Talk:David Mertz/Archive 1

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Archive 1
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Contents

Citations found at failed VfD

Thanks to David.Monniaux for providing me with more info on his bibliographic search. With his pointer, I found two Citeseer hits of electronic voting/security articles:

 A PC-Based Open-Source Voting Machine with an Accessible.. - Arthur Keller Uc (2004)(Correct)
 Karl Auerbach, InterWorking Labs karl@iwl.com 
 David Mertz, Gnosis Software, Inc. mertz@gnosis.cx 
 ...
 www-db.stanford.edu/pub/keller/2004/electronic-voting-machine.pdf

 Privacy Issues in an Electronic Voting Machine - Arthur Keller Uc (2004)(Correct)
 David Mertz, Gnosis Software, Inc. mertz@gnosis.cx 
 Joseph Lorenzo Hall
 ...
 www-db.stanford.edu/pub/keller/2004/privacy-electronic-voting.pdf

If the article is kept, perhaps someone (not me) wants to incorporate these. However, I am not D.W.Mertz, who has some articles on ontology and philosophical logic. I'm a decade or two younger, and have the middle initial Q (though I don't necessarily use it in articles).

That said, I am not "well known in computer science", but more in the "popular press" about programming topics. In non-academic writing about programming, I have been read by at least hundreds of thousands of people (and translated into about a dozen languages). My own site, solely for copies of my publications, at one point reached 600k distinct IP addresses (then the list got corrupted)--which only loosely corresponds to distinct eyeballs; but my primary publishers are probably read more widely.

I do know of a number of instances where my "popular" articles have been cited by CS academic papers (but more so in masters or doctoral theses than in publications). You'd need to use a citational index rather than a simple bibliography to find this though.

Also, if you were to look in humanities or social-science academic bibliographies, you'd find about ten papers of mine published in "good" journals. These are mostly in philosophy and ethics, but some shade into economics and law as well. Ten, of course, is a lot less than a hundred, but it is more than two or three. So vote as you think the facts merit. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:39, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

More on publication history

This is terribly out of date, but my old Academic Curriculum Vitae contains a list of the stuff I wrote for philosophy journals. The bulk of my publication is better found at the main page referenced publication list, though these are mostly "popular" rather than academic (and about programming or computer science, rather than philosophy). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:35, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Disinformation about Zionist-Nazi collaboration

You posted that Zionists and Nazis actually collaborated. But you admit that some Zionists only 'sought' to collaborate. Not the same, not the same, not the same, for a phd in philosophy you're playing awfully loose. "Dr. Mertz sought to sodomize Joan Rivers" means something different from "Dr. Mertz sodomized Joan Rivers." Tanya! Ravine 20:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

He-he-he. Usenet posts that follow you for the whole life. I have a couple of those myself too. :-) Anyway, I don't think it's relevant to include that on the article. bogdan | Talk 20:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
It happens that the pseudonymous Usenet post I wrote to alt.politics.homosexuality in 1993 that Tanya Ravine earlier libelously mischaracterized, and inserted gratuitous footnotes to, is something I still entirely endorse (other than the dreadful error of writing "their" rather than "they're", which makes me grimace). In fact, if Tanya Ravine hasn't taken it off her talk page, you can see that my ancient remark is nearly verbatim the same as what editors a decade later put into the Yitzhak Shamir article.
But even if that 12 year old post contained something as scandalous as Tanya Ravine claimed, I hardly think writing a three paragraph Usenet comment in 1993 is my greatest claim to noteriety (nor even such a claim at all). David Mertz/Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

My personal vandal

I'm kinda curious who this User:Tanya Ravine is, and why s/he's taken it on herself to strangely vandalize the article about me. The last couple edits took out the clause:

...formerly an academic philosopher who specialized in postmodernism.

With the edit history description WP:NOR. I'm trying to imagine if there is any intent behind that at all, or if it is just a random WP guideline that s/he latched onto. Obviously the fact I have a Ph.D. in that field, and held some minor academic posts is well-enough referenced in the article itself. It hardly seems contentious that I "specialized in postmodernism" either. It's a bit of a simplification, but close enough. I wouldn't really use quite that characterization myself; but that's how most people describe my publications. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (David Mertz)

