Talk:Thomas McEvilley

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1 - 2007-2008


[edit] A clear start

After the latest edits on the article by Dave, I removed the text and image on systems art and refraised a sentence all on Thomas McEvilley earlier request. I hope we can make I clear start now to expand this article agian, and I hope that we can work on this together. We can lay our differences aside, and use this talk page in the way it is ment in the first place. To change ideas about improving the article. I would like to continu here to talk about that. -- Mdd (talk) 13:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your patience and understanding. I think a lot the problem has been culture shock, of which the shock of new notability is a part. Thank God Tom does not have to endure a malicious reputation smear; he would never get over it. It is true that when a large number of socially uncontroled hands get in these matters errors are rampant. Let us say that if x people are involved in a set of articles they might have an error rate of y. If nx now get involved then you might find an increase of errors to ny or more. What the critic might not realize is the increase of n in the size of the audience and n in the size of the true material made available. So for an increase n in errors you get a powerful new capacity. If you then have a mechanism in place to reduce the errors you get all this new capacity for free! I remember Jack Caskey decried what he saw as a decline in the field now that it seemed to slipping out of his control and that was way back in the 1960's, ancient history for most of us. Again, culture shock. It isn't out of control, merely in wider control and I do believe the correction mechanism is in fact effective. The whole Wikipedia/Nupedia issue reflects the same shock. I am not going name any names but certain very nasty experienced editors surviving evidently from Nupedia times formed a resistive clique to drive the masses off of Wikipedia by being insulting. I only got one thing to say to them. How could you possibly do 2.5 mil articles by YOUR methods? Harvard University (and a few others) has thrown its entire prestigious weight onto the side of the people by having much of its previously nearly inaccessible library put onto the Internet. Hoorah! If it were not for Google Preview it would be pretty tough to write quality articles here. Anyway, there is a bit of published still rare biographical info on Tom. I knew I saw it somewhere. I am not going to be involved in this article now. Take it easy on Tom. Some authors clamor for the publicity and insist, demand, we put them and their stuff on here. This is a different case. If you write about Tom's work, make sure you read what you are writing about, OK? If you need me you know where I am.Dave (talk) 10:49, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

mdd I would again like to request that you put this talk page into archive or even better delete it into the history section as I see you have done before.

if/when I have time I will submit a draft from the page you made for me.

please respect my request to put this talk page in a less visible place.

it has been a week since I first asked and I am not going to engage in any discussion--now please archive this or place it in the history area. thank you, jdb76.15.46.220 (talk) 01:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I archived the all previous discussion. There clearly have been a lot of confusion on both sides and I apologize, that I couldn't clearify this earlier and save you all the trouble. At the moment the article is in a format from which it can be expanded again. New data and sources can be add to the biography and work sections etc. I watched the two video's and I do believe this article can use a lot of more apropriate content. It is still in a premature state, but that is with a lot of articles like this. We are working on it and this will improve sooner or later. Good luck. -- Mdd (talk) 12:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikify & cleanup

User:Orangemike just added an wikify + cleanup tag on this article, which I don't understand. I have written about 200 biographical articles on the Dutch and English Wikipedia in the current format and untill now all seems right. If this article should be wikified and cleared up so does about 500 other biographical articles I am workin on in the field of systems science. So User:Orangemike please tell me what I am missing here. -- Mdd (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The problems are all minor. He's referred to as "Tom" instead of Thomas; there are minor grammatical and spelling errors; article titles are italicized, rather than put into quotation marks: that sort of thing. And I concur: many articles here are in need of similar touch-ups. We all do what we can, where we can. --Orange Mike | Talk 12:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I think we have an other way of working. I have wikified about 100 articles last year who where in serious trouble with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Systems and I still have some dozends to go. But these where in fare worse shape then this article. I personly find it these tags here rather offending. But I have learned to accept that people work here with different quality standards. And my own standard is also rising. -- Mdd (talk) 13:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I removed the tags. These should only be there because there are mayor reasons. I do appreciate any touch up, but:
  1. I agree with minor grammatical and spelling errors
  2. I never heard of the rule that, "article titles are italicized, rather than put into quotation marks".
  3. I don't understand the argument that "He's referred to as "Tom" instead of Thomas". Maybe in the first sentence his nickname has to be added (tom). Can anybody explain?
I don know that arguments like this are no reason to tag this article with a Wikifi tag. -- Mdd (talk) 14:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
It's in the manual of style, especially Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles). --Orange Mike | Talk 15:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks I changes the italicized article. Next. What about his nickname or do you say "usual name". I cannot find who to solve this by the book. How do we proceed with that? -- Mdd (talk) 19:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Movies on YouTube and video.google

There are at the moment two video's on Thomas McEvilley on YouTube and video.google but these links don't seems to be stable:

Now I found a new link for the YouTube video:

Does this work -- Mdd (talk) 12:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

It works for me in The Netherlands. -- Mdd (talk) 12:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

YouTube and VideoGoogle are not normally considered appropriate external links. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok but these are very interesting... and there are very interesting new movies on YouTube. I even started a project there to collect these rather notable movies, see here. -- Mdd (talk) 13:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)