User talk:Seth Finkelstein

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Welcome!

Hello Seth Finkelstein, 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! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Wikiacc (talk) 15:39, July 25, 2005 (UTC)


The address 140.247.201.190 reverse-resolves to the hostname "roam201-190.student.harvard.edu". I believe the "student.harvard.edu" part of the hostname indicates that editor is unlikely to be Alan Dershowitz himself. Though by now it's likely someone has told him about the article. -Seth Finkelstein 02:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

That may be so, but 140.247.219.31 resolves directly to Dershowitz. Anyone who has received an email from Dershowitz in the past will be able to tell you that. 140.247.219.31 is responsible for blanking the page, partially and completely - [1] [2]- Xed 10:39, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] your bio page

If you want, you can put your bio up for an WP:AfD vote to get it deleted. Sdedeo (tips) 16:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm unsure if that's the smart thing to do though, as doing it will attract people who want to be contrarian. -- Seth Finkelstein 21:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, now that it is up, you might as well make your pitch as to why you are not notable at the AFD. Put it out as a first level bullet * with a Delete introduction. I've already argued that you should be listed to as any other editor in good standing would be. (As opposed to Mr. Brandt, who is banned and whose biography has survived 8 AFDs at last count, some or all of which he may have initiated.) GRBerry 03:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Haven't I been making my case in the "Question" thread? It looks like I'd be way outvoted ... Seth Finkelstein 03:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately (from your perspective), 35 of the 52 individuals who have received the EFF Pioneer Award have articles in Wikipedia (just by counting red links and blue links). It seems an EFF Pioneer Award is a strong indicator of notability. The argument that the article requires defense from vandals is weak because all wiki articles require defense from vandals. I'm afraid that you are doomed to live with your fame - which is better than the alternative! --Jacknstock 04:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
But, essentially, it doesn't matter if someone vandalizes, say, Bill Gates' bio or the George W. Bush page. They're at another level entirely. It does matter much more if I'm getting a little rare news coverage one day, and someone takes that as an opportunity to sling mud at me in what's allegedly a reference site. And no, the caveats of not believing everything you read are not much comfort. The damage is still done. It's an issue of how much harm can be wreaked on a person by the vandals. And Wikipedia is just off the scale here when it comes to bios of living people. Seth Finkelstein 04:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
That's an argument about the reputability of Wikipedia, not the notability of Seth Finkelstein. I agree that unethical people can be hurtful and/or damaging in what they say or write, and this is particularly the case on-line, where there is very little personal accountability. --Jacknstock 04:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
It's more. It's that Wikipedia's processes are particularly flawed and potentially hurtful to living people who are slightly notable but not extremely so. Seth Finkelstein 04:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
And yet Jimmy Wales won an EFF Pioneer Award. "Empowerment of individuals" at the cost of other individuals? --Jacknstock 05:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, I can see your point. Besides, I'd never heard of you before the afd nomination. I have changed my vote to "delete." However, I fear we deletionists cannot win in this case. --Jacknstock 02:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I hate to have to make that argument, but I think it's the truth. I'm just not at the level which is required to comfortably bear the risk. Seth Finkelstein 06:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting citations

Seth, last time I checked, there was no consensus about how to cite sources or format them. My preference is to have a footnote corresponding to an entry in a references list. This is created by placing whatever you want as a footnote between <ref> and </ref> tags. For formatting citations I find it most convenient to use one of the templates on WP:CITET. Alan Pascoe 22:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hey Seth, are you mad enough to write an article for my site?

You should be. This living-person bio stuff, particularly for marginals like you and me, is out of hand. Would you like to write an article for Wikipedia-Watch.org on the problem? I really like the points you made on your AfD. Google is going to start ranking my site properly, and more people will read anything you write on my site than they would on yours. If we work together, maybe we can get Wikipedia to treat us with more respect. And with any luck, maybe it will happen before we need to send out resumes someday to find our next job. --Daniel Brandt 66.142.90.22 22:39, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Not yet (yet!). Thanks, but at this time, I'm still "working within the system". I'm sympathetic to your own concerns, but right now, I want to avoid anything that's associated with threats of litigation. Maybe we can be "Good Cop/Bad Cop" :-) -- Seth Finkelstein 12:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
    • I understand. Since I'm already in "indefinite block" hell, I had the freedom to write a new page at Wikipedia-Watch.org/wikitort.html and perhaps you can comment on it via your blog. Or will something you write on your blog constitute a legal threat? Be careful -- you are probably already in purgatory just by communicating with me. --Daniel Brandt 68.89.128.136 10:32, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost article

I touch on the experience with the article about you and use some quotes in my article for this week's issue of The Wikipedia Signpost, our community newspaper. It's in the context of Angela Beesley's request and the issue of subjects getting their own articles deleted generally. Feel free to review the draft version and let me know if there are any problems with it. --Michael Snow 07:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German Article