You wrote the article about yourself and this stuff isn't sourced. Obvious NOR violation. Nobody else is Wikipedia History added themself to the list of famous philosophers, either. Go, Davey, go! Tanya! Ravine 20:48, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a famous philosopher, obviously. I didn't know there was a list of famous philosophers; in fact, there seems not to be. I did write for philosophy journals during the 20th century (and a bit in the 21st :-)), if you're talking about the category membership. That's just banal though. An academic philosopher, y'know, isn't someone who is particularly important in philosophy: it's just someone who had a job in a university department and/or published in journals of the field.
FWIW, it seems to have been User:Grunt who first added something close to the sentence Tanya Ravine doesn't like. See [1]. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:10, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Tanya, I don't know what your purpose is here, but you started by adding what looked like an allegation of anti-Semitism using a 12-year-old Usenet post (which didn't even back up what you wrote as I recall), and now you're deleting material with no explanation. Could you say more about what your reasoning is? SlimVirgin (talk) 21:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Wasn't my point obvious? He wrote an article about his own self and said he was a philosoper. Why doesn't that violate WP:NOR? Answer me that. He can say somebody else did it, but it's in the VERY FIRST version of the article he put up. Maybe he'll have some slippery pomo idea of truth about why it's soOK to say stuff that isn't so. & he put himself in the 20th century philosopher category too.
& the Usenet post is closer to my description from his. It just does not match the source. Its a long way from some Brit-hating extremists offering to start a revolution in Palestine if the Axis will just train them, outfit them, and send all the European Jews to Palestine to "collaborating" between "Zionists" and "Nazis." Some pretty funky exaggeration. Tanya! Ravine 20:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
It's amusing that Tanya Ravine just changed the Yitzhak Shamir article to read per her above characterization. Actually, the change isn't bad; but I think before s/he put this comment here s/he wanted to get the word "collaboration" out of the article. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:10, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
You're a piece o work, Davey. I changed the article to match the source it cited, and took out the peculiar POV-carrying slant it had. Then you changed it to take it further away from the cited source. What's this, it can't be a POV problem since it matches some LULU of a POV? Tanya! Ravine 20:41, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Old Usenet posts

& this is a guy who talks about "Zionist racists" & says it's OK to tag other people for being "insufficiently Anti-Zionist". & says "there are a lot of really ugly things in the theology of Judaism--probably more so than in most religions." He's got an article because he's got a political gig on this Open Voting Consortium & it ought to be OK to talk about the uglier side of his politics.

Why do you want to censor the article, eh? Tanya! Ravine 20:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the other quotes above came from. Most are not directly from the previously mentioned Usenet posts. But I wrote hundreds of comments to Usenet in the early 1990s (and since, but particularly then); the quotes look plausibly like phrases I could have used.
While it's hard to be sure of meaning without the context, that phrase "insufficiently anti-Zionists" sounds to me like an allusion to the blacklisting of the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. As editors may recall, the Abe Lincoln brigade went to fight for the Spanish Republic while the USA foreign policy was still officially neutral in relation to Nazism (and Nazi-supported Franco). Obviously, the USA eventually joined the war against the Axis; but the returning brigaders were characterized (by State Department documents) as "prematurely anti-Fascist", and suffered social repercussions, i.e. blacklisting. So my guess is that a decade-plus ago I was being ironic in making that allusion. Or maybe not: again, I have no idea the context where the phrase might have occurred, or even whether I originated it myself or quoted someone else (or never used it at all, for that matter). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:34, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Golly Golly Davey, nice try. These are from posts you made to the RPA list in 2003, and your explanations don't hold any water. The same sequence where you equated practicing Jews and people who call psychic hot lines. Your decade of hateful comments hasn't gone unnoticed. You can pretend to be ignorant of your track record, but the truth is out there! Tanya! Ravine 20:47, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Is that where you came from, the RPA list? I don't remember what specific comments might be the focus here, but I am a member of that list. In fact, this article about me mentions that I've written for Radical Philosophy Review (the RPA academic/print publication). Anyway, as fun as this all is, I don't think any of it has any relation to David Mertz' reasons for noteriety, so is irrelevant to this article discussion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, here's the post Ms. Ravine seems to (dis)like: [2]. For better or worse, my interlocutor in that conversation is my colleague Lewis Gordon, whom I went on to start a WP article on (once my Wikidiction started to pick up). And yeah, reading the context, I definitely had an allusion to the Abe Lincoln brigade in mind, which some of the RPAers would have picked up. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Golly Davey, you're supposed to be notable because of your political activity/ism. A history of comments that so sure sound anti-semitic is worth mentioning in an article on any political activist. If your babblings were OReilly rightwing gibberish nobody'd be arguing about this & they're just as relevent to your pomo (semi) intellectual flatulence. Tanya! Ravine 20:00, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

What is a philosopher?

