collaborated on another major rewrite, generously peppered with references by you to works by him, 3 in the introduction alone. Unlike such a dynamic duo, I do not collaborate with another when I write for WikiPedia, nor would I use collaboration to skirt the spirit of WP prohibitions. But it is my position that since you established a single link, surviving for nearly 2 years now, to your article, it is certainly not out-of-line for me to include a pertinent link of my own to balance the score, particularly when "Old News videos" zeroes in at the nub of a pet pejorative the two of you have conjured.

I was not the one who initiated this topic, nor initialized its content. You wrote in Talk on June 29th, 2006: "I thought a section on pseudo-archaeoastronomy might be useful, but I'm not sure I'm the person to write it." Less than a week ago, on March 16 at 22:08, Steve introduced "Fringe Archaeology". (My apologies to you, yesterday, I had not checked the history logs to discover,indeed, its author is Steve McCluskey). Now, there's a designated area where the dominant archaeological establishment can laugh and point fingers at the silly know-nothing amateurs running wild. But when someone like me calls your bluff and laughs and points fingers at silly archaeologists who are wedded to an out-of-date dogma that can be demonstrably established with reliably sourced links to periodicals such as Time, the Atlantic and the the Quarterly Review of Archaeology, suddenly all sorts of hell breaks loose. Steve exercises what he must consider to be his prerogative as a voice of the "establishment" to wipe away anything he feel is objectionable, while conveniently leaving his POV intact. He choses to make the Ida Jane Gallagher's Ogham/archaeoastronomy claim a laughingstock. Contextually he spun into his mix archaeology's favorite poster child for that silly idea of diffusionism, Dr. Barry Fell, then twice rubbed out my attempts to rebut with authoritative quotes and reliable sources, citing the dirty little secret that most American archaeologists wouldn't recognize Ogham if it stared them in the face. OK, he relented and yesterday pulled Fell from the center ring of his 3 ring circus after my protestations.

But Ida Jane's only faux pas was perhaps being a bit over-enthusiastic about what has been established as either an imprecise winter solstice sunrise alignment or no alignment at all. I'll concede Steve's point that her's may not be an ideal example. However, since he specifically raised an issue that archaeoastronomy with Celtic Ogham existing in America is to be considered only fanciful among the Fringe, then it is only fair and balanced for me to, in the most neutral language I can imagine, expand the context therein to other claims, perhaps more compelling than Ida Jane's. Not only do I address this as an expansion of his paragraph on the WV issue, I stay within the boundaries of his designated laughingstock arena. But I offer WikiePedia readers actual timelapse video evidence of the same family of American rock art Steve so casually scorns. Let them laugh. Let them cry. Let them see for themselves what this is all about!

I am disturbed at a pattern I detect by the two of you to control and govern this WikiPedia article as your own, private domain through close colloboration. You scold me slight infractions, but skate yourselves on very thin ice. Faulting me for something you yourself did, i.e., link to you own work, is hypocrisy. Worse, the gray area, when you conspire to give undo emphasis to your own pet projects such as Grecian Temple alignments and Hopi skywatching.

I will be responding to your latest post on the thread about drawing from the metrology article, publicly, shortly. At its heart is our differing, subjective evaluation. I think you are stretching credulity to rule me out of bounds for citing and summarizing Reisenaur. IMHO —Preceding unsigned comment added by Breadh2o (talk • contribs) 15:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Alun wrote >>Steve has pulled the section on Fell, despite one of the references you cited pointing out he distorted data and was wrong about an astronomical orientation. Putting it back in looks as though you're trying to pick a fight. Since you've arrived here you've accused me of sneaking material in, of provocatively misspelling words to annoy Americans and of reverting your claim that Kennewick Man circa (circa 9th millennium BC) supported Fell's claims of American Ogham (circa 1st millennium AD last time I checked) amongst other things. That could be passion or it could be hostility.<<

Look, Steve at first had no tolerance and wiped my annotated quotes from Kelley (re: defense of Fell) and Stanford (re: intimidation by archaeological brethren for colleagues curious enough to dig below Clovis). Unsettling to him, I am sure, but fair and balanced to the point rebuttal nonetheless. Steve chose to mess with Fell, wipe me off the map and I restored the criticism. When he unilaterally wiped me again claiming OT, I wiped the whole paragraph on WV as I threatened to do in Talk. Only then did he relent and remove Fell. He opened the attack on the linguistics, not I. I'm going to be a thorn is the sides of you two guys when to abuse the fairness doctrine and I have the goods with reliable sourcing and follow the rules but get wiped nonetheless. You talk about patterns, the history logs don't lie. "Putting is back in looks as though you're trying to pick a fight"? What are you talking about? You'd do the same if the tables were turned!

