User talk:Stephan Schulz/Archive 1

Creation Science

You did right on the "Flood Geology" page. While there are some intelligent, articulate "Creation Scientists", most of them are of the "Dr Dino" school of junk science and how everything in the Bible is literal (which would mean, I suppose, that Jesus of Nazareth thought that Herod Antipas was canid since he referred to him as "that fox"). Lots of things which is true "are said" don't belong in an article. Some Purdue students have been known to refer to Notre Dame students as "fish eaters", "bead stringers", and the "Pope's Pupils", but that certainly doesn't belong in an article about either school in an encyclopedia.

Thanks for attempting to bring a viewpoint from the mainstream scientific commuity to the "Flood Geology" page. For Wikipeida to remain credible, it has to reflect mainsteam scientific values. While I have no problem with people who have their "alternative theories," I do have problems with people who see their minority viewpoint as one that must gain instant credibility or be totally accepted by others, or even resent it ever being characterised as a minority, non-mainsteam viewpoint even though that is what it is. Rlquall 18:40, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I can, in fact, tolerate vast variety of beliefs. What I cannot stand are intellectual dishonesty and sheer stupidity. --Stephan Schulz 19:23, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for fighting to keep the scientific opinions on flood geology fairly represented. I never have the patience for that kind of thing. --Laura Scudder | Talk 21:45, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

flood geology.

i understand, but i don't understand what relevence deep time has for the flood. the days of creation may have been millenia ... but the flood was still the flood. also, regarding the above, may i suggest that it is far more persuasive to provide evidence than to perpetually insult and malign? Ungtss 22:03, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maori language

I take your point. However, it is counter-intutive to sail a canoe, even if it is technically correct. Arrived doesn't change the sense. I'm reverting again. Smoddy (t) (e) 16:45, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC) (see also User talk:Ping

Hi Smoddy, no problem. I actually was triggered more by your comment than by the actual edit. Canoes do sail. Canoe sailing used to be an olympic discipline (I think it still is). Polynesian sailing canoes helped spread humans over 1/3rd of the world (by surface area, if not by dry land). Yes, the well-known American Indian canoes were paddled. But you can even buy sailing rigs as an add-on for many of the modern fiberglass/aluminium imitations...--Stephan Schulz 17:00, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Poinmt well taken. Just seemed counter-intuitive. I understand now (that's my something learned for today!) Smoddy (t) (e) 19:14, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Voting Warschau/Warsaw

Hi. Since you have edited on pages with disputes about the names of German/polish locations, I would invite you to vote on Warsaw/Vote to settle the multi-year dozends-of-pages dispute about the naming of Warschau/Warsaw and other locations.--Schlesier 08:47, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

png format

Can you convert the Germany map to this format? I don't believe that I have the facility to do so. Others have raised objections to the .gif format. I only use it because it is a bit crisper than .jpg. Kelisi 18:19, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. See .

Both PNG and GIF are lossless formats, and nearly any graphics program will support both (typically you choose "Export" and then the format). PNG has been developed as a response to the Unisys patent on some parts of GIF (now expired) and has a number of advantages. JPEG is lossy, and not very good for hand-drawn and similar pictures - it is optimized for photographic images. --Stephan Schulz 10:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Global warming

"Do not archive ongoing discussion." - I'd hoped that anybody objecting to any specific section being archived would just move it back individually from the new archive (Talk:Global warming/Archive 3). If you disagree with the Talk:Global warming/General discussion subpage, please say so. A total revert of a quite time-consuming bit of tidying up, with the intention of focussing on the actual purpose of a Talk page (improving the article) is rather disappointing. Rd232 22:06, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Humm, I just noticed that you also removed all the active sections (and indeed, nearly everything). Talk:Global warming/General discussion now looks fine (was I supposed to find it? Your link here was the first I found), but the version I reverted was very different and very nearly empty. I think it's better to archive stale parts than to archive (nearly) everything and then ractivate parts - that breaks versioning. But maybe the system went berzerk? --Stephan Schulz 22:16, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what you saw, but the revised Talk:Global warming had the General discussion link at the top of the page, above the TOC, and the archive was added in the Archive section. I s'pose I should have made a new section "Hey I've moved stuff". As for versioning of active discussion - we don't need strict versioning of talk pages as we do of articles - as long as the content is all there and access to it is clear, that's enough. I would have thought moving any discussions considered active from the Archive to the main Talk or to General discussion would fix this perfectly well, and people involved are perfectly capable of doing this. I'm quite annoyed at losing my tidying up work, so please help fix it. Gruesse, Rd232 06:54, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I was away/busy for a few days. I did not understand your idea of General Discussion - sorry. I took it for an alternative version of talk, not for an extra page. I think it's a very bad idea, moving the active parts to a new page. I don't want to do without versioning for talk pages. And the "general discussion" does indeed help improving the page. It helps build consensus and uncovers a lot of sources. So my approach to archiving would be to just take completely stale subsections and move them out, but not to do anything else. --Stephan Schulz 00:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but the dispute is over the word Small as derogatory to the opposing views, and thus is being labelled as POV. I believe that the removal of the word -small- will end the edit war by getting both points herd. Let the reader determine if the lsit is small or not, right?!?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eisenmond (talk • contribs).

Why is "small" derogatory? It is factual, though. "A number of scientists" gives the wrong impression of significant opposition. Even counting generously, the group is miniscule, and their scientific (as opposed to popular) output is negligible. --Stephan Schulz 21:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Automated theorem proving page

Wow, you've really improved that page recently. It is starting to look more like an encyclopeda entry, and less like a few random facts. Nahaj 23:13:10, 2005-09-08 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm mostly sticking to incremental changes, as I don't have the time to really make it into what it could be.--Stephan Schulz 12:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I caught your comments about the recent edits to the page. I thought I'd come here and add some somewhat off topic comments. The phantom anonymous editor would lead you to believe that the only exhastive search of the proof space is breadth-first search. (A "fact" he needed for the argument he made in his second edit.) There are (very limited) areas of research when an attempt at an exhastive search over a (know small) section of the proof tree is an aid. Even in those cases, breadth first search is *STILL* not anybody's method of choice. My stuff for D-complete systems, for example, uses the rather simple minded "shortest first except for special patterns" algorithm, and can do dramaticly better than any breadth first search. My point (such as it is) is that I believe his statements to be wrong as well as not meeting any need. Nahaj 00:46:09, 2005-09-13 (UTC)

GW (again...)

Thanks for your help on GW. You may want to take a look at the history of Attribution of recent climate change too. Regards, William M. Connolley 22:12, 15 September 2005 (UTC).

Hi William. Thanks, I may take a look. But my time is limited - I mostly react when I find something weird on my watchlist.--Stephan Schulz 22:35, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

SS, don't be a mindless sycophant, become informed on the issues.--Silverback 22:22, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Silverback, thanks for the "compliment". I've been called some things, but this one is new. I do try to keep up with the science. I am a working scientist (although in automated theorem proving, not climatology), and I understand how the scientific community works. I also know how hard it is to read and understand scientific papers even in my own field. That's why I'm sceptical about your weird interpretations of recent papers. On your user page, you write "judge my posts on the merits, not credentials". I'm trying to, but I see little merit at least in your contributions to GW. --Stephan Schulz 22:35, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Automated theorem proving is a long way from replacing the Supreme Court, but maybe we will get there someday. On GW, I don't see how you can find WMCs OD statement, which is pretty much the same as what our solar section says, supportable. Qualifying the TAR statement which doesn't mention the solar activity is a minor issue, although I persue it as a matter of principle. I don't think we should worship the consensus and that page of the TAR is out of date, even if the statement extracted from the page did not go far enough to be wrong. Apologies about the "compliment", but you evidently did revert the page before you read the paper.--Silverback 22:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I don't quite see the conenction between ATP (which is about undeniable conclusions reached from unambiguous axioms in a well-defined logic) and the supreme court (which is mostly about weighting opinions based on a nice-but-unclear 200 year old piece of paper that was cobbled together as a compromise by a gang of querulous back-forrest revolutionaries - now why does that remind me of the GW discussion?). Back to GW: You say the consensus has moved. I think it has not moved significantly - it has been refined. We have a better understanding of many things now. But that does not change the basics. At the level of abstraction in an encyclopedic article, the difference between the TAR and the current state of the art is negligible. Oh, BTW, I did not revert before reading, I just could not get my edit to talk into the system because of permanent edit conflicts. --Stephan Schulz 23:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Legal reasoning may be far more intractable than theorem proving. I do think that some legal precedents spread like computer viruses and can be quite erosive. For instance, the right to a jury trial has been lost when the possible sentence is less than 6 months, and the reason is "efficiency of the courts". If that can excuse can overcome the supermajority requirements for amending the constitution and erode the constitution, it can erode anything. As for GW "consensus", I used that term because it seemed to be one that WMC understood. I really think the state of the science is represented by the latest peer reviewed literature, at least in the highly visible journals, i.e., as long as it hasn't tried to escape scrutiny in some backwater publication. For GW, given the multi-discipinary nature, there are probably a couple dozen journals, where if a significant result that moves from the IPCC summaries has been published, and it specifically discussed its work in perspective relative to those previous results and it hasn't been challenged within a couple years, then that is the state of the science. Part of that "better understanding of many things now", is how solar activity after 1950 that was not thought to be greater than that before 1950, is different enough when amplified by GHGs to account for a significant minority of the post 1950s warming. The Meehl paper investigates the contribution of the solar activity in improving the data fit over runs which only include the GHG increases. Stott goes further and actually puts numbers on the solar contribution. Frankly, you can't defend the statement that this doesn't make a difference at the level of abstraction (and I assume "generality") of this encyclopedic article, since the solar section makes statements similar to those that WMC made in the OD article that are just patently wrong. If the article can have incorrect statements on a subject, then correct ones on the same subject must also be relevant.--Silverback 03:53, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

printf vs. puts

It doesn't matter much, but if you don't think that puts is simplier than printf just compare the length of the resp. man pages. You should never use a function before reading it's documentation. ;-) -- Hokanomono 15:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, people have to learn printf() for any non-trivial program anyways. printf() + puts() is definitely more complex than puts()  ;-) Also see my reply on talk: C programming language --Stephan Schulz 16:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Admiral Hornblower's seniority

If we are going to extrapolate when fictional Hornblower would have raised his flag as an Admiral by looking at when real Captains raised their flags we need to bear in that promotion came more quickly during war time. The main reason was the needs of war required the promotion of lots of the more senior Captains in order to raise the most able to flag rank. Dozens of Captains more senior to Nelson were promoted, and yellowed, in order to raise Nelson. It is a minor point. Most readers wouldn't care. I tried to think of a real officer who was promoted to Captain around the same time as real Hornblower. I thought of a few, but they didn't live long enough to become an Admiral. -- Geo Swan 19:09, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Right. But the effect of yellowing, dying, resigning, and so on is limited - it can speed up promotion of a candidate, but it can never lead to someone with less seniority being promoted to admiral before someone with more seniority. For that, it needs something like a suspension from the list, or maybe an act of king or parliament. If they did not do this for Nelson, it's unlikely (but not impossible) that they did it for Hornblower. Very likely Forrester just messed it up ;-) --Stephan Schulz 19:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

William Connolley

No; British English adds a full stop when the abbreviation abbreviates by cutting of the word, not otherwise. Thus "Street" become "St.", but "Saint" becomes "St"; the same goes for "Mr", "Mrs", "Dr", etc. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:18, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, that surprises me. I'm certain that I learned Mr. and Mrs. from my (Scotish) English teacher. I was not certain about Dr., though. Thanks for pointing the rule out!--Stephan Schulz 22:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know either! Thanks Mel. William M. Connolley 08:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC).

It also seems to be a British English thing - Strunk and White has Jr. (even on the title page), Ph.D., etc., and Webster lists as rules (noting inconsistent usage):

• A period follows most abbreviations that are formed by all but the first letters of a word (your rule)
• A period follows most abbreviations that are formed by omitting letters from the middle of a word (which would cover Mr., Dr., etc.)
• Normaly, no period for acronyms (NASA, EU,...)

Webster also lists Dr. explicitely (I've got the 1996 New Encyclopedic Dictionary). --Stephan Schulz 09:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

RFA etc

Thanks for your comment over at the RFA. I'm not quite sure whats up with the arbcomm at the moment - probably overload - but they don't seem to be very talkative. William M. Connolley 22:09, 18 November 2005 (UTC).

Climate change Arbitration re-opening request

There is a request, of which you are a party, to re-open the climate-change Arbitration case here. I thought that you might be interested to comment, or at least observe.

Yours sincerely,

James F. (talk) 02:16, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi James, thanks for letting me know (and thanks for the move to where it might do more good). --Stephan Schulz 11:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Tenth Crusade

Regarding restoring the controversy bit, yes good call.