I'm a bit puzzled by your objections. If David Mertz has an MA and a PhD in Philosophy, and if he has taught philosophy at a university, then how can it be original research to say that he's a philosopher? The article doesn't claim that he's a famous philosopher or a great philosopher or a gifted philosopher. Just a twentieth-century philosopher. That seems fairly straightforward. Ann Heneghan (talk) 20:44, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

That's no definition of philosopher. I can have a degree in animal husbandry and teach it, but that does not make me an animal's husband. Tanya! Ravine 20:46, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, David Mertz is also an animal's husband :-) (a primate's even). But that doesn't really rise to notability. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Tanya, that is the definition of a philosopher: to have a PhD (or even less) and to have taught it. Philosophers don't have to sit around in robes corrupting the youth of Athens nowadays. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:18, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Well it's not the definition of philosopher found in Wikipedia. If you use that definition the article violates original/verifiability guidelines. If that's really the definition you want used, why don't you change the philosopher article and take out all the dudes on the 20th century philospher list that don't match it? Tanya! Ravine 19:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
The real question is why you've picked on this article. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
When you can't answer the objection, question the motives of the one who poses it. A sure signal about the responder's good faith. Whose friend do you have to be around here to get your vanity page protected, eh? Tanya! Ravine 20:31, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Hello, Tanya. I don't think I would be considered as one of Lulu's "friends" – any time we've been editing the same articles, we've been on opposite sides. But the article looks fairly balanced and neutral to me. The book that it claims he wrote really does exist: I saw it on Amazon, and it's obviously popular. I don't think there's any reason for doubting that he has a PhD in philosophy and has taught philosophy at university level.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines philosopher as:
A lover of wisdom; one who devotes himself to the search of fundamental truth; one versed in philosophy or engaged in its study; formerly in a wide sense, including men learned in physical science (physicists, scientists, naturalists), as well as those versed in the metaphysical and moral sciences, but now chiefly confined to the latter. Also with defining word, as moral philosopher, political philosopher; natural philosopher (= physicist).
The emphasis was added by me. I think if you have an MA and a PhD in Philosophy, and have taught it at university level before moving on to something else, you can safely refer to yourself as "formerly an academic philosopher". I'd personally remove the "Dr." from the image caption, though I would, of course, leave in the article that he has a PhD. I'd also add a year of birth. I think those two minor things would make the article conform more to other similar articles. But it makes no sense to keep removing from the article that he is or was a philosopher, and your persistence in doing so will certainly lay you open to questions about your purpose in coming to this article in the first place. Ann Heneghan (talk) 23:14, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I made the two changes you suggested, Ann. I apologize that I just spelled your last name wrong (twice!) in the edit history. I may even be a lover of spelling, but apparently not a very good one. (david mertz)
No problem. At least you didn't spell my first name with an "e". That would really have made you an enemy ;-) Ann Heneghan (talk) 23:51, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Right wing kooks

I recognized his name in a (private) mailing list report about anti-semitic writing by academics, and Googled my way here; that's my "purpose." Saying anybody with a degree in philosophy who's been adjust faculty anywhere is a philosopher cheapens the word and debases the profession; nobody else on the list he added himself to has such minimalist qualifications. The VfD list kicks out current academics with better credentials every day. Tanya! Ravine 19:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I still don't know where this odd Tanya Ravine came from. But the ranting somehow got me thinking about this other odd-ball Horowitzite ultra-Zionist list from a while back: Masada2000 "Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening List (get it, they think they're clever to be able to make an acronym :-)). A few years back, my dear old Jewish mother was included there, and told me about it; after seeing the amazingly estimable company she was in, I felt so left out. So I wrote them begging for inclusion (I'm there now; though it looks like, coming back to haunt me, I may have made yet another typo; the real scurge of my professional life).
So I was thinking about it. I imagine a good number of the fine intellectuals (or others) on the "SHIT list" have Wikipedia articles. If Tanya Ravine were to buy my book Text Processing in Python, she could learn how to write a web-scraping script to take each of the names off the nutjob list, check each for Wikipedia entries, then... oh, I dunno, spend some time acting foolish somewhere other than on the talk page for the article about me. (david mertz)

What the article claims

I don't want to start ignoring your posts, but we don't seem to be making progress. First, it's not a vanity page, second, it's not protected, and third, you haven't yet said which part of the statements about his philosophy background you object to. I'm pasting them below. Please say specifically which parts you are challenging/believe to be false, or forever hold your peace. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Mertz was formerly an academic philosopher who specialized in postmodernism ... Mertz graduated in 1987 from the University of Colorado with a B.A. (Hons) in philosophy and mathematics. He completed his M.A. in philosophy in 1991 at the University of Massachusetts, and received his Ph.D. from the same university in 1999 for a philosophy thesis entitled The Speculum and The Scalpel: The Politics of Impotent Representation and Nonrepresentational Terrorism. [3] He has held teaching posts in philosophy at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Hartford.

