User talk:Jbowler

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"jbowler" is jbowler@acm.org. I run cascaded spam filters set to the maximum setting possible, therefore email to this address may not get through (though, amazingly, it normally does.) IRL I am John Bowler (along, of course, with a whole load of other people on this planet.)

[edit] Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Jbowler, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! Katr67 (talk) 17:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RfC

Hi, you still haven't said whether you accept the summary of the dispute for the RfC. Please do so, otherwise the procedure is difficult if not impossible. Also, if you want to add things, please keep the thing brief - that's the whole point. BTW, an RfC is not a "threat" as I see you called it when posting to User:Jj137. It's a normal, friendly procedure.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:56, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

The whole thing seems irrelevant after the new edits by User:Jilliana27. I think it's a reasonable substitution, with the exception of a few sourced facts from the previous version that appear to be censored. Now, if the edit conflict continues, it will have to be summarized in a different way.--Anonymous44 (talk) 14:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to add my own summary, but I think fixing the citations is of more immediate importance. No.91 effectively preempted the whole process by accidentally re-introducing his previous edits, so I had to remove those too. Jbowler (talk) 19:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC) John Bowler

I am No.91, sorry for the lack of clarity on this (I did state it on the talk page, though). I just decided it was time to log in with my proper account, now that an RfC was going to be held (people tend to pay less attention to editors who don't have accounts).
I didn't reintroduce the "Political views" section accidentally. I meant this as a compromise or at least a starting point for a compromise, after which you would hopefully agree to modify rather than delete the debated parts. Anyway, as I said, I'm more or less fine with the way things are at the present moment. The details about Tibet and Stalin aren't so important against the whole background, although I still don't think it was improper to mention them. Your conduct in this whole issue has been pretty miserable IMO, but I see no point in going on with this. If you try to extend the same method (deleting inconvenient sourced info under the pretext that it is not important enough etc) to other articles, I assure you that you are going to fail pretty soon - the system still works. --Anonymous44 (talk) 21:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
You want to drop the RFC? You've posed a legal question - I assert that your edits break one or more of the WP rules for which instant deletion is mandatory in a biography, you assert your approach to biographies is permitted. It's an interesting legal question.Jbowler (talk) 22:23, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Of course, you or I could ask such "legal" questions at the talk page of WP:BLP or at the Village pump|Village pump, for example. The legal question for me was mostly if your approach (deleting sourced information because you consider it to be too selective, without even trying to prove that it is) is permitted. But whoever does this might be accused of misrepresenting the case (for example, as far as I understand, you did feel my summary at the talk to be a misrepresentation of your position). --Anonymous44 (talk) 23:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Right; that's the question, to paraphrase (without, this time, intending to spin), I deleted information with citations because I considered that it had been entered selectively for it's (I considered) negative effect on the reputation of the author. My justifications were numerous but, as you say, the primary justification (I'm using the US legal principle of simplifying an argument by mutual consent - so I'm abandoning some of my positions because I want a legal judgement) is that the text you entered was too selective. I would, of course, dispute the relevance of "without even trying to prove that it is"; my argument is based on the text as written, viewed by a reasonable person. I.e. I argue that it is self evident from a review of the text that it is selective in nature. This line of argument wouldn't work in a US court - I'm being overly general, US courts, maintaining the distinction between the legislative and judicial branches of government, want line and verse. Still, an RFC isn't judicial (in the US sense), it's a non-binding arbitration process, so it seems most helpful to get the the core of the matter. Jbowler (talk) 00:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I'll revise my (overly judicial) petition for the RFC to reflect this. Jbowler (talk) 00:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC) John Bowler

My approach is specific to the biography, in the article on Kerby, Oregon the assertion that the place is a ghost town causes me a little problem (since I am not yet a ghost and I live there), I've left it because it is sourced, though the source is not, I think, reliable and I haven't got my copy of the primary source User:Katr67 uses yet, to see if it says the same thing (which would be interesting, given the date of publication.) Jbowler (talk) 22:23, 25 December 2007 (UTC) John Bowler

Are you saying my history of Kerby, fully citing Oregon Geographic Names, isn't accurate? Note that OGN isn't the source for the ghost town designation. If you find any errors--per my cited source--I will be glad to hear about it. I'm not sure what this has to do with the RFC though... Katr67 (talk) 18:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
No - my comment was specific to the ghost town description, and the source for that is ghosttowns.com, not OGN. My comment was that the Parenti misstatements were not permissible because of the specific rules for biographies of living people; asserting that Kerby is a ghost town (which is untrue) and supporting it with ghosttowns.com (which incorrect in this regard) is perfectly fine in wikipedia because it is a sourced (thought clearly untrue) statement. I.e. outside biographies (where the laws of libel apply) the rule, as I understand it, is not that a statement in wikipedia is correct, rather it is that was said by someone else and that source can be cited. Jbowler (talk) 21:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Michael Parenti

Hello Jbowler. The reference section of this article looks messed up (it contains a bunch of duplicate entries). I thought I might fix it, but you seem to be actively editing, so I should probably wait. EdJohnston (talk) 03:20, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know the nature of the problem; the author can't get to grip with the very complex wikipedia {cite} stuff, so just copied it in, I understand how to match it back to the original (copied from a word document) references. Jbowler (talk) 03:57, 5 January 2008 (UTC)