I'm not going to touch it now, but there are really a lot of issues there that should be covered:

1. Does Bush think of it as a crusade? (Some evidence he does.)
2. Do the Muslims think of it as a crusade? (Pretty clearly, many do.)
3. Regardless of the above two questions, is it actually useful to look at it in terms of a crusade? Are there more similarities than differences? Does it fit the model of a crusade? If it does, does that help us understand any of it any better?

A lot of work needed, probably something that can't really be done objectively for about 10 years, once we have a bit of distance from it, or perhaps 30 or 40, when the archives open on this stuff.

But interesting.

Regards, Ben Aveling 11:51, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ben, that's why we settled for a description only approach in the previous rounds of discussion, and cut out all the evaluation and the "some say this, some say that" pseudo-NPOVing. I think this is the right thing to do in this case. --Stephan Schulz 12:06, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration re-opened

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2 has been re-opened. Please place evidence at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2/Evidence. Proposals and comments may be placed on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2/Workshop. Fred Bauder 01:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

WP:V citations

You may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Citation format poll: Format of citations and WP:V examples, and WP:FN. (SEWilco 08:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC))

Hi SEWilco, thanks for the notification. I've seen the poll and think it is somewhat flawed (for example, it presents wrong dichtonomies). I'm also not certain if another global policy is a good thing for Wikipedia - even if it in theory improves articles, it might affect the community negatively. If I find enough time to think about this, I'll enter my comments on the poll (don't count on it - I'm in the process of moving, so I have two flats and a new job at the moment). --Stephan Schulz 08:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Final decision

The arbitration committee has reached a final decision in the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2 case. Raul654 18:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to thank you (SS) for getting this case re-opened. I was a bit dubious (privately) as to whether this was the best thing to do, but it seems to have worked out. William M. Connolley 22:29, 23 December 2005 (UTC).

Thanks to all involved. Actually, when I started this I did not expect it into a full-blown case. But anyways, I'm reasonably happy with the outcome. William, congrats to your 3 extra days of free reverts ;-). Merry whatever you celebrate and a good new period of however you measure longish periods of time! --Stephan Schulz 23:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

"broken bot"

His bot isn't broken, he is broken. See the comment I left on his talk page, just above yours. He went through blindly reverting all of my disambiguation link fixes from yesterday. I'm in the process of fixing them, as well as getting outside observers. Search4Lancer 19:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

It sure looks like that. I think that bots run by anonymous users are problematic anyways...--Stephan Schulz 20:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

SEW

Hi. Just wanted to say that DF pointed out to me the latest SEW stuff: User_talk:William_M._Connolley#SEWilco_2. See my comments there... the bottom line is that Im not going to comment "officially" unless I really have to. William M. Connolley 18:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC).

Hi William! Probably a wise decision. --Stephan Schulz 23:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

SEWilco's RfAr

Guten Abend, Stephan. Wie geht es Ihnen?

Bad, if I'm addressed in third person singular. I'm not that old... ;-)

On SEWilco's RfAr, you said "See WP:ANI, where the discussion seems to take place." You're quite right, and it occurs to me that our discussion is probably out of place there. I'm replacing all that text with a pointer to the objections, but I don't want to step on your toes here. If you think it's a bad idea, that's fine; I'm just trying to tidy things up a bit.

Tschuss, – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 01:21, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Quite ok with me. Thanks for informing me.--Stephan Schulz 01:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

My RFA

Hi Stephan. Thanks for your vote in the RFA, and also for your support during the voting. William M. Connolley 20:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC).

It's a pleasure! Congrats! --Stephan Schulz 21:29, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Aetherolombotomry or whatever it is

I've blocked our friend whatsisname TTsomething for violating 3RR and personal attacks. There's no point weasling about whether a peer-reviewed journal is "mainstream" or not; it is implied in peer-review. NPOV does not mean compromising between a rational position and a stupid one. — Dunc|☺ 18:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I can see the problem that "peer-reviewed" has a well-defined meaning in scientific circles, but is open to misinterpretation. Anyways, I'm happy enough with your version. --Stephan Schulz 18:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Gdansk vote redux

I recall that you were one of the architects of the Gdansk vote. Please comment on the interpretation of the vote expounded by Space Cadet on Talk:Simon Dach. Thanks for your time, Ghirla | talk 14:11, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ghirla, I think you misrecall. I voted there, and maybe left a comment or two, but I had nothing to do with the setup or format of the vote. Anyways, I'll take a look. --Stephan Schulz 15:29, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Signing, Account

Hallo, besten Dank, but actually I don't want to edit - Wikipedia is just filled with too much oneside POV. MG —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.23.39.36 (talk • contribs)

Well, you do anyways. No reason to deprive you of useful tools.--Stephan Schulz 21:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

2003 invasion of Iraq

Hi there, when trying to go over the discussion at 2003 invasion of Iraq I saw it has become a big mess. If I see it correctly there was a conflict between an anon and others and now the page has been blocked. I think the anon had a point that an encyclopedia article about any military conflict should not be written exclusively by three members of one the conflicting parties, in this case Pookster11, Swatjester, and Dawgknot who according to this comment all belong to the US military. I therefore suggest to get more people into the boat, that should take the wind out of the sails of bias allegations. As I saw you also edited on that page, would you be willing to help out? Get-back-world-respect 22:31, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's been a long time since I wrote on that article. I agree with your sentiment in principle, but I don't know if this solicitation is the right way to do it. I may take a look, but I don't have the time to be a regular contributor in a topic I don't have first-hand knowledge or very much expertise.--Stephan Schulz 22:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

German grammar question....

Hi, this is an Einstein/Licorne question..... debate distatsteful enough that you don't want to get involved.... Licorne's been quoting the phrase "meiner theorie" as if it was proof that Hilbert claimed ownership to General Relativity. I'm a de-1 speaker, so what bothered me wasn't completely obvious... The sentence he's quoting from is "Einstein kehrt schließlich in seinen letzten Publikationen geradewegs zu den Gleichungen meiner Theorie zurück.", and he picks on "meiner theorie" as if it reads "my theory". However, my weak grammar sense of German says that "meiner" is a grammatical form (of which I've forgotten the name) that is used when talking about a property of the thing, not the entire thing - that Licorne's abbreviated quote, "Einstein kehrt schließlich in seinen letzten Publikationen geradewegs zu meiner Theorie zurück.", is not only wrong, but ungrammatical. Care to help pase? --Alvestrand 06:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

In this particular case, I cannot help you. "Meiner" in "meiner Theorie" is the female Genetiv of "meine" and indeed translates into "my theory". Of course Licorne's permanent repetition of the quote should, by normal usage rules, be converted to Nominativ if required in the quoting sentence ("meine Theorie"). But as a literal quote, it is at least factually correct. However, as usual, Licorne ignores the context. The full journal edition is online at [1] (then click to the paper). Hilbert writes in full: "Indes sowohl Weyl gibt späthin seinem Entwicklungsgange eine solche Wendung, daß er auf die von mir aufgestellten Gleichungen ebenfalls gelangt, und andererseits auch Einstein, obwohl wiederholt von abweichenden und unter sich verschiedenen Ansätzen ausgehend, keht schließlich in seinen letzten Publikationen geradewegs zu den Gleichungen meiner Theorie zurück." This could be interpreted as a priority claim (which would still be only Hilbert's, and not a truth). However, if you look two only two sentences up, you will find: "Die gewaltigen Problemstellungen und Gedankenbildungen der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie von Einstein finden nun, wie ich in meiner ersten Mitteilung aufgeführt habe, auf dem von Mie betretenem Wege ihren einfachsten und natürlichsten Ausdruck, und zugleich in formaler Hinsicht eine systematische Ergänzung und Abrundung." (emphasis by me). The emphasized part translates to Einstein's general Theory of Relativity, and is unambiguously assigning the theory to Einstein. Hilbert does not claim priority. He may or may not claim priority on the final form of the field equations ("meine Theorie" could also mean "the theorie I am presenting here" or something similar), but he recognizes them as only the final, inevitable step, while Einstein did the important conceptual work. But, as I wrote: Who cares about Hilbert's opinion. He is only a dead German...--Stephan Schulz 08:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Knowing that I can't make that argument is also a great help! (Online version added to the references section of the "disputes" article) --Alvestrand 09:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Licorne

I moved the comment per your suggestion. I do mean what I wrote, though, as a form of the most fundamental "testimony" of all -- I'm testifying with my feet: I'm leaving as a writer and editor until he's gone. Plus I think that Licorne may be dangerous (whatever "Licorne" may be -- we are assuming "he" is one person with no "organization" behind "him", just a "free lance" or "loose cannon", as it were) . I've been around long enough to know bad when I see it.

This is reflecting bad on Wikipedia: Wikipedia has to grow some cajones and do something soonest to remove Licorne's vileness. I cannot believe that Wikipedia has tolerated this sort of menace as long as they have. wvbaileyWvbailey 22:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia has millions of users. Of course there will be some assholes among them. We also assume good faith as a policy, so they can often run wild for a while. But Licorne is banned, and I do expect this ban to become permanent. Also, that page I linked to as evidence is not visible for a casual browser anymore. So the mechanisms are working, if slowly. I don't think this reflects badly on Wikipedia at all. Any large collection of people will experience similar situations. If people start cheering him on, then is the time to walk out. --Stephan Schulz 22:28, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Typo

HA! Thanks! ;-) Netscott 00:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My pleasure! ;-) --Stephan Schulz 00:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, did you actually follow any of the links for that user page? And if you did... any comments? That's a new move on my User page... and I'm curious to know what others think. Thanks again! ;-) Netscott 00:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I did, but I did only glance at the linked text. I'm a computer scientist, so I split hairs for a living. I don't need to watch others split them on Wikipedia ;-). --Stephan Schulz 08:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Paternoster

Please see Talk:Paternoster. All the best, <KF> 23:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Knuth-Bendix completion algorithm

Nice example on the talk page. And nice that you were willing to spend the time to answer his question that well. Nahaj 01:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I had hoped to improve that page for a long time, but a) have no time and b) was reluctant to throw away all that was there. Maybe now we'll get someting better...--Stephan Schulz 06:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Werner Herzog

Good Job!--Staple 02:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I hope so...there is still the father, though. Let's see what happens. --Stephan Schulz 06:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The strange thing is, I think he's probably telling the truth. A Salvatore Basile does have a smallish part and assistant director credits in Cobra Verde--and a fairly long acting and producing career, mostly in South American cinema and television. Its hard to believe that someone would just pretend to be some obscure actor (although he might not be so obscure in colombia...)just to argue over herzog's ethnicity....but then again, its hard to imagine a professional actor and director caring enough to come back and change the info every day.--Staple 19:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Germans did not really distinguish between all the different people in (former) Yugoslavia. We had a lot of "Yugoslav" restaurants, went to "Yugoslavia" for holidays, drank "Yugoslavian" wine, and so on. I still find this conflict hard to understand and totally pointless - as far as I can tell, it took them half a year just to figure out who belonged to which team. Anyways, I'd be happy with just documenting the lack of hard sources ("father from Yugoslavia"). I'm certain Herzog wouldn't mind. I'm far less certain that Herzog actually knows the Ethnicity of his father... --Stephan Schulz 19:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. But communist unification was just a blip on the historical radar of this conflict. It's been going on so long I doubt we'll convice anyone to change their minds. It's interesting how global animosities bleed over into the world of Wikipedia. I bet if you look at the webpage for any troubled area, you'll find an edit war. Maybe in the future rival factions will just revert each other's information instead of spraying each other with Kalashnikovs.--Staple 20:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

But there had been a unified Yugoslav state since 1918, and a "Yugoslavia" (albeit with serious internal strain) since 1929. I suspect that what caused a lot of the present animosity was the Nazi occupation and the Nazi strategy of playing different groups against each other. Anyways, we probably cannot immediately change the situation, so let's make the best of it.--Stephan Schulz 20:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Colours & albedos

Stephan, Following you recent comment on albedo/colours (Pluto) I wondered if you could comment / give me some advice how to improve the renderings on my different diagrams. I’ve struggled how to render the diverse albedos and colour indices on different diagrams trying to balance the visibility and ‘credibility’ of colours. As example, as you know the broad spectrum colour indices do not translate into a unique RGB. Also, translating linearly albedo into brightness makes dim objects almost invisible, given the range of albedos, so after some tests, I’ve settled on a logarithmic function. In addition, some data are missing or not directly comparable, and of course, my software has still bugs. While the modest ambition of these diagrams (e.g. TNO.colours, centaurs.colours) is to ‘give a rough idea’, they are a bit more that an artist’s vision, as they are based on the best data I could find. I would be very grateful if you could comment in more details or could give me some technical advice. Thank you. Eurocommuter 10:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on imaging as all. I had the impression that the second image was more technical (saturation corresponding to albedo), while the first series looked inded a bit like (processed) photos or artists impression scaled only for size. I like both, byt the way, and think they are quite effective in the article.--Stephan Schulz 11:25, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that’s right. The first is just built from NASA pictures I’ve put into the same frame to go with (somebody else’s) text in the article enumerating the moons bigger than Pluto. The second is really ‘mine,’ entirely based on the data from different sources for albedo, colour indices and size on and my n-th attempt to model them without offending the common sense. The first time I went for a ‘simple’ model and received (very rightly) no, it sure cannot be such a hellish hue comments. The biggest problem is Pluto; people got used to NASA’s cheerfully yellow ‘natural’ colour. No reader seems to think about such details like the amount of Sun light available at this distance or the size in pixels of the original HST image given the camera resolution! After that, try to image Pluto as a dark, dim brown. Of course, if New Horizons probe sends sun-flower images I promise to eat my source code. Thanks for your note. Eurocommuter 12:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: WP:POINT on Germany

Sorry about that. The German Wikipedians are innocent. I shouldn't mess up the article about their country. :-) - Alan 22:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. But the argument essentially holds for all (or at least very nearly all) the other articles, as well. --Stephan Schulz 22:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Svalbard image

Thank you for notifying me; I've already updated the image --TBC☆^{O M G!} 02:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, very good! --Stephan Schulz 21:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Admin?

Why aren't you an admin, anyway? Then you could smite the ungodly yourself. Do you want nominating? William M. Connolley 21:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking about it, but I'm not in a hurry. My edit count is about to hit 1500, which seemed like a reasonable number to go up for admin. Notice, however, that I'm not particularly strong on smiting...I think its generally overrated ;-) --Stephan Schulz 22:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, a few more edits would be good. And a desire to smite :-))) William M. Connolley 19:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Na...smiting is fine for Cusaders. I'm more a mixture of Judge and Rebel. I dissect them with my superior intellect, all for the cause of good ;-). BTW, this is number 1496. You might enjoy 1495. --Stephan Schulz 19:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Christian Goldbach Semi-Linear Resolution Georg Daniel Schultz Martin Davis Karpacz Raynold Curicke German Eastern Marches Society Delayed clause construction Daniel Chodowiecki Bernhard von Reesen Isabelle theorem prover Gandalf theorem prover Anthropogenic climate change IPCC Third Assessment Report Formal verification Climate commitment studies Clontarf, Dublin Proof procedure Deutsche Volksunion

Cleanup Logic in computer science Cult classic Lebensraum Merge United Nations Climate Change Conference Goldstone's theorem Centre Against Expulsions Add Sources Homeopathic proving Scientist joke Dini test Wikify Aaron Brown Algoma University College Minas de Oro Expand Bytom Emergent algorithm Moa

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 01:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Your note

Hi Stephan, thanks for your note. I didn't have you in mind when I said a couple of people appeared to want to start trouble. My point was simply that it's a straw poll designed to guage what the parameters are. There's no need for oppose "votes," negative comments, hysteria, aggression. No need at all. But we always see reactions like this from one or two around these proposals; some people enjoy trying to turning things into a circus. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. I think we found a nice compromise now, too (indenting "oppose"s so they don't mess up the automatic numbering, but are still around). I have to say I got into this discussion at all primarily because I was a bit unhappy with a full-blown poll at what for me looked like the very start of the discussion. Have a great weekend! --Stephan Schulz 12:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Grüezi

Thanks for the advice. The trouble is with personal case studies is that they become, well, personal. However, I am still sorting out my approach. It takes a while to "learn all the rules". Wallie 20:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Stay around a bit, and you will come to value the Wiki approach. It's no perfect (what is?), but look at what it has achieved up to now...--Stephan Schulz 20:34, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I am a pretty tough bird. I am just trying to help improve it further, as should we all. This is the sort of thing I was refering to. [2] Wallie 20:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

EWS23's RfA

Hello Stephan! Thank you very much for your support of my request for adminship. I hope that the new tools will make me as effective as you thought I could be, and that I will continue to remain "level-headed" now that I have the mop. Thanks again, and if you ever see something that I could be doing better, feel free to leave me a message. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 02:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

User Page Revert

Heh, it was no problem. Thanks for keeping Guillen in line, at that =) - Saaber 17:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Is Saaber your preferred form of address? --Stephan Schulz 17:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Global Warming

You took out the reference to The Hype about Hydrogen, but that book argues, among other things, that Hydrogen is not feasiblie as a technology useful in slowing global warming. So I think it is relevant to the entry? Since you deleted it, I'll leave the matter to you, but it seems relevant to me. --Ssilvers 23:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ssilvers! The global warming page deals primarily with the science of global warming. Hydrogen has no connection to that. Using Hydrogen as a portable replacement for fossil fuel may help reducing CO2 emissions if it is generated without fossil fuel use. But that connection is at least two steps removed from the issue of this article. We have a seperate article on mitigation of global warming. Your source might be a better fit there. --Stephan Schulz 00:00, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks, Stephan. --Ssilvers 00:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back

Errr... welcome! William M. Connolley 20:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Tanned, increased muscle mass, minimally decreased waistline (still plenty to go ;-) - beach volleyball and swimming are good for you! --Stephan Schulz 20:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Smile

E-Bod has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk page with a friendly message. Happy editing!

I Just Love your Edit Summary (The universe is a tad older than 13.7 years ;-))

You just made my day. Congradulations.--E-Bod 01:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It improves my day ;-). --Stephan Schulz 19:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Summary for policymakers

Just a request for you look look at recent edits to Summary for policymakers William M. Connolley 19:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I find the article to be a) misnamed (there are more than just IPCC reports that are sumarized) and b) superfluous (whatever needs saying should go into IPCC). --Stephan Schulz 19:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... could be. As originally created [3] it was just a stub so I could type SPM in... maybe merge/redirect? William M. Connolley 22:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

nitpick

on Talk:Global warming, did you mean "it criticizes", rather than "I criticizes"?  :-) bikeable (talk) 18:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it should have been "He criticizes" (and is, now). --Stephan Schulz 19:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

global warming

Many thanks for your message. Unfortunately I saw it too late, but actually the quote (as properly quoted, not as originally misquoted) is quite informative, and this is what I've picked up on. You'll see my edit to the article, and my followup comment on talk. I'll leave others to do with it as they see best. Feel free to change anything I wrote that doesn't fit in well with the article. Arbitrary username 22:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hockey Stick - neutrality

Dear Stephan,

I am not sure whether you understand that the blog RealClimate.ORG was established by Michael Mann et al. with the primary goal to promote their work on the climate, especially Michael Mann's work on the temperature reconstructions. The recent NAS panel's report rejected a significant portion of their statements and confirmed all criticisms originally made by McIntyre and McKitrick I can think of.

It would be a striking clash of interests if an interpretation by an "expert" from RealClimate.ORG were taken as a starting point for (mis)interpretations of the NAS report. Is the report so unclear that you need a third party anyway? Why don't you look at the summary and/or listen to the press conference? [4]

All the best, Lubos --Lumidek 21:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

I appreciate the kind words. I just want to see the article improved. RonCram 21:26, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Blinded

Thanks for helping me find some balance. I can distinguish bias from neutrality when I read it; that doesn't mean I can always write in an unbiased way. Think of me as an art critic who can't paint, or a sports commentator who can't do figure skating. :-) --Wing Nut 13:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a pleasure. In time, I can find some more balance for you ;-) --Stephan Schulz 14:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

...for all your good contributions to Global warming, and for the phrase "I sometimes even travel to the big room with the blue roof." which is priceless. Keep up your good work. --Guinnog 15:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I wish I could claim that phrase as my own, but I probably stole it off the net. Anyways, thanks for your good opinion! --Stephan Schulz 15:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Page Global Warming Controversy

Questions about my adding *The Real 'Inconvenient Truth' at JunkScience.com to the list of Science References; 1. Have you read that page at the link? 2. Do you think the information on that page at the link has value as part of the Global Warming Controversy? 3. If it's worthwile as a link on the Global Warming Controversy page, where should it go? 4. If not there, is there someplace elses you believe it could be appropriate? Sln3412 17:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

JunkScience is not a useful source for any information. The page you linked to is less obvious than most, but has enough misinformation and spin to make it useless. We do have a large number of excellent real sources, from primary research papers to the integration reports by the IPCC, the US NAS, and other organizations. So we do not have to rely on any sources from a well-known spinhouse. --Stephan Schulz 20:33, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, okay. I happen to agree with a lot on that particular page, and a lot of the graphs from NCDC or IPCC data, regardless of who's paying for the site, and/or if the rest of the site is junk or not. But if you think it's biased too much, or not needed, it's cool. Thanks Sln3412 23:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Link to The National Academies

Question: Where if anywhere would you believe a link to The National Academies National Research Council's "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years" publication should go? I did not see one anywhere on the Global Warming-related pages. *Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the last 2,000 Years Sln3412 17:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

That actually is a useful report with some weight. I would suggest to put it at temperature record, as this is only a minor topic on global warming, which is countinously overload anyways. --Stephan Schulz 20:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Will do, thanks!

400Kyr talk

I am unsure what I started, Image_talk:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png but might you look into that? I don't know if I should mark that NPOV or not, or if I should drop it and let the others come to some conclusion. Sln3412 17:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite clear about what you ask me. DF has give a rather good description of the situation as far as I can tell. --Stephan Schulz

I think it's a little lopsided to claim "Since the Industrial Revolution, circa 1800, the burning of fossil fuels has caused a dramatic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere" or at least to point it out in a graph/caption. Plus I'm not sure anything's showing that burning fossil fuels has specifically caused this rise in CO2. I'm not aware of any data proving cause/effect. It also looks to me like around half that rise in CO2 has only been since the 1950s, and that warming's only spiked since 1900ish. Although I might be interpreting that data incorrectly. Historically, I'm also under the impression that we're looking at the Industrial Revolution as running from either 1780-1840 or 1760-1830, that's a rather wide "circa". Or are we talking about the Second Industrial Revolution, from 1870-1915 or a combination of both? Sln3412 23:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

We know very well that the dramatic increase in CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels. Not only is the order of magnitude correct, what is much more significant is that the isotope ratio of the carbon in atmospheric CO2 has changed in a way that is entirely compatible with the burning of fossil fuels (fossil carbon has much less C14 than carbon from the biosphere, and, if I remember correctly, the C12/C13 ratio is also different). I don't think this fact is disputed by anybody, not even JunkScience or Crichton. The industrial revolution is what started the wide-scale use of fossil fuel, and that is where the massive anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 started as well. Yes, this is not an overnight process, so having an imprecise date is fine.

Secondly, CO2 and warming are two different things. For one, warming lags any imbalance created, because Earth and especially the oceans have a very high termal intertia. If you put a kettle on the stove, the water will not boil right away. For another thing, other effects also affect the climate. A biggy here are the sulphate aerosols (the stuff that caused acid rain). We put out a lot of them during the middle of the 20th century. They have a strong cooling influence on the climate and have masked the warming effect for a while. But a) we've cleaned them up and b) we've continued adding CO2 to the atmosphere (CO2 essentially accumulates over long times, while suphates have a rather short atmospheric lifetime). --Stephan Schulz 23:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

If we start using hydrogen fuel cells as a power source, and the exhaust is pure water, will that increase humidity levels so much we create a positive feedback loop that raises the sea levels 20 feet in the next hundred years?

No, because water vapour is in a dynamic equilibrum in the atmosphere (thanks in no small part to all these open oceans covering 70% of the planet).

How about the increase in population being the primary reason for higher CO2 levels? More Sun? Less Sun? Earth's angle or wobble? God? Computers? My point is that there's too much conjecture, with models that right now are lacking.

Actually, you are confusing your lack of knowledge with the state of the science. See above for the isotope ratio that is one very strong piece of evidence that tells us where the extra CO2 is coming from.

And that we can spend the money in better ways regardless of the answers.

And that is a total non-sequitur. Are you trying to say "If we understand the science better, we might make worse decisions (because the public is stupid or something?), so we should obscure the science to make better decisions?". That's a morally bankrupt position in my eyes.

Be that as it may, thus is not some closed-loop system where we can directly attribute cause a to effect b. I don't disagree that humans affect the Earth, nor do I disagree that burning fossil fuels adds to polution and to CO2. And I don't disagree that temperatures have risen as an average, as we're measuring them directly now. A graph that states directly this causes that is not exactly balance, not given this subject!

The graph states that the industrial revolution with its reliance on fossil energy has led to increased CO2 levels. That is a fact, and undisputed by anybody with a rudimentary understanding of the issue.

I just don't see any long-term overwhelming scientific evidence that humans adding to CO2 by breathing is any better or worse than plants adding to O by breathing, or that we can measure anything directly and compare it to proxy readings either.

I don't understand what you are trying to say here. CO2 is CO2. But CO2 from breathing contains carbon that has recently been fixed by photosynthesis. All the carbon we breathe out (and give off when we decompose) as CO2 has been extracted from the atmosphere by plants a short time ago (for breathing, that will typically be a few months). It does not change the overall balance of gases in the atmosphere.

We simply can't tell right now because the time periods are far too short, and the variables far too many. It really doesn't matter; neither you nor I are going to majorly affect the debate on any of the levels needed to solve this particular problem or non-problem. --Sln3412 05:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Again, you confuse your understanding with the state of the art. And I will do my best to affect the debate, wether in the small or in the large. The more people understand science and how to distinguish science from pseudo-science and propaganda masking as science), the more satsified I will be.--Stephan Schulz 10:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I still think the fact that the CO2 we've produced is in the atmosphere (I agree, of course it is) can't be equated to answering why the Earth is keeping it in these quantities. All the other noise just, to me, complicates the issue. A seemingly political and policy issue more than anything. And I'm not saying we shouldn't spend the money or obfuscate anything (or even wait for more research or more falsifying of theories). I'm saying that given limited budgets, and a lack of cooperation on many levels, the money is best spent on things that will have some sort of large, measurable, immediate effect on the problems and possible problems that face us as humans, of which global warming is one. Is it wrong correlate the data to give global warming less weight as a pressing issue, or to doubt much can be done about it, or to think this is more of a political and policy issue? I just don't draw the same conclusions you do. But I don't attribute it to some conspiracy or anything. Just that this subject is so emotional in so many ways, and that the discussion mixes too many subjects into one big mess. Thanks. --Sln3412 19:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Earth is keeping it because it has no way to go ;-). Earth is keeping it in the atmosphere (for the time being) because the geological processes that can sequester it work on really long time scales. Read carbon cycle (and understand that carbon is neither created nor destroyed in these processes - it just moves between different reservoirs). The biosphere is a carbon reservoir, CO2 (and methane) the atmosphere is one, carbonic rock is a major one, fossil fuels are one, and the oceans are one. To remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the carbon needs to go somewhere else. The oceans take up some (and get more acidic from carbonic acid, i.e. CO2 in solution), but only until a balance between acidity an atmospheric CO2 is reached. The biosphere cannot grow significantly, as it depends on sunlight and other nutrients. And the creation of fossil fuels and other carbon-containing geological formations takes geological time periods (i.e. really long ;-). We do know a lot of stuff about these processes. --Stephan Schulz 20:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

(Indent fix.) We do indeed know a lot about the processes, and that's in a way my point on it all, this all happens on such a long timeline that it's difficult to see "the forest for the trees" as to exactly what's happening right now in this short timeline. CO2 does need to go someplace, but I don't think anyone would say we totally understand all the climate mechanisms in the first place much less how they interact. This is a lot of variables. While it might be a good probability that we are producing CO2 too rapidly for the Earth to be able to adjust to it all, which might lead to warming, and while there might be a way to prove it, I can't see us proving so in a few years or decades or centuries.

Earth is adjusting fine. It's way of doing so is increasing atmospheric TCO2 and as a consequence heating up. This causes problems for is, of course. As far as "proving" is concerned: There is no strict proof outside of mathematics. Science does not offer "proofs", only in models and explanations. But as far as the common sense notion of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" is concerned, yes, we have proven that anthropgenic CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere.

I don't deny it's accumulating and that we caused what's accumulating. There seems to be a step missing. And a few other problems. I think we've already been disagreeing on most of those.

If we assume that reducing CO2 production will reduce atmospheric (or oceanic) levels, that's fine, it's not unreasonable. Nor is attributing 'production = levels' unreasonable.

Actually, it is. Since CO2 has a long atmospheric life time, it accumulates over time. So the level is a function of previous emisssions. Reducing emissions helps us to decrease the speed by which CO2 accumulates. To actually reduce CO2 levels, we would need very drastic reductions in emissions (and it would still only decrease slowly, with probably many 10000 years to return to pre-industrial levels).

I hope I live another 50 years so I can see what everything actually does. After that, it won't matter to me any more!  ;)

But not unreasonable doesn't mean true. I'm just saying we can't really prove it by experiment, and the only way of proving that reducing production will cause lower levels is to do it, which we haven't.

You cannot prove anything by experiment. It's always possible that the aliens that control the simulation we take for the universe change a parameter. Or that God or the Pink Unicorn decide to fudge the experiment or to change a law of nature. Experiments help us to form hypotheses and to validate theories, not to "prove" them.

I'm more fond of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. But anyway, the best experiments control as many variables as possible, no? Depends on what kind of proof you're looking for. If I put water where it's 30F it freezes, that's my kinda proof. And it makes beer good, too.

I'm not sure we even can, given the social, political, economic, emotional and organizational involvement in it all.

That's quite possible. But it does not affect the validity of the science. There are two totally different questions here: "What is going on?" and "What should we do about it?". While the second depends on the answers to the first, the first one is totally independent from the second.--Stephan Schulz 11:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree. My answers are different than yours on that though: The first is "the average temperature of the Earth is increasing". The second is "nothing". But I totally agree with that statement you made. Well, except maybe a question in between the two, what CAN we do about it. --Sln3412 22:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Please don't think I'm going to deny that the Earth is getting warmer on average, nor that we aren't affecting it. I'd hope others wouldn't deny there are a lot of factors going on here; that we don't totally understand all the patterns in the now.

"Total understanding" is not in the realm of science. Try meditation or LSD. Science offers us good models. And our models of the climate are plenty good enough to understand that adding CO2 to the atmosphere leads to an increase in temperature.

Ah, I should rephrase. I don't think we understand the paterns well enough yet to make the claim, but that we will understand them better in the future to be able to do so, whenever that future is. Obviously, you don't agree with me on what "well enough" is. Fair enough.

Just because I or anyone draws different conclusions from the data (or offer up ideas that are marginal, just as ideas) doesn't mean that we don't understand the basic process. Just sometimes the conclusions drawn from them, or how we can affect them positivly are not understood (by anyone at times). This isn't a matter of science, per se. Me, I'm not on anyone's side. My interpretation of the data is just mine, and I think this is too large to be some sort of odd non-falsifiable conspiracy. It mainly looks like big organizations fighting a mostly PR battle. Clearly, though, we are impacting the environment all the time. It certainly seems there is a correlation between burning fuels and more CO2 in the air.

It not only seems so so, it is so (for fossil carbon-based fuels, of course). No discussion.

I disagree with the cause/effect analysis. Nothing to discuss, yes.

It does look like there are ways of removing (letting go, neutralizing, absorbing) it that may not be good. As in, getting rid of nuclear waste. Perhaps technology will make it better. Perhaps technology will destroy us all.

I don't get this part.

Nuclear power has a bad result of producing nuclear waste we have to get rid of. Some of the ways we can remove CO2 might not be good either.

I agree on that. That's why it's a good idea to not produce to much CO2 in the first place.

While looking at ice cores is good, it's rather different than directly measuring things; in time, in region, in matter, in method. I don't think we can take the two and directly compare them, which is part of the problem I believe.

We don't measure anything directly. To measure temperature with a plain old thermometer we rely on a model of fluid expansion under heat, measure a distance (using a theory about light and optics to read the scale) and convert that to a temperature. And of course we need the laws of thermodynamic to believe that the thermometer will actually assume the temperature of its environment.

Watching mercury expand or contract in real time to temperature is as direct as you can get, just as is grabbing CO2 out of the air. Getting it from ice cores is a second step, and thus less direct.

Back to my point; just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean one causes the other, nor does it not mean one causes the other.

Absolutely. They can be unrelated and just coincide by chance, or they can be caused by a common cause. But for anthropogenic global warming, we actually do understand the mechanism to a good degree. Svante Arrhenius has predicted the effect in 1896, long before it could actually be measured with any reliability. What we are now doing is, in a way, a giant experiment validating his theory. Wo do not rely on coincidence. The same holds for CO2 in the atmosphere. We release a lot, it increases a lot. That should be enough to convince most people. But we also have the isotope ratios to directly measure the relationship.

Nicely said! Makes sense.

I just think we need more data to make absolute statements that A causes K without going through the steps first. But maybe we don't. No matter how crazy or bad my ideas, I try to look at all the points, and I try not to deal in absolutes. Just because we can't make absolute statements doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about it just in case. That's another topic though. --Sln3412 03:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, science never does absolutes. Try religion. But we do have a much stronger case about anthropogenic global warming than is needed to convict somebody to death, to go to war, or to allow a new kind of medicine. --Stephan Schulz 11:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

There are plenty of absolutes. The temperature water boils at, the chemical reaction from mixing base and acid, etc. The synodic period on Mars is 779.96 days. Hydrogen has 1 electron. Whatever. Regardless, I don't agree we have that strong a case, but you do, okay. I don't think we'll be on the same wavelength on this subject any time soon!  :) --Sln3412 22:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

To not extend this infinitely, but: The temperature water boils at depends at least on solvents, pressure, and physical impurities (you can e.g. have superheated water even under otherwise normal conditions). The chemical reaction of an acid and a base depend on temperature, concentration, and again a lot of other factors. --Stephan Schulz 22:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. I'm controlling my variables by using bottled drinking water from the store and putting it in a pan on my stove. Something like that. I mean, sure, we can say, well, we're on mars or the water is 98% salt and 1% gasoline, etc. Still, I don't like the text in the box on that graph. I'm in the minority, oh well. Thanks again! --Sln3412 22:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Research money

Hi, Stephen. I am puzzled by what you meant by this:

• Scientists don't receive "research dollars" for publishing papers.

I'm not making a point about the article here, just trying to clarify your language.

When you say receive research dollars are you referring to wages, i.e., money for personal use? Like, "I got a $500,000 grant so I can quit my job and go study the polar ice caps for the next 6 years." (Oh, and maybe hire a grad student or two to assist me.)

I'm personally a little unclear about where research money goes. Is it just used to fund the non-salary expenses of a project? Like, the scientist gets $45,000 a year from his university (personal income). If he's awarded a $250,000 grant, his personal income doesn't go up in the slightest. He can just buy things and hire people? --Uncle Ed 16:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's about it. Typically, the grant holder does not even see any of the money. It goes to the university (or other institution), which deducts its overhead (from 20 to 50% - that covers not just administration, but also things like buildings, energy, lab space, generic infrastructure, and so on). The grant holder can then charge project expenses (RA's, specialized equipment, travel money, and so on) to this account as long as some balance remains. Some kinds of grants in the US allow the grant holder to "buy" himself out of certain teaching obligations (i.e. he does more research, less teaching) by hiring a substitute lecturer. But none of the money goes into his own pockets. There may be some indirect effect, however: Having grants is seen as a good thing, and may help you to renegotiate your base salary with the university (mostly in the US), or when applying to other universities. --Stephan Schulz 16:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's almost enough for a small article of its own! :-) --Uncle Ed 16:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

One could argue that if I know I can expense my costs, get published, get out of obligations, become known, and/or get a raise because I brought in a grant, and then I go get a grant... However indirect, it is a money benefit to me.

Yes, one could argue that. It would be rather inane, but that probably wouldn't stop Crichton and Seitz.

Not everyone does things others deem sensible, and not everyone is in something for direct benefits.

In a way, it's like spending your remaining budget before the end of a quarter so your funding doesn't get reduced. --Sln3412 03:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that relates at all... --Stephan Schulz 09:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Getting a raise later from getting funding earlier is rather like the unintended consequence of budgets causing people to waste money earlier so as to keep the same levels later. --Sln3412 22:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

wikipedia in school

Re your harry potter argument that seems to have been deleted with the other content. I understand that the US schools can be quite draconina with their censorship, which is why i suggested the US schools, since they seem likely to be the ones censoring. Somewhere they have a standard. i am sure i would not agree with that standard, but at least we could allow the thousands of really great articles that do not offend. Think of all the good stuff related to math, physics, chemistry and biology alone that is lost due to a few 'offensive' pages. for me the things we lose are worth the things that become available. Sure, the censors win, but they already have won, meaning zero access to wikipedia. Who's laughing, them or us? David D. (Talk) 21:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

i also agree with your comment re; are the schools really censoring wikipedia. I still have not seen strong evidence for this. This may well be a case of WP:BEANS, if we ask the schools if they are censoring wikipedia they will turn around and say "why do you you think we should be?" maybe we should just keep mum for a while. :) David D. (Talk) 21:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

As others have pointed out: There is nothing to stop schools from censoring just parts of Wikipedia. There is nothing that stops people from forking a safe (and even static) version for schools. And there is nothing that stops you, me, or an AOL IP address, from inserting a picture of Paris Hilton blowing some guy into a Wikipedia article on Arithmetic. Censorship and openness are diametral opposites. Wikipedia's very model is openness. Therefore we cannot censor (and should not try it). --Stephan Schulz 21:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Landis

I disagree that the policy of WP:Not refers only to articles - It states for example: Furthermore, the Talk pages associated with an article are for talking about the article, not for conducting the business of the topic of the article See also Help:Talk page which states Wikipedians generally oppose the use of talk pages just for the purpose of partisan talk about the main subject. Wikipedia is not a soapbox; it's an encyclopedia. In other words, talk about the article, not about the subject. It's only the habits we encourage that keep Wikipedia from turning into a slanging match. and also Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#How_to_use_article_talk_pages--A Y Arktos\^talk 22:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. Misusing talk pages is discouraged. But so is deleting material from them. Posting a reminder to keep on topic (as you now did) is much better than deleting others comments, appropriate or not. --Stephan Schulz 22:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• While I do understand your point, it is in fact allowable to remove content from talk pages - see Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages: Content to remove ... Superfluous - Content that is entirely and unmistakably irrelevant. and even more specifically under Prune: Following Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate. See Talk page guidelines#Behavior that is unacceptable on Wikipedia for what is content that is not appropriate on a talk page. My edit summary was quite clear, and following your prompt, I have indeed addded a message to the talk page to state I have done so and am also declaring my intention to do so again unless concensus on the Landis talk page disagrees.--A Y Arktos\^talk 22:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Email

FYI, I've sent you an email. JoshuaZ 00:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Got it, and will reply via email. --Stephan Schulz 10:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Specific headers in SPM

Thank you. This [5] is much better than my bland initial attempt. :-) --Uncle Ed 09:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I still doubt the article is useful, but I'll try to make it as good as possible...--Stephan Schulz 11:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Christendom as a Political Polity

It was initially sourced to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it has a whole section in the wikipedia article on Christendom, and it referred to the political role of the pope and the papacy in that early medeival time. A polity can also refer to a collection of entities with a common theme making up a political unit, plus it didn't say that one existed, just that there was a strong ground for it and was part of the reason took the cross to show their allegiance to the church. This concept of Christendom being peculiar between the 10th to 15th century is well attested to, christendom has since changed in meaning which is why the footnote was placed to clarify what is being referred to by the term, leaving the detailed distinction to the main wiki article. I'll pass on the holy war footnote its not really that important, but why did you revert the link to the religious war as well?--Tigeroo 05:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Tigeroo! I didn't (this time). I did it in the earlier cases for three reasons. The first one is grammatical. You more or leass each time added something equivalent to "the crusades were a series os religeous wars". No, they weren't. They typically were campaigns in a war. The second reason is that not all crusades were primarily religeous. They all had a religieous component, but the motivations of the crusaders are varied and complex. The third reason is that I don't see that this link really adds a lot to the article. It just suggests that a simple term explains a complex situation. --Stephan Schulz 06:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Thats fine, I will kill the holy war thing, the distinct difference here was that everything was couched in terms of religion lending it a flavor, even if it wasonly used to justify or excuse the war. I will amend accordingly, and lower the emphasis, but removing it would be wrong.--Tigeroo 08:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree but I'm not sure how your last RV causes changes that correspond with the Edit Summary! I'll do further editing to correspond as mentioned.--Tigeroo 18:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't notice your other half sentence. The thing you labelled as was, of course, not one, so I took it out. --Stephan Schulz 19:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Crusades

Hey, S. Schulz, amigo, stop screwing around with legitimate edits. I put "thus" and "CE" in the Crusades piece and you called it "vadalism." How is that. If you object to use of "CE" then suggest "AD," but it seems to me that any piece that deals with events in the "9th" century should tell readers if you are talking AD or BC. (And I don't know who put word "Jason" in the article, but if your point in editing that was to refer to "vandalism" make very sure you don't overreach and call everything you take out as "vandalism." You paint too wide a path when you do that and it's a misnomer. So stop screwing around and get with the script. Rossp 04:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)rossp

Hi Ross. Sorry about that - I was referring to the edit by anonymous User:24.88.254.19 ("jason") just before yours. Just unlucky timing, I wasn't aiming four you. --Stephan Schulz 06:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hockey stick (graph)

I didn't want to get into an extended discussion about this on the ArbCom talk board. But if you go to the search box on the left and enter "Hockey stick (graph)" and click the Go button, or click on the link in the title above … you'll find that that is an alternative name for the article.  TheSeven 23:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Seven! I know that that term redirects to temperature record of the past 1000 years. But that does not imply that it is an alternative name for the page, just that the topic is discussed in this article. I think there was a suggestion of having a seperate page just on the Hockey Stick. --Stephan Schulz 23:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Germany transport

Thank you very much for pointing that out! I was very sad to see such a well-written section go but I felt that the copyright of the site had been violated. I will be sure to be more careful in the future. TSO1D 00:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem! Nowadays, its rather frequent for other sites to borrow from Wikipedia (that they credit us is rarer). Good luck! --Stephan Schulz 00:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

<p> tags

Thanks Stephan. For some reason, the user had a space in there and it still came up jumbled with Guettarda's submission above it. Maybe a quirk on that person's browser design or settings, and/or a little glitch in the WP code. I also like to use the <p> to create a little space between paragraphs, something the WP code seems to respect. Thanks for the message. ... Kenosis 22:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Shattered Consensus Mediation

You have been listed as a party in this mediation. As mediator, I would welcome your input. Thanks! --nkayesmith 09:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Replied to at Talk:Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming#My opinion. I'll be only online very sporadically during the next days, so expect delays if you try to communicate with me.--Stephan Schulz 00:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Great Comment

you comment at this request for comment which in part reads:

But this is an international project, with a lot of non-native speakers, and people from many different cultures. If there is any substantial difference between a "fuck process" and a "screw process" attitude, it's to subtle for me. Using this not-even-misquote as an excuse to dismiss the complaint appears unproductive to me.

was extremely pertinent and well worded. Hopefully, the user will appreciate it too Lost Kiwi^(talk) 02:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

patents

Hi Stephan,

Why do you still have patent stuff on your homepage? I sit on the UK committee which at least in theory helps formulate the UK gov position but I thought this had been knocked off the radar screen for years now? --BozMo talk 13:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi BozMo! Well, it's not off my screen. It is an ongoing discourse. The EU parliament decision rejecting software patents was only a few months ago, and apparently another attempt to overturn it is being made. As a computer scientists, I've seen thousands of bad patents as opposed to maybe 3 or 4 acceptable ones (Lempel-Ziff-Compression (although mis-handled, the patent itself valid) and Public-Key cryptography (Diffie-Hellman and RSA) are the ones that come to mind). In nearly all cases, the difficulty is not coming up with the idea, but with an implementation. This is adequately protected by copyright. Protecting trivial ideas hinders progress and works against small developers without large resources and portfolios. --Stephan Schulz 14:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

It was the second rejection and the majority was rather big... Actually I am strongly opposed to patents on software. But I only raise it when I see a clear and present danger. At present it is back hiding in the hills I think ? --BozMo talk 14:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Still weasely... ?

I hope you don't mean me! I appreciate that the POV I think I saw on the Global Cooling page was pro-warming not anti - but if you think I'm tilting the article the other way, tell me and I'll fix it. I just think we have to write as though to people who haven't followed the debate (Thermohaline currents, Limbaugh's use of the issue et al), and we have to be careful not to assume that there is just one side to this debate. But please, if my comments irritate you - let me know. You guys seem to do a pretty good job on these pages. - and it was a good edit too --Dilaudid 20:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not referring to you, but I'm unhappy with It has been asserted, notably in Anthony Giddens's 1999 Reith Lecture on risk, that "[in the 1970s], orthodox scientific opinion was that the world was in a phase of global cooling" [4]. It has been suggested.... For the first "it has been asserted" we have a concrete source. It would be nice to have a similar one for the second. As for the rest: I've seen a couple of analyses of the scientific literature, and essentially no-one advocated cooling as certain or likely in the 1970s. Even those few scientists who considered it possible usually were well aware of the fact that any short-term noticable cooling it was caused by short-lived emissions and usually qualified their findings with a statement that any cooling effect would have to overcome the increased greenhouse effect. Time magazine and the popular press wrote some misleading articles confusing short-term aerosol cooling and the Milancovic Cycles, but this was outside the scientific discussion. Our article should reflect this. And thanks for the thumbs up! --Stephan Schulz 20:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I always say it has been suggested - otherwise it personalises (if you say "opponents have suggested" then it almost seems to suggest that "they" have an agenda) - I just changed the point that was being made, without attribution. I think you're right that it does sound weasely - but I'm pretty sure that's what Limbaugh et al are getting at. A source would be nice, to put it in context. I'm going to take a break from this anyhow. I tried to get further into the MBH and M&M debate and it is totally - totally - over my head. It's also pretty acrimonious, which is tiring. Maybe see you in the New Year --Dilaudid 18:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Agnes

In response to your allegations of my allterations to the 'crusades' article being very 'point of view' rather than factual, then I ask you to revise 'your previous knowledge about crusader history, taking into account fact and legend, and accounts from both sides, and avoiding bias, and then it will dawn to you that what I have done is not 'POV' but rather an elimination of the bias, drama, fiction and innaccuracies, and inserting solid facts that have been unjustly missed out to make out that the crusaders were angellic saviours, and hiding their grim legacy. And as for the 'spelling mistakes' I am sure you wil find that they are typing errors (which i found in the previous version-which you seem to favour, perhaps not in the same abundance, but still there) and you could have simply just corrected them as you read. And be open minded, just because you dont like what you read, it doesnt mean that it isnt true: after all, it was the crusadors who were the agressors.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Agnes Nitt (talk • contribs).

I suggest you check out my edits on this and related topic. I have no glorified view of the crusading heroes beating back the Empire of Evil. I do care about NPOV, sources, and encyclopedic language. From your edit:

• "The Children's Crusade was not a military campaign, but a mixture of fact and fiction (mostly fiction though) of a popular uprising in France and/or Germany, with the intention of reaching the Holy Land in order to convert Muslims there to Christianity.": No, the Children's Cruade was not a mixture of fact and fiction. It either was a real event or not. Reports about it may be a mixture of fact and fiction. The colloquial use of "though" is inappropriate in an encyclopedia.
• "...the Moors, who had successfully conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula, after a plea from Jews and Unitarian Christians who were suffering badly under the previous Christian rule.": There is no source given for this statement, and it is there without any context (did this influence the conquest? Was it even relevant? Did the Jews and Unitarian (? shouldn't that be Arian?) Christians come together in an assembly and vote to ask for help, or did some Emir bribe a few nobodies to have a pretense? Or was it something altogether different?
• "This was further strengthened by religious propaganda, advocating war in order to reoccupy the Holy Land, ...": Reoccupy? When had it been occupied for the first part? There never, to my knowledge, was a Christian occupation of the Holy Land before the Conquest. Yes, it was part of the Roman and later Byzantine empire, but Christianity spread from there, it was not brought by force. And the Western Crusaders were in no way comparable to a Roman or Byzantine administration...
• "However, the Muslim armies' successes were putting strong pressure on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire, especially the conquest of Spain...": Why did the Arab/Berber conquest of Spain put pressure on the Byzantine Empire (which was at the other end of the Mediterranean and mostly in conflict with Turkish people?
• What happened to the whole section on "Immediate cause"?
• "On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury, but instead led to the massacre and rape of Muslim and Jewish civilians that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe,...": What massacre of Muslim civilians accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe? There were no significant Muslim communities in Europe outside Spain at that time.
• "The Crusades had profound and lasting historical impacts, mostly negative, but with some minor positives.": Do you have a time machine and have re-run the experiment a few times? "Negative" and "positive" to whom? If you want such a statement in, find a proper source and attribute it.
• ("Nonetheless, there have certainly been many vocal critics of the Crusades in Western Europe since the renaissance, due to widespread killing, rape and plunder of the innocent and helpless.)": Actually, the Crusades have been criticised in Europe for any number of reasons.

...and so on. It is quite possible that there is something salvagable in your edits. However, there is so much wrong with them, that it is much less work going forward from the old, reasonably good version than to fix your deeply flawed edits. If you want to avoid blanket reversion, edit individual sections individually. Also, discuss your edits on the talk page first.--Stephan Schulz 17:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

1. with regards to the ommitted section, i don't think it was me, and if it was, then it would have been an accident, because I would have rather edited it.

Well, it was you. Check the edit history of the page.

with regards to the ommitted section, i don't think it was me, AND IF IT WAS, THEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ACCIDENT, because I would have rather edited it. I never said it wasnt me at all, all I said was I didn't know I had done that, now that you point it out, I realise that it ws me.

2. if you have an issue with the language, then alter it yourself and keep the content the same.

I have, in fact, issues with both language and content. And sloppy language does not inspire trust in the content, either.

Yes I know you have an issue wih the content (you like the pro crusade version, rather than the version that was more fair, and gave accounts of what happened in coonstantinople and the occupied teritories) and what you are referring to as 'sloppy language' is in fact regular words such as massacre, rape, pillage and loot. I did not use adjectives such as great, glorious etc, which is what the older version contained, using too many negative adjectives to describe the saracens, and too many 'sloppy' adjectives and phrases to sweeten the name of the crusaders(such as...personally felt pious Christian fury... - and that isnt sloppy?? I didnt say anything like that, all I did was say the crusaders slaughtered and raped, and thats more factual)

3. The childrens crusade IS a mixture of fact and fiction because even in the 'historical' account nobody is sure of weather it was triggered by a dream, or if it was really just a pack of lies. (and if you didnt like the part where it said 'mostly fiction' then you could have ommitted it, but you obviously have more concerns with the story: you probably dont like it because its not as dramatic when the truth is revealed.

No, the Children's Crusade is not a mixture of fact and fiction. What we know about it is. There is a difference between an event and its description. This is an example of sloppy use of language.

well if what we know of it is a mixture of fact and fiction, then we can't write the fact can we, because its not what we know. What we can do, is write the most accurate version of it even if it isn't 100% fact. You obviously had no issue with the previous (and now current ) version of the childrens crusade. And no, don't tell me that was a fact.

4. And no, the mentioning of the reason behind the Moorish presence in Spain is important, as it is background knowledge relevant to the theme of the mixing of west and east, of which the crusades was a part of. And no, the Jews and UNITARIAN christians (I used to be one myself, thank you very much) weren't bribed by an 'emir; (they werent even reffered to by that) but were instead suffering genuine persecution, expultion, and intimidation, and were being killed off. I know it probably doesnt please you to know this, but history will be history.

If you want this in, bring some context and a source. At the time of the Moorish conquest, Spain had an Ibero-Roman subtrate population mostly following Trinitarian Catholicism and a Visigothic ruling caste following Arianism (which is a specific form of Unitarianism that holds that Jesus is a creation of God the Father, and not co-equal with him). Do you have any source for your claims that "Unitarians" were persecuted?

Yes I know about Unitarian christians, I used to be one myself thanks, and as I mentioned previously, yes they were persecuted, alongside the jews. And as I previously mentioned, I did my research way back, but if you would like me to give you a name of a book, then i'll try and rumage through my old stuff and find you something.

And besides, if it werent for Islamic Spain, The west wouldnt be what it is now (thanks to science and technology) and this might be hard for you to absorb aswell.

While this is true, it is also off-topic. And the importance of Al-Andalus for knowledge exchange and a flowering of science and the arts in the aftermath cannot be used as a justification for the conquest in the first place.

And I would cite a reference had I done my research yesterday, but I reasearched this all way back before my acceptance of Islam.

Please read WP:V. Unsourced and controversial statements will be deleted very fast and in accordance with Wikipedia policy.

Now now, keep your hair on, as I explained before, it is relevant to a certain degree, and in the case of unsourced, this is a discussion page on your personal profile, and therefore I am doing no one any harm by un-sourcing my conversation. I cant see you sourcing your side of the conversation. And bythe way, it was hardly 'exchange of knowledge' because the west had no knowledge to begin with lol.

5. In regards to your disdain at my usage of the term 're-occupy', well I'll have you know that in the older version it said 'retake', which indicates that it belonged to them before. So I changed it to Re-Occupy, to show that it was occupied in the first place. And it seems to me you need a dosage of Christian history (unbiased); Roman Cathlocism is remenant of the old pagan Roman religeon, and all the previously -occupied-by-Romans- territory became christian territory, where trinitarian christians persecuted the Jews and Unitarian Christians. (the Trinity is remenent of the three main roman gods)the land there WAS occuppied by them before. (dont forget that the christianity we have today is heavily altered teachings of jesus christ, and mostly pagan religeon; the cross and fish signs are from pagan Roman-the romans took the fish off the pagan egyptians)-Ihope thats cleared some things for you. And so technically the crusaders were remenant of Roman and Byzantine administration...

Well, let's just say I'm confused. Which three main Roman gods? There were a lot more in the classical Greco-Roman pantheon, and at the time of Christianization there also were other competing religions, in particular the sun cult of Sol Invictus. That Christianity has changed a lot over time, and has incorporated various elements of other cults is nothing new to anybody with a reasonable historical knowledge. But there is no continuity between the Byzantine administration driven out by the Muslim conquest (just after they had driven out the Sassanids...) and the western Crusaders.

That is what I was trying to tell you, some emperor of constantine or some other roman place (i cant remeber his name)found that proper christianity was increasing despite their efforts to quell it, so they changed the state religeon and merged the two together, and therefore the entire byzantinium empire was officially 'christian'-however this wasn't te true christianity. All this was in order to keep control over everyone. So the christians are the romans. I hope you get it now ( perhaps I should have explained that before- sorry)

6.No1 the problem was with MUSLIMS; they didnt like how it was spreading quickly (via trade and normal everyday dealings between muslims and other faiths, and especially the fact that many early sects of unitarian christians (who were persecuted by the romans and later- the romans under the name of catholicism-which is virtually roman religeon with some christian teachings and holyfather ghost and son, instead of the three main roman gods) were accepting Islam (due to prophecies in their gospel of the coming of a last prophet, which was during the time of Mohammad, and all the potents were hinting it was Mohammad. And therefore the problem was with Islam, and not the turks. And because muslims, unlike their christian counterparts, were united at the beggining when they were 'proper' and if you were fighting turks, then it was with other muslims aswell. Dont get confused with more recent events were the problem was with the turks. In this case it wasnt. And it makes no difference how far away apart they were, Muslims are brothers and sisters no matter what. And by the way, i only altered the original version by putting in the part about spain, the previous writer put the bit about conquests in it.

I don't believe this. Muslims were united? What about the Sunni/Shia conflict that started less than 30 years after the death of Muhammed? What about the Umayyad/Abbasid conflict (with the Umayyads ending up in control of Spain, the Abbasids in control of the Holy Land)? And the Seljuk Turks that pressed Byzantium had little in common with the Abbsids again, much less with the Umayyads in faraway Spain. Islam is no less inhomgenous than Christianity. And political cooperation has often enough ignored religion, too.

In terms of justification, Spain was being ruled by a tyrant and was treating members of other creeds badly to the extent that they called for help. No christians were expelled there propert was not confiscated and the country became better for all, now that is what i call 'for the common good' of the world-if only all rulers were like that. And I totally agree with you that there were conflicts (not as many as christinaity, but you are right, there were. But that doesn't dismiss that Muslims were united (i mean the people, not neccesssarily the rulers) and Im talking about the majority mainstream Sunni muslims of the time, so if any muslim suffered on the other side of the world, they would also feel that suffering. Therefore muslims as individuals would come to each others aid, and yes the problem was with Islam, not turks.

7.About the massacre of muslims in europe, I was mistaken; i didnt realise it said Europe, I thought it was talking about the overall aftermath, of which most of the damage was on the Muslims side, not the indvidual incidences that happened as a result in Europe (because that would make more sense, mentioning the big incident, not the sub. but then again I think it just shows how biasd and anti-Islamic the previous one was- making out that Muslims didnt suffer at all; literally dismissing their casualties. plagerism of Historical facts if you ask me)

Please be more careful. And use a dictionary if you are uncertain about the meaning of words. Assuming "plagerism" should be "plagiarism", the sentence makes no sense.

Fair comment, I cant say anything less than I agree with you

8. No I do not have a time machine, but I guess one would do you fine so that you can perhaps get involved and perhaps sympathise with the victims, not the agressors, and perhaps help bring justice to the victims by de-demonising them-the poor souls. and in regards to positive and negative effects, well you tell me: how much exactly have you read on this topic? judging by your coments, not alot, in if you have read 1 or 2 things, then they must have been wholly one-sided texts that are anti-Islamic, and pro-crusaders and violence. I have read pro crusade and neutral texts. I have never read anything pro-saracen, because havent found any such thing yet. and my article was Neutral, i didnt add any drama or sobbing or anything, just solid, but shocking facts that people have been trying to keep in the shadows for years.

I have read several relevant books. I even own a couple, including Runciman's "History of the Crusades" (German edition, "Geschichte der Kreuzzüge") and "The Fall of Constantinople", Norwich's "History of Byzantium", Ostrogorsky's "Byzantinische Geschichte" and Maalouf's "The Crusade Through Arab Eyes", a book I very much recommend if you want to get a different perspective. In my opinion, your "facts" were to a large part not facts, but opinions, and unsourced ones at that. "Positive" and "negative" are not absolute. What is good for me can be bad for you and vice versa. The Crusades intensified contact between the East and the West, something that was definitly good for the West. They eventually lead to the unification of much of the Muslim world under Saladin - is that good or bad? Would the Mongol invasion of the Middle East have had a more or a less devastating effect without the Crusades?

You talk about crusaders 'intensifying' contact wiht the middle east as if it were something they should be thankd for; all it is, is that the west relised that there was another world outside their wooden huts. Oh, I know that the crusades trigered the Muslim nation to unite, but when it comes to positive and negative, the Killing and loss of civillian life in that conflict makes it have an overall negative outcome, and just because the west benefetid from th carnage, it doesnt justify it, or make it seem ok. and as for the mongol hoards, who like hitler, wanted to conquer the world, well if it wasnt for the Muslims, the west would have been a massacred. The muslims took the brunt of that battle, and faught the world threat till they were victorious. But still the crusades were BAD and barbarious, you cant argue against that. And no, you need to read more, not me, I have read pro crusade texts aswell and I fully understand their point of view, however I do not agree with it, because it DOES make the crusades look angellic overall and the muslims as cruel people who were aggressors, and is extremelt POV.

9. yes there have been, but more 'human' natured people will agree that the humanitarian crisis and mass abuses, by far beat the condemnation related to a waste of money or a loss of soldiers lives due to attacking other peoples properties. The reason why there arent as many critics of the crusades in the west, as there ar glorifiers, id because people try to gang up on them like in my case, and the lack of clean, unflawed unbiased education. In no way is what Im saying biasd. I have a mixed christian and Islamic hertiage, and I havent just left christianity for nothing (and no-i wasnt paid or bribed by some emir, in fact I lost out on a lot of worldy gains as a result, but have grown spiritually)

I suggest you read some real academic texts. The scientific community has a very differentiated view of history. The years since 9/11 have brought a crop of loud-mouthed pop-hist/propaganda writers that cater to the lowest common denominator. But they are not typical for the academic debate at all.

Thank you very much for the insult. Much appreciated. But I did my research way before 9/11, and have been to lectures by muslims and non muslims, and have read books by muslims and non muslims and pro crusaders (and usually you find the pro crusaders verry aggressive and angry when you get into a debate with them, whereas neutral and muslims are generally more friendly and passive). So i think the propaganda part has been playing around in Europe for centuries now. On the Muslim side, They continue till this day to suffer in silence, as usual eing accused of cruelty that is not in them. Why dont you try to find out what happens to muslims in gujjurat, or cashmere or in china etc.? perhaps you might find that Muslims arent as horrible as you think.

10. I think we have a lot of acceptance to make of the wests previous errors, and we should shed away this proud and haughty skin we have on us at the moment. You should try and feel empathy towards those who were abused and suffered during that time, especially from the Muslim side, as you have to agree, they are pretty much ignored. And thanks for answering :)

But empathy with the abused should not come into conflict with the historical truth. Barbarism of the Crusaders does not excuse the Muslim conquest of Spain. Neither is it the other way round (it does explain part of it, but explanation and excude are different things).

Spain was ruled by a genuine tyrant who persecuted the Jews and the unitarians. The Muslims never expelled christians from their lands and many of them as well as jews became 'top brass' and occupied jobs such as wizirs advisors etc. The crusades however had a bad effect, kiling and looting. They didnt help the regeon in anyway. Whereas Muslims did, and they lasted 800 years there filled with knowledge art and peace. Now that is historical truth, Just because you dont know it, doesnt mean its not true (sigh-i;ve lost count of how many times I've had to tell you this). my advise is: Just read more.

Agnes Agnes Nitt 18:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

--Stephan Schulz 19:46, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Agnes Nitt 21:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but whatever you say cannot change the fact that Muslim civilians were attacked raped and massacred during the oppressive crusades, which were an attack on the homeland of an indigenous people. And Unitarian christians were persecuted by trinitarian christians . full stop. If you dont know that it doesnt mean its not true. you dont seem to understand that. the edition of that article which you prefer is POV no matter what you say, I have read more about this topic than you and know a great deal more about christianity and its history than you so dont doubt what I say about Unitarians being persecuted.It is the same denial that you are expresing when doubting the massacre of Muslims and calling it POV. Wake up from your dreams of ideal western crusaders loved by all, when they are only bias, ultra patriotic to the extent they would justify anything if theydid it, heartless arrogant people. I would argue back against every single uneducated comment you made, but I dont have the time. But believe you me: hopefully I will take your advise and research from the begining the crusades and completely change this article one day, citing every single reference i used. And i'd like to hear your excuses then ( I know you will make some petty excuses, such as you didn't understand "plagiarism" because i missed out an I, and other petty rubbish like that) and yes, you are probably a Roman catholic, and dont want to know that what you are following is in essence a pagan Roman religeon, and stop pretending you dont know.I've made it quite clear, if you truly love jesus christ then find the truth in him and seek him. Because he would never in anyway justify this war as you did Agnes Nitt 21:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think this is going anywhere. I also think people who read this will be able to form an opinion. --Stephan Schulz 00:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, and yes people will be able to form an opinion. I know you are trying to hint that everyone who reads this will agree wih you, but thats not entirely true because there's always different types of people: those who are ready to accept history they don't like, as it is and unabridged, and those who battle on to deny it, so as you say: people who read this will be able to form an opinion. And no matter what I say and no matter what evidence I bring to you, you will not acknowledge the truth. And to be honest I'm happy leaving it at that. Agnes Nitt 15:44, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Guess=39 is young (compared to me)

--BozMo talk 16:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Good guess. You mean people can get even older than that? --Stephan Schulz 16:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether I am still "person" rather than "fossil" I would rather not say. --BozMo talk 16:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Robert Hue image

Duh. This image is the official one from the french senate, and is normally for free use. Or maybe something escapes me. :( Max Thayer 07:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Something escapes you. Even if it is released under a "free for use license" - which I see no reason to believe - you cannot relicense it under the very specific CC-Attribution/Sharealike. And as far as I know, France, unlike e.g. the US, does have copyrights on official gouvernment-produced images. --Stephan Schulz 07:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a case of misunderstanding the english terms. There, I added a self-made image. The quality is alas extremely poor, but I guess I know understand the logic behind wikipedia images.Max Thayer 08:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Saddam Hussein image

Here is the source : http://www.wpclipart.com/famous/political/ The site normally states that the images are "public domain". Max Thayer 07:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I'm not very certain about that source, but at least the owner forcefully states that the images are PD. But again, in that case the correct license tag is the public domain tag, and not a CC license. --Stephan Schulz 07:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I got it wrong as english is not my first language.Max Thayer 08:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment

Beware getting sucked into endless "debates" by people who only want to waste your time. I've encountered such people in a number of venues, and have found that they love to keep you going on a string. Apologies if my remark is out of line, since of course it's your decision to do whatever you want. Raymond Arritt 16:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Raymond, thanks for the warning. I've made use of your experience here already. But I normally like to stay in a debate unless even an uninformed, but unbiased observer can evaluate the positions. As we are now strictly in black helicopter land, I doubt I'll go on much longer. --Stephan Schulz 16:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Tim Ball and geology

Hi. Do any references show that Ball was in fact a professor of geology at the University of Winnipeg, and not climatology as he claims? All I've found are citations for Ball as a prof. of climatology, such as this one. [6] Shawn in Montreal 16:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shawn, see here. Ball's own professional website has been down for some time. Ball himself has made rather misleading (and often plain wrong) statements about his career and qualifications. It's not that he did not hold serious academic degrees and positions, but neither his numbers nor his claims add quite up. --Stephan Schulz 18:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. And I think notable. See what you think of my latest edit to his article, addressing his contested claim to be a climatologist. Shawn in Montreal 18:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Fine with me... --Stephan Schulz 19:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

thought you would be intrested to ask him a few questions

Interview with Art Robinson, Prof of Chemestry of the Oregon Petition Sunday 1-3pm CST on Race to the right. click here to listen online. Feel free to call in at the number listed at the website for the phone number.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zeeboid (talk • contribs).

Thanks for the note. But as I wrote here, I'm not really interested. What's more, your show seems to require a Windows-only media player, and I'm in a very different time zone.--Stephan Schulz 01:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Greetings!

Thanks for stopping by my page and leaving kind words, and thanks for your own contributions and efforts to preserve common sense, science and encyclopedic content. Mishlai 17:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Glad to have you here! --Stephan Schulz 17:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for note on your training

It is good to know you are into computer science. I thought the degree was strictly for life sciences. Have you ever visited McIntyre's blog? They have some of the climate computer modelers stop in from time to time and I think you might be interested in some of the discussion. Pro-AGWers are welcome at ClimateAudit and your posts (if you decide to join the discussion) will not be censored. No doubt you are familiar with some of the text books written by some of the regular posters there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RonCram (talk • contribs) 23:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC).

RFC?

Given the level of recent nonsense, which seems to be escalating into allegations of Nazism, do you think its time for an RFC to clear the air? William M. Connolley 20:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've thought about that. (I'm tiring of CE's little games in particular.) Apparently stuff like this erupts from time to time on GW related articles, so I've just been trying to stick it out, but at some point it gets in the way of the articles. Raymond Arritt 20:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there are two issues here. While I agree that User:Childhoodsend mostly seems to be there to waste our time, his behaviour is (barely) within accepted limits. On the other hand, the general Jihad by User:Mnyakko (now apparently departed) and User:UBeR with their "evidence" pages, and the histrionics by User:Rameses and his various incarnations are much harder to stomach. If we do not get a community solution soon, an RfC might indeed be in order.--Stephan Schulz 22:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

OK. It seems Tony has gotten enough material for his radio show and moved on. I don't know what an RfC would entail, or even what its purpose would be, since there's a steady stream of people who are willing to take their place. Maybe someone more experienced could fill in the details for me. Raymond Arritt 22:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Progress, then. I'm sure I can remember the how-to, if needed. This [7] is the start point William M. Connolley 22:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I find this coalition quite interesting.... --Childhood's End 18:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I find this remark rather boring. --Stephan Schulz 18:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh no -- our cover has been blown! Quick, call in the black helicopters so we can make our escape! Raymond Arritt 20:33, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you have that mixed up. Orbital satellites: mind control rays. Black helicopters: covert surveillance and kidnapping. Escape is via the phone system. --Stephan Schulz 20:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Uber seems to have backed down from the WMC harassment since the AN thread; the thread also flushed out the Rameses/Brittania sockpuppetings. All in all, I'd say things have improved. If they don't stay that way, I suggest you forgo the the RFC (since - speaking as an arbitrator - I consider RFC is totally meaningless) and go straight to arbitration. I don't think they committee will look kindly on Uber's behavior. Raul654 21:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

We have a series of very similar edits recently at Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, which to me are unsupported POV: Zeeboid [8], Rameses [9], Rameses [10], Brittainia [11], Brittainia [12], 76.64.57.201 [13]. At what point, if any, does this become an actionable problem? --Nethgirb 07:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you actually saying removing the opinionated (i.e. subjective) word "small" in place of nothing is a POV? That's laughable. For more, however, if you are serious, I suggest you check out WP:AWW, WP:NPOV, and WP:A. ~ UBeR 17:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Nethgirb, I have blocked both Rameses and Britannia for 3rr violation (being established sockpuppets, their edits are accumulated together). I'm seriously tempted to block 2 of those 3 accounts (counting the third one I discovered) permanently.

As for when it become actionable, I'd say it becomes actionable whenever you can provide clear and compelling evidence that they are pushing a particular POV - and that shouldn't be too hard. Raul654 19:06, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

User:Zeeboid is definitely not a sock of Rameses/Brittainia. Raymond Arritt 13:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to say, this is hilarious from my perspective. I haven't been accused of being WMR's sockpuppet since I created this account over a year ago, with Pgio and the Aetherometry AfD, and this whole accusation went through without me even hearing about the accusations, even though I had been checking my watchlist daily. --Philosophus ^T 10:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The big room with the blue roof

This phrase appears on your userpage. Is it toilet humour? Or a metaphor for WP?

The instant improvability of WP is almost irresistible - I agree - but some Open source people see WP as a perversion of the software development idea, because it's not conducted amongst people who can spot the worth of any single contribution.

Not sure where I'm going with this. But your mother tongue seems to be German, and I notice that a lot of the best contributions to English WP technology articles come from German speakers. So, what's the German take on WP, on the hit-and-miss nature of the project?

It's a broad question, seeking specific answers - my apologies.--Shtove 01:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The big room with the blue roof is hacker humor. Notice that the roof is black at night and normally gray when it rains. As for your other question: Germans seem to take Wikipedia more seriously (or maybe even life - I hope that's curable ;-). Comparing the English and the German Wikipedia, there is a lot less cruft on the German, and for non-culture-specific topics, I often find the average article on the German Wikipedia better. I don't know about the quality of contributions by German speakers, but there are two things to keep in mind: There are a lot of German speakers - about 100 million native speakers, and most are in modern, highly developed countries with compulsory education and a tradition of excellence in education and technology (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). And on the English Wikipedia, you will naturally only find people who are fluent and comfortable in English, hence mostly academic types, the cream of the crop. Secondly, German society has other hot issues than (in particular) US society. So on some issues we can appear neutral and aloof ;-). --Stephan Schulz 07:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Stephan, I never know whether to answer notes on your Talk page or mine. The substantive answer is on my page.RonCram 19:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, keep it on the page of the initial contribution. I keep pages I've contributed to on my watchlist for a long time. --Stephan Schulz 19:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I have added another note on my Talk page. Just thought I would give you a heads up.RonCram 03:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Award

		The Resilient Barnstar
		For keeping your temper in the face of provocation (by one who has been professionally trained to provoke, no less) you are hereby awarded the Resilient Barnstar. Raymond Arritt 00:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I'll proudly display it. --Stephan Schulz 23:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Home Page

Seems to be not working. Sln3412 18:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I have been informed that the servers at our research group at TU Munich will have scheduled downtime today. Mail is working again, but I suspect they still operate on the Web server. Try again tomorrow. --Stephan Schulz 18:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Global warming debate

Hello. IntelligenceSquared held an interesting debate on Global Warming. Based on the votes of the audience, those who said it was not a crisis won the debate. I thought you might be interesting in reading about it. [14]RonCram 17:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ron. In that case, as you like to point out, science is not decided by voting. And of course, debates with a 8 minute time slice are always favouring the oversimplifying side with the witty remarks. But seriously, just looking at the introduction: Rosenkranz, supposedly neutral, starts by presenting it as a political topic (mentioning Gore and Boxer, but not a single scientist). He himself clearly takes a sceptical position ("I'm cynical enough..."), he repeats plain lies (the alleged global cooling "consensus") and errors (climate prediction is different from weather prediction). Also, of course, the question is not if GW happens, or how it happens, but if it is a "crisis", a rather badly defined term. Anyways, thanks for the interesting link. --Stephan Schulz 22:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Science is not decided by consensus either. :) ~ UBeR 22:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. But the prevailing scientific opinion is, and that is our best way to gauge the science itself. While most science is eventually refined (and sometimes, though rarely, even overturned), most people disagreeing with the prevailing scientific opinion are plain wrong. This is not "A is right in all details" vs. "A is wrong in at least one detail", it is "A is a better explanation than B". If A has wide support in the scientific community, while B has extremely scattered support, I'd bet on A anytime. --Stephan Schulz 22:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Gilisa

I predict that Gilisa's answer to your latest question is to the effect that yes, one can have more than one ethnicity: If your parents are Italian and Swedish, but you grow up in France, your ethnicity is Italian and Swedish and not French. --teb728 08:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC) Well, you dont have to be a profit for this- i allready gave you several exampels..(can be deleted of course) --Gilisa 16:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been following this discussion but not participating, but I had to laugh when I read your comment, Stephan. Great to see people keeping cool under attack. Best regards, Icemuon 10:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I try, and I train a lot at global warming and related articles ;-). --Stephan Schulz 16:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Dear Stephan Schulz, i revise my comment to you so you could read it easily.and i also want to reply to Icemuon here (if you have no objection, otherwise you can delete it) Yes, it is very funny Icemuonand of course that Im very happy to hear that you enjoyd the disscussion and have fun to read it with good spirit and good feelings-you really warm my hurt.--Gilisa 15:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Gilisa, the Nazi "Aryan" concept was athletic build, blue eyes, fair hair, elongated cranium - the idealized "nordic type". See e.g. Reinhard Heydrich for an example. But most Germans are, in fact, short, stocky, brown-haired and have a rounded cranium - what used to be called the "alpine" type. This is particularly true for the southern parts and Austria. Just look at the Nazi leaders themself. Hitler himself was brown-haired and rather small, Joseph Goebbels was of slight build and had dark hair, even Nazi-Superman Otto Skorzeny was not blond. While "Aryan" was indeed the ideal, "white, non-jewish" was the norm for being an accepted German citizen under the Nazis. Sometimes "Aryan" was used coloquially to mean "non-jewish", but that is, of course, nonsense. Most Japanese or Bantu are certainly neither. So neither was (Nazi-lingo) "Aryanness" a prerequisite for being German, nor, as you pointed out, were all (Nazi-lngo) "Aryans" German. Nazi racial theory was, of course, neither consistent nor logical - today the term "Aryans" is used for the hypothetical speakers of early Indo-Aryan languages, and it still is debated whether their spread was a due to conquest, intermingling, or culture export. They certainly had nothing to do with the Nazi ideal. --Stephan Schulz 22:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Computers

