User talk:Tom harrison

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Tom is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.


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This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot III. Any sections older than 14 days are automatically archived to User talk:Tom harrison/Archive 2007 . Sections without timestamps are not archived.

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Previous discussions: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

[edit] Palestinian celebrations

Hello Tom, About your edit would you plese provide the full text of the source? thanks, Imad marie (talk) 10:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hey Tom

Hope all is well. LoveMonkey (talk) 01:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Fine, thanks, but busy, and less than eager to spend the time I do have on wiki. Tom Harrison Talk 19:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Top Importance Chicago Articles

If you want to help me choose Category:Top-importance Chicago articles, come comment at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chicago/Assessment#Current_Top-importance_Candidates by June 5th.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 13:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Tony; your hard work does a lot for the project. Tom Harrison Talk 19:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Your recent AIDS article edit

I'm fine with the term "conspiracy theory" in talking about many, if not most, prevalent non-scientific consensus theories about AIDS. So I'm not reverting your edit for that reason, though I know some would. It's just that it's a little too sweeping in this case.

Edward Hooper, who gets a fair share of treatment in that article, is not and was not (clearly, anyway) a conspiracy theorist, even though he wrote a whole long book about how bad laboratory work in Africa might have created HIV. And there are others, I'm sure, who believe some accidental iatragenic theory of HIV, but who don't think there's been some cover-up of that origin, only a systemic bias against the idea. For the case in question here, it's much harder to suppose that U.S. scientists might have created HIV in the lab, but that there's no conspiracy theory. At the very least, even if it was legitimately funded secret biological warfare research (or for some other purpose), how could we not know that unless there was a coverup? Still, it's better to leave it at "claims", I think. Structurally, I'd start with the less crazy theories, and only start using "conspiracy" where it was getting pretty clear, and "conspiracy theory" where you're talking about people who spin those for a living.

I sometimes make edits hastily, without reading carefully. Sounds like you're taking a bit of a vacation from working on Wikipedia intensively. Maybe you should be careful about this kind of minefield article?

I'm currently trying to resolve tricky (possibly WP:BLP) issues about the mention of Paul Farmer in this article. And I realize I've got my work cut out for me, because I know almost nothing about Farmer, or HIV epidemiology, or Haiti, or what Farmer might have said vs. what a friend of his, Noam Chomsky, might have said in joint forum appearances and in an introduction to one of Farmer's books. Editing these kinds of articles seems like it should be easy, because they are chiefly about people who have gotten things wrong. Sometimes amazingly wrong. So much of being Wikipedian is about making things right, and that makes us so much more on top of those who are amazingly wrong, doesn't it? Yeah, usually. But sometimes, people get things wrong for subtle and complex reasons, and accurately characterizing their positions and their errors is commensurately subtle and complex. And all broken clocks are right twice a day, so sometimes these wrong people are right, too, in certain ways.

Anyway, you're an admin, I'm not, so I really don't want to antagonize you. Obviously. I just want you to understand. I'm not the world's greatest living expert on AIDS and weird hypotheses about it (though my hopefully-WP:BLP-compliant work on Leonard Horowitz might someday -- shoot me first! -- qualify me as a specialist on the guy.) I just think you got it wrong here. Subtly wrong. Understandably wrong. But still wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong. ;-) Yakushima (talk) 12:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Apparent inconsistency

In your recently-added section at the Cla68-FM-SV Evidence page, you say both Also, the noticeboard section where he added his question had already made that obvious to anyone with minimal background...WR believed that one of their pet targets lives in Swalwell (JzG) and, in the very next sentence, Cla68 pretended to ask an innocent question so he could draw attention to speculation about SlimVirgin's real name and where she lives. That appears to be inconsistent: it is illogical to simultaneously claim that Cla68 must have been aware of the speculation because the noticeboard already drew attention to it, and that Cla68 was being underhanded in order to draw attention to it. Either its already mentioned on the noticeboard, in which case Cla68's question is possibly rhetorical and certainly has no effect in terms of drawing attention, or it isn't, in which case Cla68's question could well be genuine. --Relata refero (disp.) 13:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)