Given how you feel about having an article here, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to see that you also have an article on the German language wikipedia. I haven't figured out interlanguage links, but you can see it here [3]. I speak no German, but have tried to use English to let them know that you would rather not have an article on the English Wikipedia. GRBerry 13:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. Yes. Thank you. I've confirmed it on that page :-(. Seth Finkelstein 16:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry overmuch, I and others will closely monitor the article. Doesn't the German Wikipedia have a reputation for its being relatively strict about articles? --Eldred 09:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
You may be right, in which case, I gain nothing. You may be wrong, in which case, I will be the one affected by whatever harm is done (could be trivial ... could be non-trivial). See the problem? And I do worry, since there's been too many times in my life when a supposedly trustworthy party has done the wrong thing. I'd much rather that behavior not even be a worry in the first place. -- Seth Finkelstein 03:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guardian article

On behalf of people I have no right to speak on behalf of, sorry about the kerfuffle over your article and the Guardian article referring to it. I had a go at removing it but ran into WP:3RR, so I had to give up. I can sympathise with your point of view - you've just been appointed unpaid policeman for your own personalised graffiti wall. As I said on the talk page, let me know if it ever comes up for deletion again - I'll support it for sure. Orpheus 16:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. A mention of the Guardian article in itself doesn't really bother me, though I think it's a silly item to include, the epitome of navel-gazing. It's all the rest of the vandalism that's been generated from the attention which is the problem. I sadly suspect I'll never get out of that being "appointed unpaid policeman for your own personalised graffiti wall". Too many people are going to have a we'll-show-him! attitude. -- Seth Finkelstein 17:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I have protected the article, so that anonymous and new users can't edit it. bogdan 21:29, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the community is currently testing functionality which would reduce the necessity to police your own article. Cheers, jaco♫plane 22:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments re your article

Hi - I realize that your article can be a troll magnet, but there are now a substantial number of Wikipedians watching your article to make sure it meets living person biography standards. It would be easier to just remove it, but I think you can be confident that over a year it will be correct and not slanderous 99-99.9% of the time, the other 10-90 minutes every week will be reverted as quickly as possible. I would hope you don't feel that you need to defend it for the rest of your life. I would also point out that the methods you are using to compain about it, like The Register, are more likely to attract the attention of trolls - who read the popular media and are not, normally, part of the Wikipedia Community. May I suggest raising your concerns on biography vandalism prevention or its associated talk page, where you can get in touch with reputable Wikipedians who value the reputation of the encyclopedia and want to help you. --Trödel 19:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Just FYI - I thought you'd want to see this discussion Wikipedia:Courtesy blanking, had I been aware of this policy I would have supported blanking the article and rebuilding it using resourced material only. --Trödel 19:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, though my problem is less "resourced material" than the issue of the article being an "attractive nuisance", which is a problem as long as it exists. -- Seth Finkelstein 04:27, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Courtesy refactor of this subsection. Summary of [this version]: QTJ expressed sympathy for the situation, Seth Finkelstein said thanks.

[edit] thanks

Thanks for watching vendor spam on the Content-control software page. It's a real magnet. Sdedeo (tips) 00:57, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome -- Seth Finkelstein 23:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] edits breaking links

Your last edits to Content-control software and Alan Dershowitz mangled up the non-ascii characters used for the interwiki links (Hebrew, Japanese, but also Polish), please take a look at that. --Hurax 21:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I suspect it's a Unicode issue -- Seth Finkelstein 22:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you tell us the User-Agent of the browser you are using? It could be added to MediaWiki's Unicode blacklist (browsers on the blacklist receive the unicode characters as numeric entities instead, which avoids the corruption). --cesarb 18:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Aha! I'm using an older version of FireFox on Linux. But I set my User-Agent to be IE6 because I was having a problem with a site that demanded that I use IE for the "experience". It didn't seem to be a problem, until the Unicode bit me. -- Seth Finkelstein 19:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Congratulations

Common sense finally prevails (two weeks ago, I'm a bit slow). Orpheus 03:03, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Never too late  :-) -- Seth Finkelstein 03:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maybe you want to respond, maybe not

Responded to your admirable note here. --Stoodwiped 05:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The price of total personalisation is total surveillance.

I saw "The price of total personalisation is total surveillance. " here with your by-line and I remembered:

"Sentient World Simulation is the name given to the current vision of making SEAS a "continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action."" from Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations. WAS 4.250 (talk) 13:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks, but I think they're working on a level of granularity that's much cruder and more global -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 17:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

SEAS can be used to model both large and small, simulated and interactive. Alok R. Chaturvedi#Simulex Inc. says

Simulex Inc. is a modeling and simulation company located in Purdue Technology Park.[2] Its main sources of income are the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.. It was established in 1999 by Alok Chaturvedi and Shailendra Raj Mehta.[3]
Simulex Inc. creates synthetic decision situations using the SEAS technology developed at Purdue University in conjunction with funding from the National Science Foundation, Intel, 21st Century Fund, Office of Naval Research and other agencies. The technology recreates situations using human and artificial agents. It populates it with real data then allows data mining, decision support, forecasting, scenario planning and strategy planning. Millions of artificial agents represent behaviors (buying behavior of consumers, movement of trucks, contamination after a bio-terror attack, etc.) and hundreds of human players can make decisions (regarding production, advertising, recruiting, etc.) all in a real time, web-enabled, interactive environment.[3]

WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I think I remember reading that it was used in an H5N1 pandemic simulation, but I'm not positive. WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guardian article

Are you the author of this? I thought the article was very good and agree with a lot of it. --Duk 02:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am. Thank you. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:38, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

P.S. the first time I remember hearing the 'sausage factory' analogy is from David Gerard:[4], [5]. --Duk 03:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


Following the link above I found this article and feel an urge to comment: if it shows anything it is how painfully long does it take for Wikipedia to respond and how being an external authority allows one to rage like a Black Hand. I did some minor editing in the same article (related to programming languages) as Hewitt, two years ago. He put inside something so absurd that even I could recognize it.

I looked to his other edits, saw his typical argumentation style "it is so because I say it is so", saw how aggressive he could get and moved away, shrugging my shoulders and wondering what he is trying to demonstrate. Later, I saw several editors of science related articles completely burned down by warring with Hewitt and leaving convinced that the Wikipedia model is helpless in face of such behaviour.

That he got eventually banned somehow reduces my learned conviction how fragile this system is. Pavel Vozenilek (talk) 02:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, my view of the fragility of the system is based on the tensions between sucking in volunteers to contribute, yet not having conflicts tear them apart. In this regard, I think Wikipedia does much more poorly than is generally believed. But that people have the impression it does well, because it draws from an expanding pool of new fodder to replace those who it burns out or drives away. That is, it's not really good at conflict-resolution. In fact, it's arguably worse than average. But it can get by, because there's more than enough replacement (free) labor. However, from a lot of perspectives, that's not such a great thing. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I was not able to parse correctly the first sentence but for the main problem: yes, conflict resolution here is very poor and that's hardly a surprise - electronic communication doesn't handle emotionally charged situations well and the need to deal with psychos like this one doesn't help either. The software remains on the Stone Age level while the number of users and of everything else grew up by order of magnitude. Pavel Vozenilek (talk) 04:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of works by William Monahan

Seth, if you have a moment would you mind reviewing the list of works by William Monahan that is currently at WP:FAC? Any comments or edits you could provide would be appreciated.-BillDeanCarter (talk) 15:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure you're asking the right person? I don't have any expertise in that area -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 18:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
You mean specific expertise about writers or William Monahan? Anyhow, just thought I would ask. I think generally people are not experts on the subjects they review at WP:FAC.-BillDeanCarter (talk) 19:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, if you wanted me to review/common on "the list of works by William Monahan", and I have no knowledge of him, it's hard to see what sort of checking or per-review function I could do well -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 19:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh, okay. I guess you haven't reviewed anything yet at FAC. I suggest WP:BOLD and try it out but either way there's plenty of other stuff to do at WP. Best, BillDeanCarter (talk) 20:29, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cheap irony

You may have missed the link to a comment of yours I was attempting to pastiche. You wrote:

“ Cheap irony is a great story. In this case, it's not just shady background, but "Encyclopedia organization didn't get information about its own COO". I think people should admit, objectively, that's a grabber. Wikipedia advocates often try to have it both ways - when the topic is positive, it's a revolutionary force for knowledge, when the topic is negative, well, it's just a tiny nonprofit that really shouldn't be held to any professional standards at all. Yes, of course, that's a great rhetorical tactic when it works. But let's put it this way - outsiders are not as inclined to be as forgiving of that shell-game as insiders. ”

I apologise if you feel that's a cheap shot, and I would like to inform you I would never in a million years allow such a thing to last a second longer than my awareness would allow within an article on you. However, I spotted the comment and I couldn't resist the cheap irony. Boot on the other foot and all that. As I mentioned elsewhere in the debate, I enjoy your pieces in The Guardian, but never mind. It was more political to reply to the second comment than the first. All the best, Hiding T 16:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Zittrain

Greetings, Seth. Do you have a moment to look over Jonathan Zittrain? Except for the addition of his nickname we have no other contributors besides me since the stub was expanded on 16 April. Thanks by the way for the link to the Yale Books Unbound version of his new book which I only had in hard copy. What a great service. Thank you either way and best wishes. -Susanlesch (talk) 19:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome, but I probably shouldn't be involved with his page - too much problematic politics for me there. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 21:55, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
OK. I better disappear like a bunny or won't be able to cite your work much as a source in the future. Sounds like we agree in places, too. Good luck. -Susanlesch (talk) 22:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Right winger ranters

Hey thanks for your clarification in the now removed thread from Jimbo's user page. I think the Americans tend to see anti-porn as synonymous with evangelical Christianity whereas I alsways relatte it to ardent radical anti-porn feminists. Thanks, SqueakBox 14:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)