Ah, that explains it! I did. Boy, did I leave. In good standing, I could have gone back, but .... there is a lot in the world that isn't very accessible in academia. Understatement.



No, very low-carb diet. Coffee and cream, mostly, heavy cream. Amazing fuel, very efficient.



Yeah, we were really ruined by hanging out with Pauling, Feynmann, Mossbauer, et al. Those guys were iconoclasts, unlike too many academics these days.



Too much dope? Oxymoron! Or is it oxy, moron? I'm a Muslim, you might never guess, but -- no dope, no alcohol. Coffee and prescription drugs, under supervision, allowed. Aren't I lucky? Paid for by Medicare. Great stuff, actually. Both.



Nah. Look, young pipsqueaks like you imagine that they can understand someone with some depth, project all their own crap on others. You're making a idiot of yourself on Wikipedia, and, believe me, that's the part where I give you good advice. You deserve what you have wished for others, that's how the world works, and how it should work. It's perfect.



Nah. Don't need it. I'm not feeling what you think I'm feeling, you are living in your own fantasy world, a world I left many decades ago. Damn! I'm lucky. Lots of people never escape. In any case, if any of you are familiar with the Qur'an, not necessarily common here, I'm fulfilling my religious obligation, which is only to convey what I see, not to demand that anyone follow it. I'm sure that I'm often quite unskillful, but those who actually have some AGF in their hearts will get past that with some patience. As to the rest, I'm not responsible.

Thanks for sharing.




No, I don't "want someone to intervene." Many editors have complained about WMC -- or the cabal. Okay, here is a chance to do something about it. Take it or leave it.

I can say this: a bunch of incoherent rants about WMC will not help. I'm not seeking to have WMC desysopped, but if others want to suggest that as a remedy, they may, but, then, it should be based on evidence of a continued pattern, not just the present case, probably, and I may not present that evidence, depends on whether I have time or not.

As to the cabal, relevance is tricky. They are going to try to crucify me over the cabal claim, which is only narrowly important so far, so it might be helpful to have testimony on that.

It's really up to anyone who reads this. Intervene or don't. Do what's right for the project. WP:IAR , however, is not just for WMC. It's policy, one of our best, properly understood.

Two things.

One frivolous - Cla68 has always had ambitions in the circus - that is why he's been doing clown impressions on WR.

The other is far more serious and worrying - it probably demands immediate attention.

When you bend down, do you notice a grey amorphous liquid streaming out of your ears?

No, its a grey morphous liquid. Amorphous liquids disturb me, as you never know where they might have been.

OMG, Grandad, not another lecture on your crackpot views of the number nineteen.

Please spare us, oh verbose one, and lead us not into your walls of life-draining prose.

Remember that today is the holy day of Mary Magdalen,
She that in a boat, with neither rudder nor sail,
Came to these shores from the Holy Land
To end her days in a mountain cave,
After which she was conveyed thence
By flights of angels in the skies to
31 rue Gaston Saporta, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, Bouches-du-Rhone, CEDEX 9.

Lest we forget.

The clerks do need to sleep sometimes. Some of them might even have jobs which require their attention from time to time, so it's up to others to help police the case pages when necessary. Police action shouldn't be necessary, but WMC doesn't appear to feel that the rules apply to him.

Right here is a fine place to discuss the case. In fact, this is a better place to discuss it than in Wikipedia, because we can talk more freely. For one thing, if one of us criticizes WMC here, we don't have to worry about him deleting our comments.

Too few clerks there are.

Are you not, Sir, the most pretentious, snivelling, fawning, digging, flattering creature, that
ever upon this earth did walk, that ask such trifling questions with curled lip, furrowed
brow and false heart ...

What, Sir, is this Monstrous Lie you tell?

I think you just yelled "Balls!" at me, but with a little more style.

wow! Mathsci must be a follower of Rashad Khalifa, because who else would call an essay debunking Khalifa's theory of 0 modulo 19 patterns in the Qur'an "crackpot views"? Martin Gardner ended up using some of my work.

Thanks for the link, Mathsci, I haven't seen that essay for one very long time. Notice the post office box address. San Quentin is a tiny community of a few houses and a post office and a very large state prison. I spent a lot of time with lifers and various inmates. For a while we had a Saudi prince there, little mixup with an unpaid hotel bill. A very large unpaid hotel bill.

Nice people, compared to certain Wikipedia editors and administrators. Much nicer. Then again, there, I had a captive audience. But I listened a lot more than I spoke.



Granted. Reading what I write has been, by decree of the Universal Benefit Council, prohibited for you. If you are tempted to violate this commandment, designed only for your blessing and welfare, contemplate the dog-vomit slime mold image at the top of my Talk page. Did you imagine that this was a joke?

From your behavior at RfAr, I suspect that you have read much more than the safe limit. Immediately, draw a bath and immerse your head in it for as long as you can.

If you can't draw a bath, then use a photo.

Here is what I've been seeing: we have editors who can't describe accurately what has just happened in full view, with a complete record available in history, but they imagine that they can write neutral encyclopedia articles. I've been reading a series of ArbComm decisions to identify cabal editors, it's been much clearer than I expected.

Very, very predictable opinions, but not just on, say, science, where similarities of views might be expected. On behavior, on Wikipedia principles and policies, and on opinions about the good faith or bad faith of other editors, it's like they are all being programmed from the same source. Zombies can march together without any leader, or, more accurately, anyone of them can function as a leader. One of them says something and the others go "Yeah!" "Me too!" "That's right!"

But what they agree on has been thoroughly rejected by ArbComm and the community, and they only get away with their crap because they mass together here and there. It's a losing battle, because someone like Raul654 creates sock masters right and left, which justifies his job. All it took was WMC, Raul654, and another admin who seems to be gone, in 2006, and presto! over 300 Scibaby socks, keeping Raul654 busy playing whack-a-mole. It's finally being confronted, arbitrators and others are realizing that the range blocks are playing havoc with the "encyclopedia anyone can edit," and it's actually being said, louder than a whisper, that Scibaby socks aren't that disruptive.

Mathsci, if you have read this far, you are not following instructions.

You are on the side of the losers, the cabal is defined by its anti-Arbcomm position, its firm belief in its own rightness, and its ruthlessness in dealing with dissent, and, in spite of all your work, you will find that you are unable to maintain it, you will be blocked and banned, sputtering all the while about those excellent articles. Much better editors than you, experts, have been banned. They may have known their topic, but they did not know people.

I'd like to fix that, retaining experts is a project, but you probably would not let me help you, and it may take some years before what I'm doing to become visible and effective. For you, I see no open doors, no windows, nothing penetrating the terrifying vacuum at the center of your psyche. Now, *I* need to stop reading or the dog vomit slime mold will eat *me*! It's a great pet to have in the corner, but it's a little dangerous.

I will use this material for a BLP of Dennis Lomax on wikipedia.

Didn't they try to convert San Quentin into a luxury hotel?



Monsieur, it would be "couilles" and I do thank you not to be putting these things into my mouth ! Putain.

a) this thread belongs in the tarpit;
b) it's getting dull and repetitive anyway, so nevermind.

Wasn't there somebody in this thread asking when the British slang word "git" could be applied?

Look, folks, I've been trying to be nice about it, but the fact is none of you are addressing the underlying issues involved, and the result is a thread that makes no sense to anyone but the participants - and probably not even them. I'm not saying this is some sort of offense or rule-violation or anything silly like that, but as Mr. Barbour says, if nobody is going to address those issues, then he's right, the thread belongs in the tarpit, where people won't run the risk of accidentally trying to read it and having their heads explode.

I could take a crack at it, I suppose - it looks like Abd (T-C-L-K-R-D) , whose name might be the acronym for "All But Dissertation," heartily supports Cold Fusion (T-H-L-K-D) research and considers it a viable and worthy concept. WP admin William B. Connelley (T-C-L-K-R-D) (WBC) is one of WP's self-appointed "protectors of scientific content," and takes a dim view of the work that's been done on Cold Fusion so far, and Mathsci (T-C-L-K-R-D) and Hipocrite (T-C-L-K-R-D) agree with him - though they claim to be more ambivalent on the issue than Abd believes them to be.

Abd's contention seems to be that WBC and Mathsci have edit-warred to make the Cold Fusion article more negative with respect to existing research efforts, and their opposing contention is that Abd has edit-warred to make it more positive, i.e., more like an advertisement for Cold Fusion "hucksters." Abd and Hipocrite were "topic-banned" for a month on the article, and WBC claimed that Abd violated this ban, and blocked him for it. Both sides have come up with a dizzying array of arguments to support the idea that their actions were justified, as is often the case in such matters...

Am I close? I realize it's all very complicated, but without a relatively clear statement of the background to this dispute, I see no reason to keep this thread going at all.

There are certainly a number of serious issues here, as well as all the hilarity. There are several issues over Cold Fusion which seem to me to be obviously separate, but which get persistently confused. One question is: "Is Cold Fusion a real phenomenon in the physical world?" -- "Is the science of Cold Fusion as currently practiced good science or bad science?" -- "What is the nature of the sociological phenomenon underlying the Cold Fusion debate?".

