User talk:Gandalf61/Archive8

It feels like you're wikihoundinng me

(ScienceApologist originally titled this thread "Your're wikistalking me". He changed to title to "It feels like you're wikihoundinng me" in this diff on January 5, following intervention by Durova - see below. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2009 (UTC))

Stop it. I can see it in your contributions. Stop doing it and we won't need to escalate this further. ScienceApologist (talk) 11:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

That is a very serious accusation, which I completely deny. Let me see what I have done recently that could have led you to make this accusation:

• I have posted my !vote on, I think, 3 AfDs that you have initiated in the last few days, and in some cases I have also tried to improve the nominated article. However, I regularly contribute to AfD dicussions, you have raised a lot of AfDs recently, and in the same period I have contributed to several AfDs that you did not initiate.
• I contributed (just once I think) to the discussions at Talk:Eric Lerner, which I reviewed after I saw your post at WP:FTN, which is on my watchlist.
• We also contributed to the same recent discussion at Talk:Timeline of the Big Bang - but in that discussion, my first post preceded your post by 8 days, and my second post was a response to BenRG, not to you.

I am certain that my editing is not "wikistalking". I am quite sure that the majority of my contributions in the last few days have been to pages which you have not edited.

You seem to be telling me that I should not contribute to an AfD discussion that you have initiated or edit a page that you have edited. I regard that as an attempt at bullying and intimidation. I invite you to consider retracting your accusation. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:39, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not telling you not to contribute. I'm telling you to not contribute for the wrong reasons. Some of your comments at those AfDs are needlessly personal and considering those are the only AfDs you commented on, and there was, at the time, a high proportion of pages in your contributions where you arrived at and began making comments about me. I am just letting you know how it looks from my end. If you continue editing in the mamner in which you have for the last 24 hours, we can bury this whole discussion. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:17, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

So I take it you are not retracting your groundless accusation of wikistalking. Instead, by referring to WP:NPA, you have added a further accusation of making personal attacks. I have reviewed my contributions to the three AfDs that you initiated, and I have copied them out below for reference:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brad Steiger "Keep prolific author and columnist; Amazon carries a large number of his books; balanced article; no reason to delete. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)"
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Displacement (psiology, parapsychology, psychical science) "Keep Article describes specific usage of term within parapsychology literature. The usage is demonstrated by a range of references, so is clearly not a neologism. Other arguments for deletion reduce to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. This terminology may be specific to one community, but that does not make it unencylopedic. The phenomenon that it describes may be a statistical artefact, but that does not make it unencyclopedic either. It could bear some re-writing for greater clarity, but that is not grounds for deletion. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:51, 2 January 2009 (UTC)"
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dino Kraspedon "Keep Neutral article; enough third party sources to establish notability. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:21, 2 January 2009 (UTC)"

No personal attacks there. No personal comments about you at all. In each case I simply stated my reasons for disagreeing with your nomination for deletion.

You need to learn that you cannot make such unfounded accusations without consequences. I am going to consult your mentor Durova about this issue. What I want to see from you now is a retraction of both baseless accusations and an apology. Do that, and this matter will be closed as far as I am concerned.Gandalf61 (talk) 17:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Gandalf61, you may want to know of, and possibly contribute to, the case submitted to the Arbitration Committee concerning ScienceApologist's behavior. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am already aware of the "Fringe science" RfA. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for being patient with my schedule. I've talked to ScienceApologist and he's toned down the header somewhat. From the looks of things the situation is pretty polarized here and that may not be enough to satisfy you. In chat tonight he and I realized we have a philosophical difference about civility. (SA, if I've gotten this off target and it needs clarification, please correct me.) He believes that civility is about perception, and that the I of WP:IDONTLIKEIT was unduly personal. In general, I don't agree perception is a tenable metric for gauging civility onsite because that's highly gameable: I've seen other situations where editors appear to game it (any permutation of 'no' becomes incivility in some people's eyes) or misremember (stubbornly accusing Editor A of incivility for a post that was actually made by Editor B). In this specific instance I think the WP:IDONTLIKEIT comment was couched in nonspecific terms and could refer to any adherent of the opposing view. Afterward we had a discussion about whether that characterization was accurate.

SA tells me it's his belief that when interacting with people, the civil thing to do is to let them know how you feel. He expressed uncertainty about what you consider uncivil about his post. In the immortal words of Mae West, It's not what you do, but how you do it. In tense editor interactions where good faith is in short supply and tempers run high, I've often found it helps the people I mentor to be someone they can come to when they need to blow off steam, and perhaps review a draft post and suggest a few changes to reduce the chances of it going across the wrong way. That didn't happen while this was brewing, so we agreed we're going to try that. I hope in a small way that makes this situation a bit closer to satisfactory; Rome wasn't built in a day. Best wishes all around, Durova^Charge! 06:46, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Durova - first of all, thank you for your help and for your explanation of SA's position. I will give SA some credit for making a small step in the right direction by changing the heading of this thread, but unfortunately that is now too little and too late to make amends for his incivility. Let me take some time to respond to your points one by one:

1. You say SA is not clear about what was uncivil in his original post. Well, he now knows that I am deeply offended by such unfounded accusations. If he lacks the insight to understand why that should be, then I cannot help him - but I trust he now understands that he should not make such groundless accusations in future.
2. You say that SA thinks it is not uncivil to let other editors know how he feels. He is correct, and if he had worded his original post in that way (for example "I feel you may be wikistalking me. Can you explain your recent posts to AfDs that I have initiated ?") then I would not have taken offence. But he did not talk about how he felt - he outright accused me of wikistalking, and refused to correct or retract that accusation when politely asked to do so. He has now left it much too late to credibly backtrack and claim that he meant to say something different.
3. You say that SA thinks that my reference to WP:IDONTLIKEIT was "unduly personal" (a view which I note you do not share). However, once again, if he had said that was how he felt, then I would have considered re-phrasing that particular post. But he didn't - he said "Some of your comments at those AfDs are needlessly personal" (note "some", not "one"), with a link to WP:NPA. Once again, it is now too late for him to credibly claim that "needlessly personal" with this link was not intended to accuse me of making personal attacks on him.
4. I note that you do not say that SA shows any signs of regret for the distress that his spurious accusations have caused me, or has any intentions of apologising to me. I am sure that if he had said anything along those lines, then you would have passed it on.

SA's response following your intervention is, obviously, less than adequate - which is not in any way a bad reflection on your mentoring, as you are not responsible for the actions or inactions of your mentee. I have been considering what further action I should take in this situation. I now see that another editor has referenced this thread in their evidence to the "Fringe science" RfA, so I think any further action or discussion on my part has become irrelevant and inappropriate. Unless SA wishes to offer a full and sincere apology (which might mitigate his offence somewhat) I have no interest in anything further that he says about this matter. By not retracting his groundless accusations when I first asked him to do so, SA has made his bed, and now he must lie on it.

I applaud your plans to help SA in his future interactions with other editors, and I hope for everyone's sakes that they meet with some success. Thank you once again for your help with this matter. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:31, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

A quick clarification: he did express that if he understood your objections he would make the appropriate amends. Regarding his manner of approaching you, your own suggested alternatives are quite close to what mine were. Best regards.

What does Topic outline of Big Science need?

Hi.

In its deletion discussion, you !voted to merge Topic outline of Big Science with Big Science (which has also been nominated for deletion, by the way).

I'm in the process of fixing the outline, but in order to address your concerns and bring the outline up to par, I need to know what your concerns are. Why do you feel the page should be removed from Wikipedia's outline of knowledge, and what needs to be done to it in order for it to stay there?

Would you mind returning to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Topic outline of Big Science and explaining your reasons? That would sure help.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 01:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Commented at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Topic outline of Big Science. Gandalf61 (talk) 07:53, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:RD/Math#Group of points on the unit sphere

I hope the tone in your last comment here does not mean I have offended you. I would not want to offend someone I hold in such high respect. Algebraist 02:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

No, not offended. It was a good catch. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

A positive linear functional is a linear functional on a real vector space which takes only positive values.

Do you have examples? Katzmik (talk) 13:45, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

No, I misread the definition. I see User:Algebraist has already fixed the example. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment on my talk page

Hi. Thanks for your comment on my talk page. I'm a bit puzzled by it, though, as I've said in each nomination that the purpose of the nomination is not to obtain community consensus on the overall issue (e.g. from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of chemical compounds with unusual names (3rd nomination) - "Note however that this deletion nomination seeks to establish community consensus for this article, not for others."). I guess perhaps you missed that? If you take a look at my replies to MGM on his/her talk page, you'll see that I do plan to establish community consensus on the overall issue via a centralised discussion in due course. That's separate from the individual nominations though, which are for the reasons stated in the nomination, not for that reason. Do get back in touch if that doesn't clarify things. All the best SP-KP (talk) 14:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes, I did see your disclaimer, but it seems to me that initiating three recent AfDs on such similar articles is in effect testing community consensus, whatever your rather confusing pre-amble says. I just think you are going about it the wrong way - you should have started the centralised discussion first, then followed it up with AfDs if and when there is a consensus that such lists are unencyclopedic. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Lists of unusual things - centralised discussion

Hi. Please could you take a look at: User:SP-KP/Centralised discussion on lists of unusual things and let me know if you think this is OK as an opening contribution to the centralised discussion. If you can suggest any improvements, please do. Once we're happy with, I'll move it to the appropriate place and notify other interested parties. Thanks SP-KP (talk) 18:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Fib coding

thank you for the fast response, got it--Billymac00 (talk) 14:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

A centralised discussion which may interest you

Hi. You may be interested in a centralised discussion on the subject of "lists of unusual things" to be found here. SP-KP (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Very curious:

I'm new to wicki contributions. You deleted an entry with the following apparent reasons:

00:05, 30 January 2009 Rjd0060 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Evolutionary vector" ‎ (Deleted because expired WP:PROD; Reason given: Incoherent original research - a random collection of occurences of a phrase without any connecting concept. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:28, 24 January 2009 (UTC).)

Without having the original verbage in front of me, I'm curious.

As a biologist and evolutionary theorist, I'm not sure why a simple and clear definition that explains the phenomenon of various rates of evolutionary "progress" would be classified by you as:

"Incoherent original research - a random collection of occurences of a phrase without any connecting concept."

Perhaps you are an math person without an understanding of the possible alternate uses of the term "vector"? As in, its ability to apply not only evolutionary "direction" to a possible set of mutations, but to provide a mathematical or graphic element to the speed by which such changes occur. This seems to be quite useful, descriptive and coherent.

Evolutionary geneticists, noteably Lenski et al, 2008; Nat. Academy of Science, specifically addresses the fact that some otherwise ignored mutations may suddenly be "facilitated" by a new particular mutation. In the past they may have meant nothing, but in the light of a new mutation, they are suddenly quite beneficial. Hence, the "velocity" of the totality of accumulated changes is altered; ergo, it's Evolutionary Vector is altered.

This "effect" has been clearly documented in research observations on bacteria, as well as in hypotheses that might the sudden appearance of new transitional organisms in the fossil record, at an apparently enhanced speed.

So, what gives? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thotful1 (talk • contribs) 19:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I proposed that the "Evolutionary vector" article should be deleted - you can read the proposed deletion policy to see how this works. Anyone who disagreed with the proposed deletion could have stopped it by removing the {{prod}} tag at the top of the page - there is always an interval of at least 5 days in which this can be done. In this case I proposed the deletion on 24th January, and the article was actually deleted by Rjd0060 on 30th January.

As best I can recall, my main reason for proposing deletion was that the article seemed to be attempting to assign a meaning to the term "evolutionary vector" that was not supported by any of the references provided. Note that Wikipedia articles should only be summarising information that is available in reliable secondary sources - Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research. The effect that you were describing may have been observed, but you also need to show that a reliable source has used the term "evolutionary vector" to describe this effect.

You can always recreate the article if you want to, but if you do, please make sure that you clearly describe the meaning of the term as used in your sources, not what you think the term should mean. As a new user, I suggest you read our guidelines for writing your first article, as well as our policies on notability and verifiability. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thotful1, are you referring to the article with the title "Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli"? That article does not use the phrase "evolutionary vector" as far as I can see. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

I make it a habit to scroll through RD/MA every once in a while, and I've seen you offer intelligent insight on multiple occasions. Hence, a barnstar. :) —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 11:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Gosh ! Thank you very much. I have moved the barnstar to my user page. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:55, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Link to OEIS in your response to "About Lagrange's Theorem"

I tried clicking on the link to A006431, but didn't get connected. Is there something wrong with the address?Partitioin (talk) 20:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Oops, yes - link should be this one. Gandalf61 (talk) 20:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

DRV

I have opened a DRV on the wrangler categories, on which you opined. Occuli (talk) 02:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I have now contributed to the DRV. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Aliquot sequences

I have an interest in aliquot sequences and I am currently pursuing one (130396). Good fun too! I happened to notice that your most recent edit to Aliquot sequence, where you updated the stats for open sequences, was followed by the termination of a sequence (62850) a few days later! What an unlucky time to update the stats! Also regarding that page, it recently had "maths suks" written on it. I reverted that one. 82.1.31.90 (talk) 11:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I feel wiki-hounded too.

In regards to your post that I noticed on Robotics lab's talk page:

I have reported your abusive posts at Talk:Classical Hamiltonian quaternions to Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts. Gandalf61 (talk) 22:40, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

---

Nobody really cares any more. No one in our community is ever going to work on the article classical hamiltonian quaternions ever again. We don't watch that article any more.

Our content dispute now is over the contents of the main article quaternions, thank you for teaching us that it is perfectly acceptable to change the focus of an article over and over again, we now agree with you that these activities do not constitute vandalism. Sorry for any confusion or hurt feelings this might have caused. Good luck with your project. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.76.28 (talk) 20:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Repeating decimal

Gandalf61, I left you some note to be discussed at Talk:Repeating_decimal. Thank you. --Ling Kah Jai (talk) 14:34, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Centrifugal Force

Gandalf61, you obviously know nothing about the topic. You are determined to be part of a majority, and you have completely ignored the reference to the third approach to centrifugal force which you deleted. David Tombe (talk) 16:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I am neither impressed nor intimidated by your rudeness. If I see any more comments like this which breach the civility policy I will report them to WP:WQA. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

It would have been much better to have come to the talk page and explained why you deleted and totally ignored the Shankar reference, [1]. You made your revert ostensibly on the grounds of clarity. But you know fine well that it was not about clarity. You have claimed that there are only two approaches to centrifugal force. A reference has been provided to show that there is at least a third approach. You cannot sweep such an edit and reference aside on the specious grounds of clarity. David Tombe (talk) 13:10, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I meant exactly what I said in my edit comment - the previous version of the lead was clearer. If you wanted me to explain my reasons in more detail, you could have asked politely, instead of rudely belittling me and accusing me of being part of some conspiracy. I have not ignored the reference you gave. I read it and found that it does not support your claim that an additional force appears when equations of motion are written in polar co-ordinates - it says, correctly, that certain new terms appear, but it does not call them forces. Please stop attributing hidden motives to my editing. Your accusations are contrary to WP:AGF and I will report them to WP:WQA if you persist. Gandalf61 (talk) 17:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Gandalf61, to suggest that when Shankar refers to 'centrifugal terms' that he is not necessarily referring to centrifugal force is not a very convincing argument. David Tombe (talk) 21:03, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

It convinces me; if the author had meant forces they would have described the terms as forces. I don't think you will find a reliable source that calls these terms forces, because they clearly do not behave like forces. How can additional forces appear just because we change to another co-ordinate system within the same frame of reference ? How can forces depend on where you place the origin of your co-ordinates ? I think you are confusing a co-ordinate system with an observational frame of reference. A physically meaningful concept such as length, mass or force must be independent of the co-ordinate system used. It may, however, be affected if we change to a different observational frame of reference. In particular, additional forces (called "fictitious forces" or "inertial forces") will appear if look at the equations of motion in a non-inertial frame of reference. But there is no dependence on the co-ordinate system - if you use a Cartesian co-ordinate system in a rotating frame of reference, you will still find centrifugal and Coriolis forces. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Gandalf61, if it is not a force, then what is it? Furthermore, you, like all the others, are confusing these inertial forces with the apparent deflections that are observed when a non-co-rotating object is observed from a rotating frame of reference. They are not the same thing. A rotating frame of reference merely superimposes an apparent circular motion on top of the already existing inertial path. The inertial path itself contains the inertial forces. Just because you can't comprehend the physical nature of these inertial forces doesn't mean that you are in a position to simply declare them not to be forces. Of course they are forces, and you simply don't understand the underlying cause of these forces. David Tombe (talk) 10:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The centrifugal and Coriolis terms are not forces (not even fictitious forces); they are simply mathematical terms that occur in the expression for the acceleration vector (the second derivative of the displacement vector wrt time) in polar co-ordinates. In a spherical coordinate system the expression for the acceleration vector is

$\mathbf {a} =\left({\ddot {r}}-r\,{\dot {\theta }}^{2}-r\,{\dot {\varphi }}^{2}\sin ^{2}\theta \right)\mathbf {e} _{r}$

$+\left(r\,{\ddot {\theta }}+2{\dot {r}}\,{\dot {\theta }}-r\,{\dot {\varphi }}^{2}\sin \theta \cos \theta \right)\mathbf {e} _{\theta }$

$+\left(r{\ddot {\varphi }}\,\sin \theta +2{\dot {r}}\,{\dot {\varphi }}\,\sin \theta +2r\,{\dot {\theta }}\,{\dot {\varphi }}\,\cos \theta \right)\mathbf {e} _{\varphi }$

but that does not mean that another set of forces appears in spherical co-ordinates. If these terms represent forces then equivalent terms would be present in all co-ordinate systems and they would be independent of the origin of the co-ordinates. In your posts at Talk:Centrifugal force you use the phrase "centrifugal force relative to the chosen point of origin"- but a force cannot depend on the choice of origin. You seem to think that centrifugal and Coriolis forces mysteriously appear when equations of motion are expressed in polar co-ordinates, regardless of the observer's frame of reference. The exact opposite is true - they appear when the motion of a particle is described relative to a rotating frame of reference, regardless of the co-ordinate system that is used. I know several other people have tried to explain all this to you, but you still seem to be convinced that you are right and everyone else is wrong. I doubt that I can say anything that you have not heard before, so I see no point in continuing this discussion. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:15, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Please do not participate in any further edit wars on Centrifugal force. Reverting another editor's contributions should be reserved for clear violations of policy, and the specific policy should be cited in the edit summary. It is often a good idea (and given this page's history of edit warring, always a good idea on this article) to discuss the revert on the talk page. I have urged all this article's editors to discuss BEFORE reverting, and again I implore you to adhere to this practice, in order to prevent further edit warring. Edit warring is not helpful to Wikipedia in any way. I have asked nicely on the article's talk page, now I am asking on specific editors' talk pages. Thank you. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 14:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I have made just two edits to Centrifugal force in the last week; one on May 26 and one on May 30. I do not consider either of those edits to be edit warring. I am not aware of any Wikipedia policy or guideline that says "Reverting another editor's contributions should be reserved for clear violations of policy, and the specific policy should be cited in the edit summary". As I said to David above, I am always ready to discuss my edits if asked politely - however, I do not respond well to rudeness and intimidation. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

And I have talked to David about rudeness. I was not quoting policy above, nor did I intend to leave the impression that I was. I have been working for some time to quiet the edit warring and get these editors working together, and for a while it was improving. I realize that you only reverted once a few days ago, but the cumulative effect of a list of editors reverting each other in the same circular pattern is an edit war. No one violated 3RR because everyone reverted once or twice, but the article is suffering all the same. I haven't singled you out, either. I also talked to Dicklyon, FyzixFighter and David Tombe, as well as the anon editor who just jumped on the bandwagon. The bottom line is that the edit warring does not help the article, and each of us must choose to be a part of the solution or become a part of the problem. I have maintained neutrality throughout the recent months, and like I have told David, there is no place for rudeness or personal attacks on WP's talk pages. In fact, since I have stepped in, the personal attacks have sharply declined, but the revert warring is starting back up, and I just don't see any justification for allowing this page to go down that path again. I invite you to make contributions to the page, every day if you like, but I ask everyone to please refrain from reverting each other's edits lest the edit warring continue ad infinitum. Thank you. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Gandalf61, OK. I can see now that you are genuinely interested in this topic. We have obviously started off on the wrong footing with each other because I had assumed, perhaps wrongly, that you had merely entered the arena as part of a numbers game. So let's move forward now. Without the hostility, I'm sure we can get a better understanding of each others perspectives.

Polar coordinates are actually a fascinating subject. It would be good if we could work through this topic in a mature manner. Over the weekend, editor Brews ohare laid out his views on the meanings of all the terms. He asked for my opinion on his views. I stupidly made a premature and wrong judgement on the interpretaion of the equation which equates the second time derivative of the position vector to zero. Editor Woodstone pointed out my error. This error however had no bearing on my overall view of the topic in general, but it has caused me to realize that there are alot of things about that equation which need to be carefully analyzed. There are actually four terms in the expansion, yet only three recognized inertial forces. I am waiting for Brews to get back to me again.

I want Brews to start again and go over his interpretation of the terms. You are welcome to join the discussion. I think that alot can be learned from scrutinzing all four terms in the expansion. David Tombe (talk) 19:09, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

self-referential function

Hi!, I did not only you remove the prod tag, but I added a very consistent reference where the answers to you four real and justifiable concerns ( present in the article) are available; is that OK? Thank you for the message Rirunmot (talk) 16:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)