It sure looks like a vanity page, and it was written by its subject, and the only external links are to sites he's created, on some of which he's a cybermendicant begging for money, and that's enough for me. He doesn't meet the definition of philosopher on the appropriate Wiki page -- NOR, Verifiability, NPOV violations, and the specializing in postmodernism comes from him and its just as unverifiable. & I said that before. & if you'd ever had to suffer through a class of his, you would no way call himn a philosopher. Tanya! Ravine 20:38, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... if you'd ever had to suffer through a class of his. Does this mean the mysterious Ms. Ravine was a student of mine? I apologize if that's the case, and you were forgettable. I am a bit concerned at the notion I could have stirred such animosity in a student, even one whom I gave a poor grade to. But I think that's unlikely, and more likely our editor is just vamping about my classes. (david mertz)

Translations

I wonder if it is worthwhile to mention the number of languages that Mertz' (my) computer articles have been translated into. I find it interesting. Mostly it is IBM developerWorks commissioning translation of select columns/articles of mine; but in some instances I have myself granted translation permission (or things that appear either at IBM or elsewhere). Off the top of my head, I know that things I've written (usually 2500-ish word technical articles) have been translated into: (Brazillian) Portugese, Chinese (Mandarin, I think), Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, French. Probably others. With some slight web searching (and checking old email), I could find URLs for those things; but I won't bother if this is an irrelevant diversion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 15:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

References

An editor has recently spelled out some article references more explicitly. Below are some that may be relevant for inclusion (I defer to other editors). I apologize if formatting was lost in copy-paste:

  • Ronald E. Crane, Arthur M. Keller, Alan Dechert, Edward Cherlin, and David Mertz, "A Deeper Look: Rebutting Shamos on e-Voting," submitted for publication.
  • Arthur M. Keller, David Mertz, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, and Arnold Urken, "Privacy Issues in an Electronic Voting Machine," in Privacy and Identity: The Promise and Perils of a Technological Age. Katherine J. Strandburg and Daniela Raicu, eds., Kluwer Academic Publishing
  • Arthur M. Keller, Alan Dechert, Karl Auerbach, David Mertz, Amy Pearl, and Joseph Lorenzo Hall, "A PC-Based Open-Source Voting Machine with an Accessible Voter-Verifiable Paper Ballot," USENIX '05, FREENIX track, April 10-15, 2005, Anaheim, California.
  • David Mertz, Three Economies: Hyper-real, Real, and Hidden, delivered for the Association for Economic and Social Analysis. October 5, 1993.
  • Udo Shüklenk and David Mertz, Christliche Kirchen und AIDS, in Die Lehren des Unheils. Edited by Dahl, Edgar. Carlsen Verlag: Hamburg 1993.

"homosexual rights activist"

Jeff Merkey, writing under one of his numerous sockpuppet accounts, wished to put this paragraph in the bio:

David Mertz has also written numerous articles as a homosexual rights activitist advocating more fair treatment of people suffering from AIDS on his site Gnoxis.cx. Mr. Mertz has been wel known in many circles for his staunch support of homosexual rights in his writings and postings on the internet.

Apparently Jeff has inserted a number of homophobic rants into various WP articles; so I suspect he thinks of this edit as some sort of accusation against me. However, were I actually notable as a homosexual rights activist, that would certainly be something I would be quite proud of. Unfortunately, I have no real notable activity in that direction (my political positions are consistent with that; but I've never been a particularly public persona in advocating such issues... maybe someday). The slightly-related AIDS writing, however, has a certain minor repute; it's been cited in some books, and a fair number of print articles. So conceivably, some brief mention could make sense. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 05:10, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Autobiography

It's kind of worrying seeing how the subject of this article is also its primary contributor. It doesn't appear to be biased or anything, but there's always bias by selective omission, and that's hard to detect unless you're intimately knowledgeable of the subject in question. --Cyde↔Weys 13:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)