There is a party whose beliefs go something like "Cold Fusion is not a real phenomenon" -- "Cold Fusion science is bad science" -- "The only sociological phenomenon consists of people refusing to take the word of the experts who know best"

There is a party whose beliefs go something like "Cold Fusion is probably real, and I really wish it were true" -- "Cold Fusion science is about trying to make a free energy source" -- "So-called experts are at best blinkered stick-in-the-muds and at worst stooges of the oil companies".

Each party is arguing past the other on all three questions.

I can tell before I write this that it's going to be long. I'm just going to make some statements, I'm not going to try to prove them. If you are inclined to believe me, I'd encourage you to verify the statements or ask me to come up with proof. But don't ask here, ask on Wikipedia, and help me get the evidence into the RfAr. And, if it's cogent, support it and confirm it. And if you don't have the balls for that, go away, you are worse than the cabal. Disinterest is normal, but pretend interest wastes everyone's time.

And if you are inclined not to believe me, if that basic trust isn't there, it's unlikely that any evidence I would present would change your mind. It happens, but it's rare, something has to bridge the gap. So if you don't want to know, I'm not writing for you, I'm writing for others, and tl;dr is just an arrogant and unnecessary comment unless you are a friend. If you aren't a friend, I don't give a fuck if you read it and I'm certainly not going to edit it down for you, waste of time.

On Wikipedia, I'll take the time to edit it down, but it's not for the cabal, it's for the neutral editors and especially the arbitrators, it's rude to present them with an undigested and unorganized mess.



That risk is always present when I'm involved. When I was younger, a few overly blunt words, and a friend committed suicide. On-line, I saw a writer delete many months, easily hundreds of hours or more, of her own work when she realized that she couldn't go back and delete my posts and every reference to them without making it an unintelligible mess. I've learned some, but tiger/stripes. I only eat those who eat others, now. Mathsci gets to be told the truth about himself because he's dripping with contempt and arrogance, and he doesn't mind if others are rejected and abused. I would never do this to someone merely because they made a mistake, and when I discover that an editor can't take criticism, I back off, generally. I only persist when they persist or there is some critical interest.



Not very accurate, though not entirely wrong, either.

In January, I came across JzG's abusive blacklistings of the two major cold fusion information web sites. Both of them are quite notable; as a result of my efforts, one now has an article. It's quite possible the other one should have one too. (These might not necessarily survive as independent articles, they might be sections in the cold fusion article, but right now, that would go over like a lead balloon.)

So I began working on the blacklistings. As part of that, I had to look at the content, and I only looked at some narrow sources, at first, and I saw that the sources were being misrepresented. When I tried to fix that, so that it was balanced, I was reverted. I did more research.

For background, I don't have any college degree; however, I first studied nuclear physics when I was twelve, and I assumed I would be a nuclear physicist until several years into Caltech, where I had Linus Pauling for chemistry and Richard P. Feynman for physics. I sat there for the lectures that became the standard physics text for many years. But I didn't continue in science; I dropped out and became, first, a musician, then I led communities, delivered babies, my own and others, started a school of midwifery, taught myself electronics and became a kind of electronics engineer, raised five kids and I'm working on two more, and developed some theories of how "free associations" can become efficient at finding consensus. I.e., the Wikipedia problem.

In 1989 I followed the cold fusion story. I bought $10,000 worth of palladium, not because I was convinced that cold fusion was real -- it hadn't been confirmed, after all -- but because, if it was confirmed, the price of palladium, then about $130 per ounce, would have skyrocketed. Certainly not the worst investment I ever made, and I was a little slow getting in; I ended up, I think, about breaking even. (Palladium later went over $1000 per ounce because of use with catalytic converters, and has now dropped to about $200 because of the suffering in the auto industry.)

I came to believe, like nearly everyone else, that cold fusion was a mistake, bad science, an error, unrecognized experimental artifact. And that is where I was at in January.

However, I started reading the recent work. Contrary to much propaganda, there is a great deal of work that has been published in peer-reviewed journals on the topic, and recent publications have been in high-quality journals, not just less respected ones. When I started to review the evidence, not for cold fusion but for scientific opinion about it, I found plenty to convince me that this was emerging science, certainly not pseudoscience, the original basic finding, excess heat, had never been shown to be artifact; on the contrary , there are 153 peer-reviewed papers that report excess heat, and it is often way above possible experimental error. The effect turns out to be quite fragile; it was very difficult to reproduce Fleischmann's work, but better techniques have been developed; still, it wasn't until 2007 that research groups started reporting 100% excess heat, i.e., every cell shows it. That, by the way, is from a review in a peer-reviewed journal. Try to get that into the article and see what you meet!

It will be there, I predict, but, when the cabal is involved, the wheels of wikijustice grind slowly.

Now, I have indeed become convinced that low-energy nuclear reactions exist. In fact, that was never really in doubt, there were known examples, such as muon-catalyzed fusion and shifts in radioisotope half-life from the chemical environment. But Fleischmann himself, though his recognition of the difference between quantum field theory (largely multibody and thus necessary in the condensed matter environment) and quantum mechanics (largely two-body, simplified and useful in the plasma environment where most interactions are between two particles) led him to think that there might be some difference between reality and what quantum mechanics predicted, did expect that the differences would be below the level of what experiments would detect. But why not try? And that's what he did. And he found heat way above detectable levels, and he was one of the world's foremost electrochemists, and measurement of heat was his forte. He also tried to measure neutrons, and blew it, his reports were experimental error. Later consensus is that the reactions he discovered don't produce neutrons, except as a rare effect, possibly from secondary reactions.

That these reactions exist means almost nothing about solving the world's energy problems, necessarily. The reactions found by the researchers are largely quite fragile and nobody has been able to scale them up to provide reliable excess heat on a useful scale. The same is true of muon-catalyzed fusion, but nobody claims it doesn't exist because it's impractical to brew a cup of tea with it, but that is exactly the claim of one of the most notable critics of cold fusion, Richard Garwin. He said, in a recent interview, that he'll only be convinced when they brew him a cup of tea with it, he drinks it, and then they brew another.

This wasn't science, it was polemic.

However, I'm a Wikipedia editor, and I believe in NPOV, strongly, and, while I'm an inclusionist and would have a far wider range of content than we presently allow -- but with hierarchical structure, where the top level would be stricter than what he presently have, and the bottom level would be wild and wooly, and anyone reading it would be aware of that -- we do *not* have such an inclusionist project and so we depend on notability guidelines, and for science articles, that's peer-reviewed secondary source as the gold standard. And that's all we need.

What's been happening is systematic exclusion of reliably sourced text, based on a synthesis that this text is "fringe." I do believe that whatever is in reliable source, no matter how old or even mistaken, should be in the project, properly framed and balanced, but balanced with sources of equal quality, where possible. I also believe that there is great flexibility and if it improves consensus to claim that some recent research "hasn't been accepted by the scientific community," I'll accept that text unless I can prove otherwise. Even though that is often synthesis. And "scientific community" or "mainstream science" is actually undefined.

Yes, WMC is a cabal administrator. The "cabal" I'm referring to was originally visible in articles about global warming. Ironically, I'm in general agreement with the cabal *on global warming*, but not with the incivility and tag-team reversion that they use to exclude reliably sourced material from skeptical POV. The cabal became quite visible in the flap over ScienceApologist, a cabal editor, and JzG was definitely aligned with the cabal. So when I RfC'd JzG over his abuse of tools with relation to cold fusion -- which was originally without any involvement or POV on my part -- I faced two-thirds of commenting editors calling for me to be banned for disruption, walls of text, and POV-pushing. There were no walls of text in that RfC. ArbComm confirmed every important point that I'd made in the RfC. So that RfC is an example of how the cabal can appear to represent consensus when, in fact, they have an isolated position that fails when subject to careful deliberation, which, while ArbComm is certainly not perfect, is much more likely to happen at ArbComm because of the more highly structured process.

Which they are now trying to disrupt. This RfAr has brought out the cabal in force, I've never before seen them assemble in one place in such numbers, though RfAr/Fringe science got close. And that, I believe, is highly useful.

WMC doesn't seem to have much opinion about Cold fusion, I think he's sincere about that, I haven't claimed he was involved in the article, as such; rather his involvement was with long-term dispute with me, starting with that original global-warming related RfC from more than a year ago, where I basically dismantled the claims of Raul654, certified by WMC, one of the worst-written RfC's I've seen, pure polemic, blatantly POV and uncivil, full of obvious ABF, etc. The basic cabal argument is that an editor has a POV and pushes it, and therefore should be banned.

In reality, we all have POVs, and we all push them; some of us learn how to find consensus beyond that, some don't. Usually, though it takes discussion, and sometimes a lot of discussion, and WMC has no patience at all for discussion. He's impulsive and intuitive, which can be good qualities, but he's unable to recognize when his gonads have taken over and he's simply aggressive.

Hipocrite doesn't give a fig about cold fusion. He somehow came to think that I was an enemy of ScienceApologist because, possibly, some evidence I gave may have helped ArbComm decide to block him. But I supported SA, in fact, in some of his work, including his work on the optics article while he was blocked. I'd have allowed him to edit the article with self-reversion, like I suggested at the time. It would have saved a huge amount of trouble. And then editors could have compared the two versions, and then decided which one they preferred. But because I advocated self-reversion as a technique for banned editors to use to make contributions without making ban enforcement difficult, the cabal editors who argued that harmless edits should not result in blocks -- when it was SA making them and when his actual declared intention was to disrupt arbitration enforcement -- now argue that a ban is a ban and Abd is just wikilawyering.

So Hipocrite showed up at Cold fusion at the beginning of May and began a dedicated campaign of bald reversion, at about the same time as I'd stopped major discussion and started serious work on the article. I'd do hours of research and writing to provide reliably sourced text for the article, to remedy obvious deficiencies, and he would simply revert it, sometimes with little or no explanation, or simply a claim that the peer-reviewed or academic sources were "fringe." With no proof of that. He ran these reverts for some weeks, and started adding and insisting on very weakly sourced negative material, not peer-reviewed secondary source, just off-hand opinions without evidence behind them in various publications, where you can find the "junk science" claim and all the rest.

Hipocrite, in fact, was trolling for the kinds of responses that cabal editors are accustomed to seeing from "fringe POV-pushers," he was trying to provoke me to edit war. On one day, May 21, I finally confronted his editing and did use a few reverts. If you add up all the "partial reverts" -- I would almost never use a bald revert, instead I'll edit the text to try to satisfy the stated objections -- and if you include an edit that was a reassertion of reverted text from weeks before, but with double the sourcing, -- I hit 4RR. That is about unique in my entire editing history. WMC protected the article, and, in fact, I thanked him. The article had been improved a bit, and, in fact, those improvements stuck. Apparently, I'd been supporting improved consensus with my edits. In his last edits before protection, as I recall, Hipocrite had done what he should have done all along: balanced my RS text with other RS text criticizing it. Why hadn't I done that myself? I would have, except that the balancing RS text was not as accessible to me, and it wasn't as strong, but I don't care about that. If it's in RS, it belongs, and at this point, even beginning to get some balance was a great improvement. Progress, not perfection.

To summarize: Neither WMC nor Hipocrite have any particularly strong position on Cold fusion, they were more concerned with the ScienceApologist anti-pseudoscience agenda and about me as a perceived enemy, one able to be effective with the presentation of evidence and the negotiation of consensus, which I am, when conditions allow it.



No. Not that at all. Hipocrite edit-warred, long term, at 3RR on May 21, and again at 3RR on June 1, though when he made that third revert, he undid it, went to RfPP, requested protection because "Abd was edit warring again" -- though I'd done no reversion at all --, and then promptly edited the article to add grossly POV material to the lede. Not a revert, right? Simply text that even Hipocrite knew wouldn't be accepted. But he knew that protection was coming, quite likely, as long as the admins didn't look too closely. They really should be more careful when the one requesting protection has been edit warring, alone, against a series of registered editors.

WMC only made one controversial edit to the article, while it was protected, and that was, indeed, an improvement, it went back to the version of May 14. However, the version of May 14 was a result of continued POV-pushing with reversion by Hipocrite, but he hadn't been nearly as bold as on June 1, which resulted in a truly intolerable version. There were polls running; I'd started one, and, as could be predicted from prior disruption, Hipocrite started another. However, from looking at both polls, it was clear that there was consensus approving, most of all, the May 31 version (every editor !voting approved that), or, slightly below that, or even the same, depending on how one interprets the comparison of the two polls, the version of May 21.

So why did WMC revert to May 14, instead? He writes about why: basically, it was fun to do what GoRight had suggested, since they are supposedly enemies. However, GoRight had no clue about the content, he simply looked and saw that May 14 had been stable for a few days, which was true. I'd was trying to figure out a minimally disruptive way to deal with Hipocrite and, remember, I already know there is a cabal and what will happen if this goes to AN/I. Sometimes, luck of the draw, but odds are, cabal members will see it and pile in.

I protested. So WMC and I were involved in a content dispute. This was in addition to long-term contempt that he'd expressed about my work, and his prior support of me being banned over the JzG affair. No way should he have touched me; if he'd wanted me banned or blocked, he knows what he could do. Except that WMC never does that. If he thinks someone should be blocked, he just does it. Old-style. Rejected style, in fact, but WMC has nothing but contempt for those ArbComm decisions.

(In some ways, I'm in agreement with WMC. If he thinks an editor should be blocked, maybe he should block, but, then, he should also notify the community at AN/I or AN, and he should recuse. The cabal editors, so far, have tried to feed the community loads of bullshit about how recusal rules will make enforcement of guidelines by administrators impossible, but the fact is that recusal does not mean automatic unblock. It means that the admin is only an "arresting officer" and doesn't make the decision about whether to "hold the suspect." IAR is not negated, but contained. WMC's error is in holding on, not in acting intuitively. He may also be dangerous, his intuition may be too heavily contaminated, but that's another issue.)



Well, it's really pretty simple. It's only dizzying if you try to understand it all at once, without absorbing the evidence first. That's what we want, right? We want a nice neat clear little analysis that we can sign on to. Problem is that the faculties by which we decide to accept or reject those analyses can be heavily influenced by some very subjective factors. But, okay:

WMC decided that the problem at the article wasn't Hipocrite edit warring, it was Abd Talking too much. That has been his opinion for at least a year. But he certainly couldn't ban me and leave the very obvious problem of edit warring of Hipocrite alone. Most don't yet realize that I had proposed to Hipocrite a mutual topic ban from editing the article, and Hipocrite had jumped for it. The cabal doesn't understand consensus process; I don't need to be able to edit the article to do my work, which is the forming of consensus. Once there is consensus, anyone can make the edit. Hipocrite's goal was to keep me from editing the article, so here was his chance. But that agreement was ignored, the admins at RfPP still wouldn't unprotect.

WMC then declared the double ban. However, he extended it to Talk. After all, that's where *my* offenses had taken place. I objected, but he insisted. After trying to negotiate directly, I went to TenOfAllTrades, by email, and asked him to suggest out to WMC that this would end up at ArbComm if he insisted, and that, from precedent, this wouldn't go well for WMC. At least there would be that risk! TOAT, however, reacted, shall we say, rather negatively, that will all be in evidence at the RfAr. While all I was doing was suggesting to TOAT that he point out to WMC what recusal policy would require, it was called a "threat." Okay, I suppose you could say that I was threatening to take a unlaterally declared ban by an admin who was involved to ArbComm. Not just a threat. A promise, and ArbComm, in some good advice that the cabal seems to not notice, suggested I escalate more quickly. It took me about four months to go from discovery of the problem with JzG to RfAr, and not much more than one month to do it this time.

Taking this to AN would bring out the cabal, and, whatever happened, it would be disruptive. From history, the cabal can assemble about twice as many editors as the People of NPOV and Consensus. (This is a rough translation from Arabic, by the way, it's a religious term.....) With additional time, the balance would shift, but it would likely not find consensus; nothing would change, except a lot more text would have been created to no good end.)

So I decided the fastest and most efficient way to bring the matter to resolution was to deny that the ban existed. I notified WMC of this, but didn't actually make any violating edits. Enric Naval, who, in spite of his claims that my big offense is walls of text, is quite capable of generating huge volumes when he's fired up, as he has done, fortunately, at RfAr, even though there wasn't any actual cause but two contesting claims, took this to AN/I, and, as predicted, cabal editors poured in. Not all editors can be identified as being cabal editors; when the cabal assembles and makes its claims, it almost always brings in some neutral editors who don't investigate carefully. It takes time and patience to understand what's going on. In any case, while I started to defend there, I realized that was a mistake. It was probably going to be closed as no consensus -- or not closed at all -- if I allowed defense to continue, or alternatively as a community ban, and probably a one-month ban. I didn't care enough about it to be worth the disruption of contesting the matter there, so I asked for a speedy close.

Okay, now I was community page-banned, one month. However, contrary to the assumptions of many who subsequently commented, I wasn't topic-banned, and I continued to participate in a glacially-paced mediation, hence I had plenty of reason to review the article and the Talk page. And I noticed what seemed to me to be a simple one character error. Because of the prior history with SA, and because of WMC's very clear opinion, expressed then, that to block someone for a harmless edit under ban would be "stupid," I made the edit with a summary that I would, per ban, revert, and then I reverted. WMC blocked me. I explained, and he even at one point realized what he'd done that he'd, as he said it, "nailed his colors to the mast," he didn't unblock or apologize or annotate the block record. I did not put up a unblock template; again, not worth it for a 24-hour block, since this was all going to end up at ArbComm anyway.

Sure, Hipocrite didn't violate the ban. The ban fully served his purpose. He had started the mediation, and stacked it with cabal editors, but most of them aren't really interested, and neither was he, in fact.



You know, people here have complained for a long time about WMC and Raul654. WMC is now before ArbComm, and Raul654 has come out from under cover far more obviously than ever before. There is actually an opportunity to do something about a situation which has been causing damage for a long time. Consider Scibaby. On my Talk page, where Raul threatens to club me for "meat puppeting" for Scibaby, I decide that, since this was so important to Raul that he'd himself write extensively about it, I'd check it out. From maybe an hour's research, which I consider far short of what would be definitive, I saw that this was a global warming cabal action. Scibaby was faced with the cabal, which operates by being uncivil to a new editor whose POV they dislike, and then if the editor tries to insist on, say, some reliably-sourced criticism of global warming, the editor is met with tag-team reversion. Most editors simply get blocked fairly quickly, but this one was a bit more persistent. It seems he had what may have been a sleeper sock, though if that was the intention, it was extraordinarily clumsy. I tend more to the explanation that Obedium was a role account, which Obedium actually claimed when he was later blocked, claiming that the use of the account by multiple people had stopped.

Anyway, when Obedium showed up, Scibaby was immediately indef blocked for use of socks. By WMC, who had been reverting him at the article. Action while involved. Obedium continued, but was harassed, to make it brief. Eventually, at the end of December, Obedium was blocked for sock puppetry, and apparently had created a series of socks starting in mid-December. As of last count, Scibaby has created perhaps 300 socks. The range blocks are causing much collateral damage, there used to be several requests a day for help with an account creation; and, as has been pointed out, most people, met with a block message, would probably do nothing. It may be down to one a day.

Huge disruption, long-term, caused by ... WMC originally, then the final block was by Raul654.

Yes. There is a cabal. We might call it a "faction" or there are other more neutral words, but I want to imply that the group, collectively, violates policy and guidelines and is thus harmful.

But what's this case about? WMC continues to claim that he has the right to maintain the ban, even though a different admin closed the community ban and when he was asked -- by an editor apparently hostile to me -- about the duration, he said it was one month. That's expired. I'm not banned. But WMC says I am, so we are back to the beginning. He's involved, clearly, deeply, now if he wasn't before. So, first of all, is he involved? Is it allowed for him to continue to threaten to block me if I edit one of those pages? Or should he recuse? I'm not pushing for him to lose his bit, but others who are more aware of the many other situations that I've heard about, and that I've seen fragments of, certainly could argue for it. I'm not attached either way.

Secondly, should I be sanctioned and for what? WMC was asked about the reason for the ban, and he pointed to a reference to WP:TRIFECTA, which only makes sense as IAR. He didn't provide a reason except post-facto, a claim that the article was nice and quiet since. Sure it is! Graveyards are quiet, too!

In any case, every aspect of my behavior for the last two years is being dredged up. It's quite improper, and by the time we are done with evidence, a lot of that may disappear. Or not. I don't mind, personally. In summary, should Abd be commended, advised, reprimanded, sanctioned, banned?

But there is more: the behavior of other editors both before and during the case may have raised some important secondary issues, and I'll be listing them. I've only made a couple of motions on the Workshop page, and only one proposed principle: Consensus is crucial to NPOV, by which I don't mean that NPOV is defined by consensus, but that we measure the attained level of NPOV by the degree of consensus found. This is based on many years of debate in highly contentious contexts. If we imagine that there is NPOV that is contrary to consensus, we will be setting up conditions where there will be continual disruption and need to defend against "POV-pushing" and vandalism. Full employment for checkuser Raul654.

In fact, having a strong POV makes one an excellent detector for contrary POV. That's why we need all POVs represented in discussions, and assuming reliable source exists, respected by the text. People who hold true fringe opinions know and accept they they are fringe; indeed, that is often their complaint. If you read the cold fusion secondary sources, many of them quite clearly describe the rejection of cold fusion by, say, nuclear physicists. They will say things like "In spite of widespread opinion, ...." However, of late, that has been shifting, and it's being recognized that there is widening acceptance, which I won't argue here.... My point is totally general. I made this argument long before I was involved with cold fusion, and before I was aware that Jimbo had made precisely the same argument in 2003.

The cabal wants Wikipedia to take a stand in favor of the "mainstream" view, but they don't define what that means. Those questions involve POV, and we are properly quite limited. We cannot answer those questions, and, in fact, the questions aren't even well defined enough to answer, and there is no one answer. What is "cold fusion?" The name implies that there is nuclear fusion, but nobody really knows for sure what's going on. The theories are a mess; it's quite possible that one of the proposed explanations is more or less accurate, but, so far, most theories explain only part of the experimental phenomena. There have been, indeed, theories that made predictions before experiment verified them. Preparata predicted, using quantum field theory, that helium would be found correlated with excess heat measured, and then it was. That correlation, by the way, is pretty solid as a confirmation that fusion explains the excess heat, but it does not prove that the reaction is straight deuterium-deuterium fusion, there are other possibilities that were mostly overlooked in the early days.

"Cold Fusion" is an idea, a hypothesis. What's real is the experimental results. What are they? What's been covered by peer-reviewed secondary source? We can start to assert that as real, and, I can assure you, we would not from those sources state that "Cold fusion is a real phenomenon in the physical world." We would state, at this point, that "Unexplained heat from high packing of deuterium into palladium, under some conditions, is a real phenomenon." In 2004, the DoE panel that re-examined the issue came up 9:9 on the issue of excess heat, half believing that evidence was "convincing" that the heat was real, and the other half that it wasn't "conclusive." ("Not conclusive," in my book, is a middle position, not equivalent to "false.") And they only had a day meeting to consider it, and there is no way that the vast body of evidence could be fully addressed and understood in a day. Nuclear physicists, in general, have been inclined to believe that, since it's impossible from accepted theory (though there is no fundamental problem, merely no expected mechanism), there must be artifact, but that is simply a belief, not something demonstrated. Electrochemists, the competing specialty here, are well-convinced that the heat is real. The other result from that review was that one-third of the reviewers felt that evidence for the heat being of nuclear origin was "somewhat convincing." Now, if you don't believe that the evidence for the heat is strong, you certainly aren't going to believe that nuclear origin is likely! So the way I parse this is that two-thirds of those who accept the excess heat consider the origin to be, quite possibly, nuclear, and it's the simplest explanation. Exact mechanism unknown.

I follow physics blogs on this, and it's amazing how ignorant most of those commenting are. They will say, referring to Fleischmann's work, "it wasn't confirmed." It was. They will say it wasn't reproducible. It was, or, more accurately the original experimental design wasn't optimal, in fact, it was practically a miracle that it worked at all. But there are techniques now that work 100% of the time, and they have been replicated and published in high-quality peer-reviewed journals. They will say, "If it was fusion, the neutrons would have killed the researchers," which assumes -- doesn't it? -- that there is only one kind of fusion. Takahashi's theory is that under fortunately unusual conditions of confinement in the palladium lattice, two deuterium molecules can form a Tetrahedral pattern (one deuteron at each corner of a tetrahedron) and that this collapses to form a "condensate," which seems to be a Bose-Einstein condensate, which, within a femtosecond or so, he calculates using quantum field theory, fuses to form Be-8, which then decays immediately into two alpha particles, 23.8 MeV of energy each. No neutrons are emitted from the four-body fusion. The idea that fusion must necessarily produce copious neutrons is just that, an idea, an expectation, based on a narrow view of what might be happening. Whatever is happening in "cold fusion" cells, it does not produce many neutrons.

However, neutrons have been conclusively shown to be generated within the cells, at about ten times background, and consistently. It used to be said by the critics that if neutrons were conclusively demonstrated, that was proof, it was fusion. Well, they have been shown, published in Naturwissenschaften in January 2009, paper by Mosier-Boss, working for the U.S. Navy SPAWAR group, called "Triple tracks...." And there are other papers. The levels are way below what would be expected from simple deuterium-deuterium fusion, and they speculate that what is happening is perhaps the Be-8 theory of Takahashi, and then those energetic alpha particles cause a few secondary reactions, hot fusion, which generate neutrons. But nobody knows, except that the evidence for nuclear reactions, since 2004, has become overwhelming. Fusion? Some think so, some don't.



There is such a party, that's easy to show from reliable source. However, there is a lot of contrary source as well! We shouldn't confuse the opinions of scientists who aren't informed about recent research, who depend on memories of their opinions twenty years ago, or on media sources, with "scientific consensus." Science means knowledge, and old knowledge is still valid, if the age is considered. But recent knowledge trumps it, because it includes the old knowledge and more.



Yeah, those people exist too. But that's not the view of the serious researchers and analysts. Who, by the way, are also experts, many of them highly-credentialed. Several Nobel Prize winners have supported cold fusion and worked on theoretical explanations.

First of all, I'm convinced that low-energy nuclear reactions are real. But that doesn't automatically mean "cheap" energy, and certainly not "free" energy. There is a technique used in Japan by Arata, a very well-respected physicist, who loads nanoparticle palladium with deuterium gas. It works 100% of the time. A cell with 7 grams of palladium in it, pressurized with the gas and sealed, heats up initially (heat is generated from the formation of palladium deuteride), but then the temperature rapidly declines to a constant level, it maintains its temperature at four degrees C. above ambient, for thousands of hours, with no sign of decline; I've seen the charts out to 3000 hours, when they terminate the experiment and open the cell to analyze for helium. (I haven't seen the helium results.) (When hydrogen is used, same initial heat, but the temperature rapidly declines, the same at first, but it settles to ambient within a few hours). Okay, suppose this works. I figured that with a modest investment of about $100,000, mostly for the palladium, I could run a cold fusion hot water heater in my house. Is that "free"?

Maybe more efficient methods can be found; there is work with nickel electrodes. But there have been quite a few companies working on the problem over the last twenty years, and most of those efforts terminated. The reason? Not that there were no results, but there was no progress toward commercial levels of heat generation. (There are other companies now, and some claims of possible progress, and much skepticism. No public proof of commercial application yet; one company, claiming generation of heat, not from cold fusion, but from hydrino theory, which is either the most brilliant scientific work in a long time, or totally bogus, has claimed a reactor which generates significant heat, and there is a claim of a confirmation, and enough media source on this that it belongs somewhere in the project, but ... it's nothing conclusive yet and it could be one very sophisticated scam.)



Look again. You are assuming what the arguments are. You've got the negative arguments fairly right, but, in fact, that's all irrelevant. What matters for Wikipedia purposes is what is in reliable source, and for the science, what is in peer-reviewed reliable secondary sources. If we followed the RS guidelines and the principles made clear in RfAr/Fringe science, we'd be fine, and we would have a much better article, but the cabal, through a few active editors, has made sure that most of the story available isn't being told. It's pretty stupid, actually.

Give you an example. The triple-track paper on neutrons was published in Naturwissenschaften. In the RfAr on Cold fusion, that was called a "biology journal." Serious error. Because the recent paper on neutrons was amply covered in the media -- it was pretty big news in March -- we have a reference to the paper now, in the article. An editor inserted "life sciences journal." Naturw. is Springers "flagship multidisciplinary journal," it's rated just below Scientific American for impact factor in the multidisciplinary category. (I think SciAm was number 49, Naturw. was number 50.) Anyway, that question was the first one resolved at the mediation. Basically, if you can get editors to sit down and discuss something with sufficient thoroughness, consensus can be quite different from the original "majority opinion." It was decided that calling this a "life sciences" journal was misleading. The implication was that they wouldn't know a neutron from a bacillus. However, Naturw. is produced by the Max Planck Society, which is highly reputable and which has access to the best possible expertise for any scientific field. This is mainstream.

Cold fusion was called "pathological science" in 1989. By nuclear physicists, facing the possibility that much of what they had believed was obsolete, and who didn't have the expertise to reproduce experiments in a few months that took Pons and Fleischmann five years to develop. And the effect was very poorly understood, Pons and Fleischmann didn't think it was ready for publication, but the University of Utah, for patent reasons, pushed them to announce it, there was worry that competing work by Stephen Jones was going to outflank them. Later, when Pons and Fleischmann ran out of the batch of palladium that they had been using, they couldn't reproduce it either, until techniques of preparation of the palladium were found that worked. They'd been lucky. (In other words, you can't blame those physicists for failing, they didn't have enough information.) On the other hand, the Caltech work that resulted in the famous meeting of the American Physical Society where there was practically a riot of derision against Fleischmann, has later been more carefully analyzed. There was, apparently, excess heat shown, but missed. The experimental data was good, though the levels of excess heat were lower than expected from the Fleischmann results, probably because of the palladium quality, and thus this experiment was reported as negative. Same with MIT results, there was apparently some monkeying with the baseline in a chart that, from the raw data, shows modest excess heat; the baseline was shifted to make that appear to be zero excess heat. It's a mess, and much of this is in reliable source, there is material for many articles, if we simply start using the sources that exist without pushing an anti-CF -- or pro-CF -- agenda. Tell it like it is, and "is" doesn't refer to "reality" or Truth ™ but to what is in reliable sources. Where there is conflict of sources, we show that, but the cabal asserts conflict when, in fact, there is none. A negative result in one experiment does not negate a positive result in another. Something was different. An unresolved mystery is not a conflict. In any case, experimental reports are primary sources and only useful as historical documents, proof of their own existence, certainly not for conclusions!

Does a peer reviewed secondary source from, say, 2007, showing the results of research over the last decade, contradict an editorial or media source from 1990, say, that says "it hasn't been confirmed"? I say no. The 1990 source was reporting the situation in 1990 and the 2007 source, the situation in 2007. And this is what they want me banned for. I've been "pushing" for us to follow guidelines. That, in fact, is what Pcarbonn did, before he was essentially framed.

He should have been restricted, and it's quite possible I should be restricted, it's my position that experts, in general, should only edit articles when it isn't controversial. Experts are almost always not neutral! (I'm not an expert, compared to someone who has studied the field for twenty years) but I now have a strong POV, from my research over the last six months.) Experts, however, should be able, like any COI editor, to edit Talk pages. That's where they screwed up with Pcarbonn.

I guess I should be more careful what I ask for, eh?

Nevertheless, I did read the whole thing, and while I (naturally) would tend to disagree with Takahashi in that the palladium lattice tends to form an octahedral pattern which collapses to form a really bad cheese soufflé, which then fuses to the pan (and becomes very difficult to clean off even with a Brillo pad) and ultimately decays to the point where it's so moldy even the ants won't touch it, scientifically speaking I don't (personally) see your assertions as unreasonable.

What's important from our perspective here would be the issue of whether or not Connelley's and Raul's treatment of you, and by extension that of the entire "anti-pseudoscience cabal," is based at least partially on revenge (over the JzG business?), or perhaps a general attempt to "pick off" the skeptics over time, since they clearly feel threatened by such people. I take it they've refused to accept your sources as "reliable"...? And it sounds like most of their efforts have amounted to little more than "wikilawyering" and novel interpretations of rules, or simply ignoring the rules altogether?

All that would certainly tally with the previous experiences some of our members have had with Connelley and Raul654. As for Mr. Hipocrite, well... he's a difficult one to figure out, I'm afraid. He seems to be a classic case of the "obnoxious idealist," assuming there actually are "classic" cases of that around. Some of us would probably also describe him as "misguided" too, though some of us would describe just about anyone who's pro-WP that way, of course...

Anyway, this just reinforces my earlier reasoning behind my preference for iceberg, romaine, and butter lattice.

The problem is that Abd is wasting everybody's time by posting his verbal diarrhea here and not preparing his "evidence" for the ArbCom case.

I wouldn't be surprised if Abd asked for one year's sabbatical leave to prepare his evidence about WMC, while all proceedings are frozen. Perhaps Jimbo and the WMF could shut down wikipedia for a year.

Meanwhile, Somey, why would anybody discuss this case here, except for light-hearted froth and self-parody?

Obviously because we're much more likely to look at the situation objectively, and not bog down the process of getting to the actual point with a lot of hot air about incomprehensible rules and procedure? Assuming we know the basics of what's actually going on, of course.

Besides, you would say that, since you're on the side of the ones with the administrative rights in this case. I'm not saying you're wrong, but to simply dismiss what Abd is saying as "verbal diarrhea" is really just a form of chicanery. Sure, it's way too lengthy for most people, but it seems clear enough that he's not as unreasonable as he's being made out to be. And either way, one could just as easily say that he'd be "wasting everyone's time" more by concentrating on the ArbCom case exclusively, since that's likely to be a foregone conclusion.

In most cases like this, the controlling forces eventually get frustrated, give up on "consensus" and "NPOV," and just do whatever they have to to make the "tendentious editors" go away. And what are they protecting, really? Personally, I'd rather see WP show a bit more tolerance for various "pseudoscience" agendas, if there's a chance that by not doing so, they'd be helping to suppress the small number of alternative ideas and approaches that actually have some merit. It's not like the site has a reputation for accuracy to defend, after all.

Thanks--well put. That is the whole thing about this so-called dispute. These boys are
enjoying typing at each other too much to actually address the original issue. They typed
like hell at each other on WP, and now they're dragging their perversely long-winded
micturitions to WR, where they can be less "civil", or so they think.

And still, there is no quarter, no one is convinced of anything (least of all the witnesses
to this utter bullshit), and nothing is accomplished. Ya know, it seems to me that 50
years from now, if the contents of this forum survive, people will be amazed and/or
horrified at how Wikipedia's dispute over cold fusion was "debated".

Yes, little men: instead of carrying this on forever, like the Hatfield-McCoy feud,
why don't you come to some kind of compromise? You can ignore me, and return
to sniping at each other. (And these new witnesses you have, on WR, will sit here
and chuckle at your highly erudite cluelessness.) Or you could come to some kind
of mutual agreement, and implement it on-wiki.

As a "witness" my eyes glaze over everytime I try and read it and find out what the problem is. The thing is already much longer than my PhD thesis!

And this is a fundamental Wikipedia problem. When issues get complex, the complex get issued.

Yes. It might take some attention, study, and applied intelligence. Ask a simple question, you might get a simple answer. Ask a question that involves complexity, you will get one of two kinds of answers: a complex answer, or polemic, designed to convince you of something.

Simple answer to what the problem is:

A cabal of editors have been blocking sourced text supporting minority opinion. WMC is one. He was exposed by Abd. He "nailed his colors to the mast." Abd has pointed it out. WMC struck back.

Hipocrite is hiding. Mathsi is an arrogant asshole. Raul654 is an arrogant highly privileged asshole. Abd is verbose and believes he understands stuff. Enric Naval can't stand opposition. WMC gives no shit about consensus, just enforces NPOV. His NPOV, not yours.

Why can't Abd just say that in the first place? Because he's Abd, not WMC. WMC would say it straight out, if he managed to understand the situation without discussion. He never discusses. Abd needs to discuss before he understands. Take your pick.

You could call it that. Or more frank, you could call it that as well. Eric, I'm addressing the "original issue." However, curious, what *is* the original issue in your opinion? To me, it's the cabal, which speaks with a dozen tongues, so each one can seem nice and concise. Cogent? No, but who cares about that?



Quarter? Who has the buttons to push? Who's been banning editors for disagreeing?



Well, I've been involved with on-line debate for well over twenty years, and I've read back quite a bit. What I see is that the facts were typically plain, positions were plain, but the witnesses were lazy. The evidence was all there, anyone who would, instead of asking for the opinion of others, actually investigate, would get what happened. Instead, people take the easy road: the obsessed editor must be the problem, get rid of him, things will be fine. Never thinking, for a moment that they are the problem, the editor is obsessed because they won't listen. So they ban the victim, and the actual cause continues, encouraged.



Compromise was tried. With JzG, I tried for about three months. With WMC, much less, because it was quickly plain that WMC wasn't interested in any compromise at all. What compromise? Got one to suggest?

Take a look at the RfAr in a week or two. You will see me suggesting compromise. It might surprise you. However, you want my summary of the Wikipedia problem. It's you, Eric, and everyone else like you, quick to judge, slow to investigate, unwilling to work to find compromise, blaming everyone else for "feuding." And unwilling to consider how that problem could be addressed, because, of course, it would involve looking at ourselves.

Brilliant, Somey, thanks. Yes, that's what happens. It's not new with Wikipedia.

"POV-pushing" should be no offense at all, if it's confined to Talk. And if not so confined, the penalty should be confinement to Talk. There are simple solutions to "verbal diarrhea" that do not involve quarantine. It's a wiki, not a public, face-to-face meeting where verbosity is a serious problem. tl;dr? Great! Perfect solution. Then those who want to, read it and, if anything is important, they repeat it.

Classic deliberative rule: do not debate what has not been seconded. Wikipedia violates this all the time, which is one reason it is so incredibly inefficient. If I make some long-winded comment in Talk, and nobody reads it, what, exactly, is the problem? Anyone who thinks it off-topic can delete it in a matter of seconds. (Or they can ignore it even more efficiently.) If I restore it without respecting that opinion, I'd be edit warring. So if I restore it -- sometimes I will, sometimes I won't, I'll usually restore it in collapse, sometimes with a brief summary.

The real problem? There are editors who do not want actual discussion. They want only conclusions, which they can agree with or not.

I have made one proposed principle in the Workshop. Consensus is fundamental to NPOV. That doesn't mean that NPOV is a matter of vote, not at all. It means that the more neutral text is, the more widely it will be accepted. "[Your minority opinion] is junk." You won't accept that. "According to so-and-so, published in the New York Times, [your minority opinion] is junk," you might accept, if you can balance it, or even if you can't, since the reported fact is true, and you know it. You will want that opinion attributed and framed properly. NPOV is not a single point of view, that should be obvious.

With a given superset of sourced material, there are an infinite number of ways it could be expressed that are true to source. Some of these will imply a POV, because we cannot express all sources at once. How do we know when we have found NPOV.

We can't know, individually. We can only know if the text offends our own POV or not. In other words, we can recognize, rather easily, POV that conflicts with our own. We are POV detectors, and when we detect no POV, we think the text is NPOV. But it's very hard to recognize our own POV as such. That's why we need others.

My radical proposal is that we measure NPOV (not determine it as an absolute) by the proportion of editors who accept the text as neutral or acceptable. If everyone signs on, obviously the text is to be considered NPOV. That may not be attainable, but, for sure, we won't attain it if we keep excluding editors with minority POV!

What do you get when you see with more than one point of view at a time?

Depth perception.

At any given time, the minimum measure of acceptability, and only the minimum, unstable if that is where it sits, is 50% plus one. Majority rule, folks. Basic principle of democracy, and only a problem when a majority faction insists on no compromise, since, after they, they can win. But the battle to maintain a position with a bare majority can be endless, disruptive, bloody. Efficiency, overall, increases with consensus percentage. At some point, it may not be worth the effort to satisfy the last holdout, but good process can always keep the door open.

Yes, that means endless discussion, but not necessarily discussion that involves more than two editors. And if a holdout can't find anyone willing to discuss, that seals it, doesn't it.

A motion is not debated unless seconded. Think about it!

In large organizations, it can take a higher threshold to get something on the "floor." Basically, the majority will table it or refer it to committee. Discussion is confined, in good democratic process. It can be done on Wikipedia, easily, it requires no new guidelines.

But it does require experimentation, trying new approaches. Notice one of the charges against me. "Experiments with new process." Guilty as charged. If that charge doesn't demonstrate what is going on, nothing will!

Well, I suppose that, as a thoughtful individual, if you asked, there was some obligation to read the reply. Only if you had time! Or when you found time. There is no rush, so the impatience of some editors continues to amaze me.



I do not claim that cold fusion exists, at least I wouldn't put that in text. I do claim that the Takahashi theory exists and is described in reliable source; before the last removal (by WMC in his revert back to May 14), I had sourced it to Storms (2007), He Jing-Tang (2007), and to a Takahashi paper as a primary source, not as a proof of notability, the first two sources, reviews, do that. There are many other theories, one just published in May in Naturwissenschaften, by Kim, which resembles the Takahashi theory in being about Bose-Eiinstein condensates.

JedRothwell, famous and allegedly banned editor and probably the foremost expert in the world on the overall literature, says he can't understand the theory papers, which involve very high math. Quantum field theory is about as complex as it gets. He doesn't care about theory. He does care about excess heat and a bit less about neutrons, alpha radiation, helium measurements, and other easily understood and much more objective signs of nuclear reactions.

All I'm pushing for is that we follow RS guidelines. That's what Pcarbonn did, in fact, but he was framed by JzG, quite effectively, it convinced ArbComm. I understand why. Without understanding the field, what Pcarbonn was doing looked bad. This was the peak, I hope, of the attack on "Civil POV-pushing," one of the most pernicious concepts to gain currency on Wikipedia. I.e., that it's Bad.



Yes. And they've been doing it for a long time, and it's documentable. But by its nature, it requires much more evidence than establishing misbehavior by a single editor. And, in fact, if you look at editor behavior singly, it can look to be within bounds. Cabal editors don't need to go beyond 1RR. They don't need to discuss.



That's very correct. But because there are a number of them, they can make it look like they are consensus, personified. What I've found is that when a particular point is discussed, they lose. But they can make this so tedious that it often isn't done. They also lose when ArbComm discusses the actual issues. They strongly support ScienceApologist, but when push comes to shove, most of them back off and leave him swinging, while they, more privately, say what a shame it was that SA was provoked into incivility and that ArbComm couldn't see what a valuable defender of the wiki he was.



Yes.



Lattice pray.

Abd, can you believe that we are soon arriving at the first anniversary of that drama fest when Iridescent stupidly indef blocked you for “repeated posting of untrue attacks on another editor after multiple warnings,” while Xeno did his Mighty Mouse routine and unblocked you because “consensus seems to be that the block has served its purpose.” What are your thoughts on that piece of ancient history? And do you think Xeno deserves a big Horsey kiss for unblocking you?

This saga seems to encapsulate all of the worst and most insidious features of WikiMMORPGism. It also illustrates, in an ironic way, one of the worst features of encylopedism (let's assume, for argument's sake, that WP is an encyclopedia.)

For an encyclopedia to pose as authoritative, it has to present itself as the "last word" on any given subject (in the case of WP, this gets transmogrified to "the last word as of 18:35, 22 July 2009 (UTC).") But science, by its very nature, makes advances by exposing flaws in the existing body of theory (Horrors! Original Research!) Thus, any account of science that presents a given matter as "settled" is the enemy of science.

The Anthropogenic Global Warming gang is going to have to explain the present decline in global temperatures. As for Cold Fusion, it is an extremely important area of research, not because it is fusion, but because it is anomalous: it is a repeatable physical phenomenon that defies the existing body of theory, and therefore it is like an open door to progress, with a red carpet rolled out. But for the super-constipated WMC types that are so prevalent at Wikipedia, it is a nightmare come true.

No, but suppose this works. It requires us to now believe in human beings acting stupidly or crazily. Any non-crazy physicist who could do this, would make up a dozen or so preps in inert material cylinders (like little CO2 gas cartridges) and just send them to skeptics with a note:



Now, I'm sure there are stories about why this isn't happening. The guy isn't sending them out because he's about to commercialize it (I've heard this one for nearly 20 years). Or he claims he sends them out and the warm cylinders are returned by scientists who have their fingers in their ears and eyes tightly closed (but no names are given of people who've returned samples). All very conspiratorial, and with nobody acting like *I* would act, no matter which side of this debate I was on (whether I could make these things, or whether I was to be the recipient).

That is how you know this is a crazy story.

Would this Arata guy send ME one of these things? No. There will be all kinds of complicated reasons why not. But ultimately, I predict, no. Perhaps it has to be in a special glass and is specially fragile and they can't move it. Whatever. For some reason, no.

I'll take one. I have access to a calorimeter. I have the perfect right to call "bullshit" until he's willing to send me one. Pass this along, and if he agrees, I'll send contact info.

Milton

He was politely asked to post and did so in a rather sensible and interesting way. Why would you think that a problem?



Maybe, maybe not. Wikipedia Review isn't the place to decide the Cold Fusion issue. Neither is Wikipedia, actually. The issue is, how badly is Wikipedia failing to resolve the issues arising on-wiki from that fact? So far, very badly indeed.

The Wikipedia isn't the place to decide ANY issue, if you take that attitude. The problem in every debate comes down to epistemology. And in any issue where there are (if you're lucky) a 99% to 1% split on some matter, if it's a popular one, you can always get 100 cites from the 1%.

So what to do. This problem has no answer, as I've pointed out here many times. NPOV says viewpoints have to be given space and citation in proportion to the fraction of knowledgable people who hold them. But who decides if this is true? You've just gone up a level and you're now polling people on whether or not they believe 1% of scientists don't believe in global warming or do believe in cold fusion, or if the figure is higher or lower. And what people are you going to poll? Are you going to poll at all, or are you going to make an estimate of the major views in the field, all by yourself (as an original research idea of your own). No? Then you have to find a cite from somebody who has an opinion on what the major views are and the fraction of "experts" who hold them, and who qualifies as an "expert." But how do you know his or her opinion on this is good? Now you have to take a poll of the people who take polls to see if the polls fairly represent the views in the field. And are you going to do this yourself? No. You have to find somebody who has already done of poll of the pollsters of the opinions in the field....

There is no way out. At some point, you (and everybody else) simply says "Fuck it, I'm going to do my own original estimate of the state of this knowledge, or otherwise I wouldn't be able to write this article". And that's what they do, violating NOR.

NPOV and NOR, you see, contradict each other. At some point on your way down the epistemological rabbit hole, you have to give up NPOV in favor of your own judgement. All you can do is hope that somebody at that point doesn't disagree with you too badly, and if they do, that they won't use a superior position to squelch you.

Quite so. It is a fundamentally misguided project.

Yes, and all could have been avoided if somebody at WMF had just sat down and had a college student philosophy bull session for an hour.

"This is really great idea. We have non-experts do a lot of editing, but we keep them in line because we don't let them put in original research, but make them cite only published stuff."

"Okay, how do we tell, or how do they tell, what published stuff to cite on WP?"

"We have our volunteer non-expert people represent the viewpoints on subjects in proportion to number of citations in the literature. Jimbo thought of that."

"Fine, but you have to know the literature to figure that out! How are these guys supposed to know what that proportion is? Even experts argue about that, and you aready said these wouldn't all be experts. And without identifying anybody, you have no way to know who is a subject-matter-expert, who knows 'the literature' and can fairly make this judgement, and who isn't."

"Uhhhh......."







"Are there any other items on the agenda....?"

Yes, next month. Some little known facts about that block, my first true block.

(1) Iridescent was in error to block me, but it was not "stupid." I understood the appearance, and for me to describe the nature of the error would be a waste of time. Given her good-faith opinion, she was correct to block me. Administrators do not have the time to figure out the nuances, often. She did it right, she wrote "indef" as in until we sort this out and not as in "infinite," and she immediately recused herself from further consideration. This is why I raised no fuss at all about her.

(2) The target of my alleged incivility was Fritzpoll. Check my user rights log and see who granted me rollback. Fritzpoll later wrote that it was all a misunderstanding. Fritzpoll eventually did what I'd been asking him to do, lift the ban on Wilhelmina Will. You might notice that some charges in the RfAr have used long posts on Fritzpoll Talk, but he explicitly welcomed that and apparently actually reads them.

(3) The warning preceding the block was issued by Jehochman. Jehochman's view of me was much the same as WMC's current opinion, only perhaps even more extreme. However, I went through DR with Jehochman, very efficiently and very effectively, and Jehochman became an ally, generally. And then he invited me to meet him in RL, which happened once, hence his comments in the filing of this RfAr.

I didn't put up an unblock template for quite some time, I wanted to see what would happen. When I did, it was immediately denied, and then, with no further action on my part, I was unblocked.

As to Xeno, it could have been any of a number of administrators. Certainly I didn't blame him, even though the unblock didn't exonerate me! I'd say Xeno made the right decision. Isn't that normal for adminstrators?

Consider the difference with the unfortunate case of Bishonen.

Lots of WP problems could be resolved, quickly, this way. Then the participants would go back and convince the rest of the community. We might call that a cabal, but if it's open, and if some other discussions can take place that present any POVs that were missing at the start, it can be very efficient.



There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. If a fact is present in RS, which is, in itself, reasonably objective, it belongs in the project. It is to be included. The cabal relies, instead, on arguments about source quality to exclude, making it black-and-white. The key is consensus, based on thorough and careful consensus-building, which happens best in small groups of people who are relatively congenial, at first. Then it expands through the most trusted of these editors, who are able to expand the consensus.

When editors understand consensus process, editors who even strongly disagree can work it out, given that the debate, once it is RS, is over framing and attribution, not over inclusion.

What happened at Cold fusion is that sources which by any reasonable standard were RS (independent publisher is the basic requirement, and in many cases, the publisher was actually highly reputable) would be excluded because the views expressed were "fringe." That's circular.

If there is a reliable source that says that Cold fusion is "pseudoscience," we don't decide that it is or that it is not, we include the opinion if there is no notable dispute, as a fact. If there is dispute, we include it as a position, generally with attribution.

It is far simpler than some think, because the matter is clouded by some entrenched Majority POV-pushers who do not agree with the inclusiveness of the RS guidelines. They want to including only material from sources they consider strong, but that turns, indeed, every disputed subject into a battleground over what "strong" means.

Act I, Scene V,

An American suburban home in Springfield, Massachusetts.
It is early afternoon. Dennis is nibbling a Hershey bar on a stool in the corner
Enter Joyce Grenfell

Oh dear, Dennis, are you upset again?

No I didn't say have you spilt your tea, I said, ARE YOU UPSET AGAIN?

Have you been tinkering around with that boxy thing in the corner - next to your zimmer frame?

You know nursey told you not to touch it.

Have you been typing those horrible naughty things on it that we talked about yesterday?

We'll have to to put you back down in the basement like last time.

Well yes, we know, Adolf and Genghis are down there, but you'll just have to make do.

Sorry, but I have looked at various WP pages and WR threads on this, so blaming me for "the Wikipedia problem" doesn't wash. In fact, I'm sick of reading about Connelley going around slapping people for pressing something he considers "unscientific". It's been going on for years.

Yes, I agree, they are pigheaded and unreasonable. But then, your long, long rants aren't helping. If you can't secure a compromise from Connelley and friends, ask someone who outranks them for help. You might (okay, will) have to modify some of what you want from cold-fusion articles.

Go back and do some research on Connelley's history of abuse. Try here, here, here.
Work with other people who have had disputes with Connelley. Plenty of them fought with him over global warming. He's a total bastard, has enemies all over the world, and you cannot reason with him. Do you have a solid idea of who you're fighting with?

Learn to be a proper victim, it garners more sympathy.

Mmmm... I don't have figures on the heat output off the top of my head, and I don't do research into sources for Wikipedia Review, but I do know that there are sufficient reports showing energy output greater than known chemical processes can explain. According to the chemists who are experts in measuring heat. The Arata experiments are not intended as commercial applications and what they show doesn't show commercial application. From the heat of formation of palladium deuteride, and the heat profile, assuming the initial heat is from p-d formation, one could estimate the conductivity of the capsule to the environment. The photographs show the capsule insulated with styrofoam, but the heat of formation and the capsule construction (double layer, three temperatures are recorded: inner chamber, isolating chamber, and ambient; basically the two temperature differentials are about equal, 2 degrees C each).

Your theory as to what the physicist would do assumes that he gives a fuck about other's opinions. You don't know this guy. He's the grand old man of Japanese physics, about 86 years old. Everything he does is being published under peer review in Japan. Yoshiaka Arata, small Wikipedia article on him.

The work described is recent, something like 2008. I wouldn't necessarily put this in a Wikipedia article, but, there are other gas-loading reports. One of the problems with cold fusion research is that there is little exact replication. Most researchers are trying to figure out how to get reliable heat output, or some new and conclusive finding, there is no money and no glory in doing what someone else did. To change that would require substantial academic funding, which was almost completely cut off by 1990. The U.S. Navy continued working quietly on cold fusion, publishing papers under peer review, with very little funding, the researchers worked on their own time, but they did get departmental support, and it appears that funding through the Navy is being ramped up, probably because of some of the recent relatively spectacular findings.