OK, pls refresh my memory. When did I accuse you of "sneaking material in"? Help me recall that. I don't think I ever accused you of trying to "annoy Americans" with you Brit spellings. I can handle that, even joked about my being a thin-skinned Yank! But it is interesting America being "Colonised" you must agree. As a stickler for primary synthesis and secondary sourcing, I'd expect better from you than sloppy conclusions. And, finally I am almost certain that I never linked Kennewick Man in any way whatsoever with Fell's claims for Ogham in America. Maybe both relate to being pro-diffusion, but direct linkage...I don't think I'd try fooling anyone. That's preposterous even to me. Are you confusing me with somebody else here. Let's see the the timestamp and sourcing on that one, if you please.

Y'know, you seem to relish the special entitlements and advantages of someone who actually gets the holy grail of peer review. The gate keepers are pretty stingy about letting anyone inside who doesn't have a doctorate. Congratulations. The system works and empowers you in terms of what you can insert. It penalizes many who have done valuable work, by, blocking, blocking, and blocking. And you wonder why I tend to be angry about the stacked deck! I endured with petty control freaks protecting their own turf with their own special ways of applying rules to their singular advantage. I persevere nonetheless because people are smart and recognize pettiness pretty easy, even without a doctorate degree. Breadh2o (talk) 06:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fringe Archaeoastronomy

Alun,

I think we should be careful that the discussion of fringe archaeoastronomy doesn't take over the article. We need to maintain balance here so this doesn't degenerate into an article promoting those theories. Eventually we may need to deploy one of the templates {{Coatrack}} or {{Offtopic}}.

--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:30, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, slow and steady on this one. I hadn't read about the Galileo Gambit before; it's a perfectly descriptive term. I see he's now talking about reintroducing his history section. What doesn't he understand about relevance?
Hope your trip goes well and safely. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:22, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
As you rightly said, he's undermining his own RfC, and is also making your point on the NOR discussion. I'd just let him dig his own grave. Given the slowness -- and often indecisiveness -- of the Wikipedia process, I don't expect much to happen unless he offends enough people that some admin not involved in editing Archaeoastronomy proposes a ban or a block.
One point that might be worth making, since he's talking about the principles of Wikipedia, is to compare his record as an editor with yours or mine. We've been around a while and made productive edits in many articles; he came here to transform one article to fit his POV. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I've spent some time thinking about what to do if this issue isn't resolved. I've drafted something on my sandbox to keep in reserve to address the Disruptive Editing problem. Feel free to comment or edit it. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 03:54, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Leadbetter

Thanks for your message about the Leadbeater article. As I stated, the purported "clear consensus" referred to para. 13 only. Question was unfair and framed without NPOV, i.e. Blavatsky's masters were not "spirits of the dead". Hence the consensus is invalid and does not justify reverting the entire article. As to the reason given for your second revert perhaps you could be more clear about which references are unreliable or unverifiable. To me a reference is either verifiable or it is not, no consensus is going to change that. I gather that the underlying problem is a belief in reincarnation. That is another matter. If you are prejudiced against this theory then you will never have NPOV and, I would suggest, should not be editing this article. Edit articles to which you can make a positive contribution, not a negative, obstructionist one. All the best.Fryymb (talk) 20:13, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Just added a header to the comment Alun Salt (talk) 09:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AN/I is more appropriate

As I see it, we're nearing the point where we should go to the Administrators noticeboard/Incidents, since we've already worked through the RfC and NORN procedures with no result. Attention from an administrator is in order. Let's wait a few more days and see what happens; if things don't improve I'll be ready to drop my draft next week.

Steve

Alun. It looks, as we feared, that Breadh2o's attacks upon the archaeological and academic communities will continue, but how he's moved them from the talk page to the article itself. Putting PoV of that kind in the article pages seems to cross a fundamental line. It's time to go forward with your proposed call for disruptive editing sanctions. You're probably right that it should go for an RfC/I, although the fact that we've already had an informal and informal RfC and a NORN discussion suggests an AN/I would be just as appropriate.
I've filled out the section Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute with a narrative and appropriate links. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 01:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
PS, I've left a note on Kathryn Nicdhàna's Talk Page asking for advice as to whether RfC or AN/I is more appropriate at this time. She's an admin with some experience in dealing with problems like this. Her reply is on my Talk Page. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
After looking at his User page and contribs, I decided to post to AN/I: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#When is a SPA a SPA, and using User page to attack other editors - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 04:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I notice that Breadh2o has cleaned up his User page and has posted links to the historical versions of the Archaeoastronomy article that incorporated his changes. Perhaps those links will satisfy his concern to express his ideas on Wikipedia and this has blown over. Patience for now. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reply: Rewrite of Archaeoastronomy methodology section

Hi Alun

Thanks for your invitation to rewrite the methodology section but, apart from the fact I don't think I'm the most expert person to do it and would defer to people like SteveMcCluskey, I'm afraid I don't really have the time right now to attempt a major re-write. However, you have alerted me that some more work needs to be done on this page, and I confess that I haven't been paying attention to it, so I'll try to do what I can over the next few weeks.

Cheers

RayNorris (talk) 13:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AN/I Disruptive Editing on Archaeoastronomy

Hello, Alunsalt. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding Disruptive Editing on Archaeoastronomy. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC)