User talk:Anastrophe/Archive 2005

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Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) will produce your name and the current date. You should always sign talk pages, but not articles. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 20:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Changing username

Hi - Some time ago, you left a request on Wikipedia:Changing username. This facility is now up and running again. Are you still interested in changing your name? If so, please confirm at Wikipedia:Changing username. thanks, Warofdreams talk 13:34, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous editing

Hi Anastrophe. I just want to say I agree with what you stand on anonymous editors: allowing users to simply identify themselves by their (dynamic) IP address is more trouble than it's worth. Cheers, --A bit iffy 13:10, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Me too; and I've done something about it, putting the case on the Village Pump [(here)]. I've been bleating about this now for a while in my edit summaries, endlessly reverting the graffiti; this may be a bit more effective. I encourage you to support the move on Village Pump. Best, Bill 13:32, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I also agree with you about not permitting anonymous editors to create and edit. I had thus far edited and wrote on less publicized articles that weren't vandalized. I'd frequently read of edit wars against vandals but didn't realize the severity of this problem until my participation on the Rosa Parks article. I contributed substantially to the article and would find that the page would consistently be vandalized with hate messages or pranks. It no longer became "fun" to write for the article as it started to become a chore to have to combat these pranksters and malicious anonymous "editors". I also wrote in the Village Pump that registration only takes a few seconds but it shows commitment. While it can't deter everyone, it helps deter a lot of the quick pranksters. Wikipedia could have a system where you register with a userid and valid email. The system emails you to confirm that it is a real email address. That way, there's at least something to refer back to when there's vandalism. I do hope that Wikipedia changes its "easy" edit policies. I am all for democracy and ease of edit, etc. but I think that history has shown that while the concept is great in a Utopian society, it can't work in real life because there are just too many people with itchy hands or evil thoughts who wish to mess things up. It also unfairly leans an article very heavily on the shoulders of several people who have to become the article's manager(s)/keeper(s) for good. Not a good way to scale or expand at all. My two cents --speedoflight | talk to me 20:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

well said, both of you. as it stands, WP is barely a step above anarchy...Anastrophe 20:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I really hope that you do stay, if only to repeat the messages that you have expressed on your user page and here. I'm still ambivalent about the long term prospects of wikipedia, but I'm staying here for a while in the hope that it does succeed. Mostlyharmless 00:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

thanks for your note of support. i'm still deeply ambivalent about WP as well, but i'm still here too. i love knowledge, words, and the accurate use of the latter to increase the former. so i continue editing articles here and there, correcting typos, rewording things, and in rare cases contributing some actual knowledge or clarification to articles. it's fun, even with all the downsides. Anastrophe 00:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps if you two stopped attacking extrapolations with prediction confidence intervals clearly shown, it wouldn't seem like there are so many downsides. —James S. 04:44, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

you're rapidly making yourself a wikicrank, Nrcprm2026. this portion of the discussion had nothing to do with you. but then, it's the nature of the paranoic to believe everyone's out to get him. Anastrophe 05:28, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikisona

It is felt that the article you created at Wikisona is not suitable for the (Main) namespace. I have moved it to User:Anastrophe/Archive 2005/Wikisona. We already have Wikipedia:Are You a Wikipediholic Test so your article might be accepted in the Wikipedia: namespace. -- RHaworth 12:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

whoops. sorry about that. still learning the finer subtleties of namespaces. thanks for moving it. Anastrophe 18:24, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Ad-Hominem and Krakatoa...

Hi Anastrophe.

Can you explain how my comment on Talk:Global warming can be interpreted as an Ad hominem (i.e. an attack at the man, not the argument)? Which argument? Which man? Thanks.

As for your Krakatoa remark: Unless I'm mistaken, Krakatoa had no long-term effect on the CO2 signal. It did have some short and medium term effect on the climate, of course, but that is not the same. I am not aware of any reasonable short- or medium term natural developments that would influence the CO2 signal in a significant way compared to the human signal. So I think your edit overstates the uncertainty. Note that the IPCC has made a number of projections based on different human emission scenarios.

--Stephan Schulz 13:02, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Survivor Spoiler Image

Hello. I saw that you removed an image from the Survivor article, citing that it was a spoiler image. I put an image of tribal council there for two reasons. First, that part of the article contains a lot of whitespace and looks blank. Second, that area of the article discusses tribal council. I thought since there is a spoiler image at the top of the article and since it was an episode that previously aired it would have been okay to post that image. I would still like to have an image there, or at least something to cover that white space. Could you let me know what you think would be a more suitable image? Possibly one from the very first tribal council of Guatemala? Thanks. Jtrost 00:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Poster Child???

I'm a little upset about your flippant critique and baseless defense over at Talk:Global_warming#Image:Cost-of-storms-by-decade.gif. I invite you to justify your opinions with logic instead of vitriol. Nrcprm2026 11:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

(above apparently posted by Nrcprm2026. attribution later corrected by Nrcprm2026.) Anastrophe 19:55, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Extrapolation is informed speculation, not fiction. The data points are historical, the extrapolation explains more than 98% of their variation, and has only an 18% chance of doing so by chance. Would you have any problems if the graph had 95% confidence interval bands, above and below the extrapolation? Nrcprm2026 20:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC) (copied here from my talk page)

I see you have removed the graph I am working on from several pages because you say it is "unreliable" -- how can an extrapolation with the prediction confidence interval displayed not be "reliable?" James P. S. 20:12, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

easy. compare to the first two revisions of the same graph. in fact, why not create a graph showing the confidence interval of these three models against each other. then tell me your graph is reliable. i am in the process of posting a 'critique' of these graphs on my user page.Anastrophe 20:19, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Again, I remind you that both graphs fall well within each other's 95% prediction confidence interval bands. I look forward to your critique. I suggest that if you think you can do better, that you make your own graph, so that objective third parties can compare the two and decide which has more merit. James P. S. 20:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

a graph by me adds nothing. your own three graphs show very well that there is no reliability to your modeling. Anastrophe 20:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Since you have shown at Talk:Global_warming#Inflation_adjustment that you lack a basic understanding of real versus actual cost to adjust for inflation, I am not suprised that you are unwilling to propose an alternative graph. But don't you think it would only be fair for me to critique your attempt? Goose, gander. James P. S. 20:36, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

you're welcome to do whatever you want on your own user page. knock yourself out. i acknowledged my error. thus far, you have refused to explain why a discrepancy of more than 3 trillion dollars does NOT suggest you are doing something wrong. i look forward to revision four of your graph, showing that costs will be 580 billion in 2025. then revision five, showing 460 billion in 2025. then how about revision six, showing 2 trillion in 2025. this is an encyclopedia, not a place to engage your phantasies.Anastrophe 20:40, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I have repeatedly explained that the difference between the second and third revisions fall well within each other's 95% prediction confidence intervals. Do you know what a 95% prediction confidence interval is? Your sarcasm is impolite and uncalled-for, and nominally against the rules here. I believe the only way for us to resolve this issue is for you to create your own alternative graph. Why don't you download the free, 30-day evaluation of [TableCurve http://www.systat.com/products/TableCurve2D/] which I used, and give it a try with the data set on my userpage? James P. S. 20:46, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

the "data set" on your page is a fundamental part of the problem. it is NOT a dataset. it is an estimation by examination of the values on an extant graph, and does not reference the *actual source data* used to generate that graph. furthermore, the dataset ends in 1998 - it is nearly eight years out of date, and incomplete. you are "predicting" values for which data already exists - it would be interesting to see how that eight year interval compares with your 'predictions' of already past history. but clearly, you are hell-bent to have this graph on wikipedia - what your motivation is i can only guess, but i would surmise you're a global warming hysteric, since you had no problem embracing 4 trillion as the cost in a previous graph. i could be wrong; it's just my opnion. wikipedia, however, suffers further as a reference source with the inclusion of this meaningless graph. i'm done. have fun. Anastrophe 20:55, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Back when I took statistics, there was nothing wrong with digitizing data from a graph. I agree that it would be great to have the 1999-2005 data, and I want to encourage you to try to find it. I do believe that wind power is a very important but neglected alternative to fossil fuels. I believe that makes me a realist, not a "hysteric." In any case, thank you for the helpful comments early on. James P. S. 21:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

i have not made, nor do i make, any claims of being a statistician, (or economist for that matter!). the onus is upon you to find the raw source data; you are the person who is making these extrapolations from an incomplete dataset. i believe also that wind energy is neglected, but i don't think it's as important as advances in solar power, which will eventually prove to be the only (and best, by far) alternative to fossil fuels, in my opinion. though it may seem like it, i have no personal ill-will towards you - i don't know you from Adam - but i do think that these speculations about future costs - which have vacillated wildly - are not helpful. stick to graphing the already-incurred costs. that should be more than cautionary enough. it is troubling to me that the IPCC's raw data is so difficult to find. Anastrophe 21:34, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Let me drop in my 3.141592652589793238462643383279502884197... cents: the second graph, from what I read, differs only that it is more precise - it uses more data points, and thus the expectation is, by information theory, expected to be a more accurate (and thus therefore different, yes) prediction than the first graph. The third graph has a different vertical axis, and is thus altogether unrelated to the first two, pending a transformation function between the two spaces, and lacking or not lacking such a function (unless the function is f(x)=x), the graphs are expected by mere common sense to be completely different.

So if your intent here was to show statistics lying, you failed. People can decieve by using less accurate statistics or simply using the wrong measures on one axis. But that is no fault of statistics, that's incompetence or maliciousness on the part of the person exploiting people's ignorance, rather than contributing to their education. Kevin baas 18:40, 26 December 2005 (UTC)