What's much more interesting to me is correlation between excess heat and helium. There is plenty of confirmation that measurement of helium is correlated with excess heat at what Storms (2007) reports as 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4. That's a magic number, Milton, as I'm sure you might recognize. It's what you get if deuterium is converted to helium, mechanism unknown (23.8 MeV, actually).



No, it's not crazy, it's simply pure speculation posing as sensible analysis, and is possibly a little higher quality than the usual I see on physics blogs. I have no idea what it costs him to produce that 7 grams of nanoparticle palladium. But I do know someone who knows Arata, and basically the guy just does his work and publishes it, and when I said he doesn't give a fuck what others think, that wasn't just speculation. Lots of people in the cold fusion community would like more details, for sure. Remember, this is recent work. What he does is to send the cylinders off for helium analysis when he's done. He hasn't published those results, AFAIK, but he's known for earlier helium results, using other CF techniques.



You imagine I have influence with Arata? In a few months, I have developed enough trust with the people in the field that I can ask questions and get answers from experts, but .... Arata is in a category of his own.

You have the right to call anything bullshit, but ... that means nothing on Wikipedia, if we were following the sourcing guidelines. Perhaps you should watch the recent CBS Sixty Minutes documentary, if you haven't, and check out the seminar Robert Duncan ran at the U. Michigan, I think it was April or so.

The documentary featured the work of Energetics Technologies in Israel, where Duncan, a skeptic, was sent to study what was being done. Duncan turned around. The American Chemical Society published a peer-reviewed Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook in 2008, and in it is Michael McKubre's paper on an exact replication of some ET work. Apparently it works. Reliable source, Milton.

Sure, bullshit. Peer-reviewed, independently published, carefully researched and written, bullshit. Published by the well-known fringe lunatic publishers, the American Chemical Society and Oxford University Press. At this point, I'd say, we start looking how to use this bullshit.

If we look at the overall body of research, it's starting to look like the skeptical position is becoming fringe, with the weird situation that the "fringe opinion" is quite possibly the opinion of the "majority of scientists." Not the majority opinion of the peer reviewers, nor of experts who have actually gone over the research in detail, instead of just sitting back and

bullshitting.

I'm telling you what I know, not what I'd put in an article, what I know is, as usual, when I've spent some time with a field, ahead of what is in RS. This is the case with many subjects, sometimes it takes the peer-reviewed publications years to catch up with what is common knowledge in on-line discussion among experts. And that's the breaks. Wikipedia as it is depends on reliable sources for notability decisions; the basic non-negotiable policy, WP:V, is actually much more easily satisfied, but not notability.

Wow, you recalled that incident with grace and charm. I am impressed. You're a good guy, Abd.

Quite an imagination, the imagination of an asshole, with his vision only able to see his own interior, and make guesses about what's outside. Bad guesses.

My legal name is Dennis. Nobody knows me by that name except the state and the police.
Springfield? Nah, that's just the data center. Suburban home? Definitely not. Hershey bar? Absolutely not. With the prostate cancer, no carbs for me, VLC diet, great stuff. You could call it a vegetarian diet, because I only eat vegetarians. With coffee and heavy cream. Upset? Well, with over twenty years of on-line flame war experience, and with successful meditation on WP:DGAF, it takes quite a bit to get me upset. I get angry, different thing. I get angry when I see good-faith editors being abused by people like Mathsci and his enablers and the rest of the cabal. But it's still just a fucking wiki. I do what I do because it's there. And if it isn't there, I'll do something else.

Adolf and Genghis, eh? Is Mathsci trying to imply that I'm a ... bad person? Shocked, I'm shocked.

If he only knew how visible he is.

I've used my real name on my user page because what you see is what you get. I don't hide. Mathsci, care to let us know more about your real self?

Let's see what I know already, let me put on my psychic hat, the one with the propeller.

Hmmm..... I can see an academic who may know his field in a narrow sort of way, but whose knowledge of life is shallow, and who is disliked by most of those who have to work closely with him, in person; some of them pretend to like him because they want something from him. He believes that he is a person of high culture, and he certainly has the trappings of it, but he does not have the fundamental humility that is necessary to approach true depth, either in culture or in science. He's contemptuous of others and full of praise for himself and his accomplishments, which he will tell you at the slightest excuse. He has no concept of how to communicate with ordinary people, he writes for himself and a small circle, and he will be soon forgotten, and nobody will miss him.

And if not for the grace of God, dear readers, there go you and I.

Obviously not sick enough to do something about it, though the links you provided could be useful, I'm still weighing how much to go on the offensive with. See, problem. If it's just me, it's not likely to succeed. By raising the cabal issue, I bit off quite a lot, but it's done, I can't stuff the cat back in the bag. You know it's true, many others know it too, but only only a few have had the courage to confront the lies. But many will complain about it here. Did I whine here about how WMC was abusing me?



I am asking "someone who outranks them for help." Or, more accurately, I've opened the door so that the community can, if it chooses, deal with the problem. If it doesn't, well, it's not time for it.

Every so often, I drop a seed crystal in the pond, to see if the concentration of connectivity has become high enough for intelligence to crystalize. Pouring yoghurt in the lake is the Nasrudin story.

Thanks for the links. I was aware of the media coverage of WMC, I needed to research much of this more than a year ago for RfC/GoRight.



Sympathy is nice, but it's not what I'm seeking. Don't cry for me, I'm not a victim, I am fully blessed in my life, I could die tomorrow and that would be the sum of it.

I win, regardless of the outcome, and I lose only if I violate my own guidance and forget my position as a servant.

^abdun min ^ibaadur-Rahmaan.

one servant among the servants of the merciful.

Somey knows my identity already but I trust him not to disclose private emails here (I had to disclose my identity to register because the address mathsci@free.fr was disallowed).

Now in response to your question.

My favourite colour is blue.

My operating system is kubuntu.

Timmy the cat used to sleep on my bed when I was little.

Yesterday I ate a salade italienne and two boules of sorbet - citron and fruit de la passion - for lunch, washed down by a carafe of excellent Aix water and a café glacé. After a performance of suites 1, 3 and 5 for solo violoncello by Heinrich Schiff in the Jeu de Paumes (constructed 1660) I had a small plate of cheese with a glass of red wine. In the afternoon I played movements from the Handel organ concertos Op.4 HWV 289, 292 and 294 with a friend. She also accompanied me on the digital harpsichord in two Bach sonatas for flute in the version for alto recorder. Afterwards on my terrasse we each had a little tartelette aux framboises, a confection made in Celony on the outskirts of Aix, washed down with a glass of orange juice.

Update: write email to Victoria and Albert Museum checking on uploading a second image of Roubiliac sculpture of Handel showing his left arm resting on a leather bound copy of Alexander's Feast.

I'll stop here

Reading this thread in its enterity ranges among the stupidiest wastes of time that I have had in my life. Now I'm gonna write some evidence for the case.

P.D.: Well, I need to clarify that:

* I have nothing against the people posting here
* I have a problem with WR becoming a place to export petty disputes so you can insult each other, instead of being a meaningful insightful review of wikipedia
* Somey tried to inject some sense, but it got diluted quickly

I think we have a candidate for the third member of the Mathsci team ...

What team?

The Bourbaki Mathsci team. We're trying to improve it by replacing all parts. We asked Alain Connes who we figured could handle the French and math part (non-commutating differential geometry ), but he was busy on a theory of everything. Egyptology and cold fusion skepticism should be easier to find people for.

Did you once know there was once a WP user:Aconnes who appeared just long enough to upload the Alain Connes photo on his bio, then was made to disappear (apparently oversighted)? Shocking. That photo has no attribution. The photographer Jérôme Chatin never released it to Commons formally. We don't know who uploaded it. But we can take guesses.

Probably it's headed for deletion. More interesting is what happened to user:Aconnes who exercised his right to disappear. Apparently. At some time....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alain_Connes_in_2004.jpg

Here's your chance if you know the man. Put up a snapshot. Now, back to your Aix water.

I clarified my message above. I was a bit angry when I wrote that.

Don't knock it until you've tried it.

Yes. Wikipedia itself perhaps needs an uncivil maladiction page. Where you can say to some pestiferous and pretentious functionary:

You know, you might PRETEND you're a feared and respected tenured professor of canon law at a university, but your behavior suggests that in real life you're more of a nervous lagomorphic little cecotrope-eating hindgut-fementer who needs to go back to the bottom of the social food-chain where you actually came from...

Some things just need to be pointed out. Saves on red-faces later, when the emperor is found to have no clothes in a much larger auditorium. Run, rabbit, run.

KDE is for Euro-trash.


I'll drink to that. Tommy Gavin will drink to that, also.

To be honest, the hilarity value is certainly on the wane, but it looks to me as if Hersfold is getting a little involved for a supposedly neutral clerk.

So, back to reviewing wikipedia. Is there really an anti Cold Fusion cabal in wikipedia that purposefully wants to paint CF in a bad light? Or is it all in Abd's mind? And what the arbs will do about this one?