Hi Gilisi! In theory, yes. In practice, all I can do it to suggest a) a good firewall and b) a decent operating system (OpenBSD is excellent, most Linux distributions are good, MacOS-X is the best of the mass-market systems). If you must run Windows (try not to), run a seperate hardware firewall, don't use an admin account for normal work, keep up with the latest patches, and keep a good virus scanner. Good luck in that case, anyways... --Stephan Schulz 17:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Your signature

Please fix your signature. It doesn't provide your user name. (at least it didn;t at my page.) --Steve, Sm8900 00:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I use the standard signature, and just mistyped it as 3 tildas instead of 4. It's fixed. --Stephan Schulz 00:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

global warming

Sorry, I totally disagree with your approach. Exactly where did you get the idea that Wikipedia is not ableor meant to chronicle continuing historical developments? I'm sure you are aware that there are many Wikipedia articles which chronicle current or recent history. So why do you feel that it is not possible to include that, or that it is necessary to delete others efforts to do so. --Steve, Sm8900 00:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

I'm not saying it's not possible, although I certainly doubt it's always useful. Much of what we chronicle today will be non-notable cruft tomorrow. However, the major problem I have with your recent edits at Effects of global warming is not that it is current, but rather that it does not fit into the article. The 2007 SPM is already mentioned at various other places, among others global warming and, in particular, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. It also is not an effect of global warming. Likewise, Schwarzenegger's politics is not an effect of global warming, and neither is the WMO resolution (except in an extemely useless sense that would allow us to put everything about global warming into the article). I also don't understand your editoralizing about the IPCC report departing from the WMO resolution. It is in full agreement. --Stephan Schulz 01:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Accusations

Sorry to bother you, but I follow many of your edits and appreciate what you do here. I've been accused of being a sock puppet on multiple pages here, here, and god knows where else. I've responded on David's talk page here. I'm not sure what to do. I don't spend a lot of time here and have never wanted to get into any trouble, I just like contributing now and then. I don't like this accusation hanging over my (admittedly made-up) name. What can I do? R. Baley 07:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. I can't honestly say that I've noticed you before, or that I even know who Glenn Greenwald is (I suppose that is the source of all the trouble?). So I have no useful opinion on the issue. To put it positively, I'm completely unbiased ;-). Unfounded allegations of sock-puppetry violate a number of Wikipedia policies, including, of course, WP:AGF. You could try to bring the matter up at WP:ANI, although the more correct way of doing things would be to open an RFC as a first step in dispute resolution. You could also try to file a WP:RFCU against yourself and your alleged sock-master, but I dislike that option, as it should not be up to you to disprove the allegations. Good luck! --Stephan Schulz 08:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, no reason you should have noticed me I guess, I don't edit a whole lot (sometimes on Michael J. Fox and Charles Swift; other places infrequently). I made a report on the administrator's noticeboard. I guess if there's no satisfaction there, I will go to RFCU. I'll try not to bother again, from what I've seen you have your hands full here. Thanks again R. Baley 08:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Intro to controversy

Thanks for your clarifying edit. [15] I like your wording better than mine! :-) --Uncle Ed 12:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Be careful! That is the second time we agree today! If this goes on, they might mistake you for a member of the global warming conspiracy. ;-) --Stephan Schulz 12:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Re:[16] Bitte, die trolls nicht fuettern. (Is this correct? -- practicing for my trip...) Raymond Arritt 20:01, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Close. The comma is wrong in German, all nouns are calitalized, and "Troll" has a German plural (Trolle). So the correct version is "Bitte die Trolle nicht füttern!" --Stephan Schulz 21:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminders! High school German was *ahem*cough* years ago... Raymond Arritt 21:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I find it fairly hard to talk in English about German - apparently my brain keeps them rather well seperated. --Stephan Schulz 21:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, yes. Languages learned as a teenager or adult are stored in different areas of the brain. A practical consequence is that multilingual patients recovering from strokes will regain use of different languages at different times. (On the other hand young children tend to store languages in the same area of the brain and thus tend to be more truly bilingual.) Raymond Arritt 21:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Question

Stephan, I am Deborah Byrd, producer of the Earth & Sky radio series, and I'm looking for a reference for this statement of yours on the discussion page of the article about scientists who oppose the mainstream view of global warming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming) "We are not talking 51% or 60% or 75%, but rather 95%+ (or "near unanimity in the peer reviewed published literature and in official statements by professional scientific organisations"). --Stephan Schulz 08:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)" How did you determine that there is 95% agreement in the peer reviewed published literature and in official statements by professional scientific organizations? Earthsky 15:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

For peer-reviewed literature, this study by Naomi Oreskes is a good reference, and the best survey I am aware of. Benny Peiser has tried to criticise it, but has, in my eyes, mostly been refuted. For professional organizations, see the list of statements at scientific opinion on climate change. To my knowledge, only the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has taken a contrarian stand. This lack of opposition is confirmed in EOS [17]. On the other hand, 20 National Science Academies (including all the major ones) have explicitely supported the IPCC position in two statements (from 2001 and 2005), and a large number of other scientific organizations have similar statements of support. --Stephan Schulz 15:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly what I needed. We touched base with Oreskes just yesterday, but her office did not provide this precise reference. I also appreciate the Wikipedia link to scientific opinion on climate change. Many thanks for your help. Earthsky 16:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

No worries. --Stephan Schulz 16:22, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Peiser indeed found only 2% of the reviewed literature by Oreskes explicitly endorsed the IPCC's statements. Of course, he still found none refuting it. ~ UBeR 20:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

But did Peiser, as a social anthropologist, even know what he was looking at when reviewing literature in the physical sciences? His list of articles that supposedly refuted the consensus was an embarassment -- many of those articles had nothing at all to do with global warming, much less refuting the consensus. Conversely, it's quite possible that there were articles supporting the consensus that he failed to recognize. Raymond Arritt 20:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change

It seems obvious to me that Z on Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change is simply trolling. Thats why I removed it. Could you not do the same? William M. Connolley 07:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether a better strategy might be to simply ignore such behavior, rather than responding to it in any way (including by removing the text). --Nethgirb 08:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Ignore or remove; not reply. But I don't see why we should let the talk pages be taken over by trolls William M. Connolley 08:41, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think deleting is the best way. Ignoring is better, but sometimes I cannot resist. He usually achives a muable level fairly soon. --Stephan Schulz 09:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Ignoring is best by far. Acknowledging them in any way (whether by replying or deleting) only encourages such people. Note that the same goes for CE. It's a little more of a challenge in the latter case, as CE is a smart guy (he self-identifies as an attorney) and can appear reasonable when it is in his interest to do so. Raymond Arritt 14:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your note on my Talk page

I do not agree with deleting text on Talk pages except on User Talk pages. Deleting text on article Talk pages is just another example of censorship. However, a User Talk page is different. Whenever I find a worthless post or insult on my page, it is a standing policy to delete it. I have found that most users have the same policy about their own Talk pages. After reminding William that he needs to abide by the WP:COI policy, Durova had asked that we shake hands and go back to writing an encyclopedia. I agreed to do that. Your post was not in the spirit of Durova's request, so I deleted it. I have behaved honorably (as I understood the rules at the time) throughout this entire episode. Regarding your request, my opinion is my own. It may or may not be accurate, but I cannot change it or apologize for it. I can, however, treat William with proper respect. I hope you and he are able to do the same to me. RonCram 00:26, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ron! Your opinon certainly is your own. I was hoping that facts might change it, though. A sudden influx of unknown voters may well appear suspicious to you, and you may form an opinion about what caused it. However, if this influx turns out to be completely common and innocent, it should lead you to reconsider your opinion. One form of showing respect is to retract unwarranted accusations. --Stephan Schulz 00:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"[My opinion] may or may not be accurate, but I cannot change it[.]" With all due respect, this seems like a counterproductive (and unscientific) strategy for everyone involved, regardless of the particular situation. --Nethgirb 00:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Stephan, I did not make unwarranted accusations. I merely responded in accordance with my suspicions. After I learned I had broken the rules, I explained my behavior to Durova. RonCram 01:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ron, "Connelly has obviously invited many editors to vote on his nomination to delete the article" is not a statement of opinion, but a claim of fact. Similarly, "... made it obviously clear to me that you were contacting people to get them to vote your way..." is claiming recognition of a fact. "I am only stating the facts as I see them" - fine. But, as it turns out, they are not facts, but wrong. Acknowledging this would be the right thing to do. Not jumping to conclusions too fast would be a useful lesson learned. --Stephan Schulz 01:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I was not trying to get William penalized for the conclusions I drew from my observations, therefore I was not making an accusation. The only accusation I made was that William scoffed at WP:COI and Durova agreed with me. Regarding any other accusation, we will have to agree to disagree. RonCram 07:11, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we are speaking different languages now. I'm trying to use English. Since when does an accusation require a desire for formal penalties? And if you did not try to get William penalized - whether formaly or informally -, why did you make those observations in the first place? To make this more productive: Do you still maintain that William canvassed delete votes for Scientific data withholding? Or have you given up this claim? --Stephan Schulz 07:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

None of the statements you have made have given me cause to change my opinion. I will not argue the observations I made supporting my opinion as that is contrary to Durova's request. I hope that we can now drop this subject and go back to writing an encyclopedia. RonCram 08:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

About you voting at Einstein tallk page

Einstein was a "classical" German? I didn't know this- nor did he consider himself for being German and nor did many Germans knew he was a German , at least not from the ethnic view point (or it was only the Nazis-which according to you had ,back then , no relation to the German culture or to the most of the German people (which many of them whether having anti-semic views or not, don't consider the Jews to be from the same ethnic group, present speaking).until he came out with the theory of relativity. And its strange how you put Jews into categories (German-Jews). I think its only right to put this sentence :"German-born into a family of Jewish ancestry" in the introduction paragraph- instead of making a special clause for ethnicity-but you probably oppose it , even though "ethnicity" can sound racial , so if we want to have a compromise -it should based on this principle (i.e -mentioning this sentence in the open paragraph as some users suggested already) if you agree and can live with that-I would be happy to delete the "ethnicity". I cant see way would you oppose it when there are already 3 entries in the info box which related Einstein to Germany (and if so, why you even need to include German in the ethnic entry) .--Gilisa 07:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

He was a "classical German researcher" - please don't quote out of context. He was part of the German scientific establishement, with a state-sponsored plum position as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (how much more German can it become?) and a professor position without teaching obligations. The fact that National Socialism destroyed much science and culture in Germay does not erase this earlier state. And I have no problem with categorizing Jews or others - I do it all the time. Red-haired Jews, stupid Americans, nice chocolate.Much of my live is spend categorizing things. Why do you find this significant? --Stephan Schulz 07:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Look Stephan-If there is something that I don't like to do-is to quote out of the Context-so it wasn't on purpose , and I have no problem to apologize for it (just for your being sure-I do).

Thanks, it's appreciated!

any way-how his being a "classical German researcher" have to do with his ethnicity ?(now you see why I get it wrong?) .By the way , in the time of Einstein 40% of the professors at the German institutions were Jews-so it was a collaboration -rather then a totally German science (If there is such a thing as an ethnic science). And please don't categorize me as a red hair Jew, Just as a Jew (in your case , even though you might didn't like it-you probably have to refer me as Jewish of German-Jewish ancestry).--Gilisa 07:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Here is the crux. In contrast to you, I think people can be of mixed ethnicity, and that the major factor in determining ethnicity is upbringing and culture, not birth. If you look at Einstein's entry in the birth register, he is not listed as a Jew, and neither are his parents (they are described as "israelitischer Religion", i.e. the issue is reduced to religion). Most of the 40% of professors would be both Jews and Germans, and have no difficulty in accepting this dual description. And neither would Einstein, I believe, in particular, as he didn't consider ethnicity an important measure of people (neither do I, by the way).

I don't know the colour of your hair, and while I know you are a Jew, that is not a category I use a lot. I'd rather think of you as human.

Stephan....Actually I'm a red-hair (you could seen it on my user page...:)) Jew ...Any way , I can agree that an ethnic entry could seems complex to you , but for me it mostly regarding to ones historical origins (not necessary race- i.e. German and Swiss are many times from the same race but from different ethnic groups (even if sharing a lot of common aspects)- I assume/hope that you can agree with that that's what most of the people think of when they are reading it. As far as I know about the German civil registry - the race never mentioned in it until the Nazis came to power-but even now days it categorize ethnic groups (as it in almost any other country -for statistical reasons, tax calculations and etc-but today its not simply based on religion; open any Atlas you have and you will find a division for ethnic groups with in any given country), and saying that some-one is from Jewish religion was enough to categories him as "different" even if he later convert (did you heard about the term Christian-Jews?) or declared himself as an atheistic. soon after the Jews get there emancipation at 1870 the term "Anti-Semite" were coined in Germany to make the separation between Jews and Germans clear. Any way , I can totally agree with you the ethnicity said nothing about the person (Actually I know many truly German-Jews, there is Avery famous (at least for Israelis) village of ethnic Germans which many of them convert to Judaism near my living place) but it do have importance when it come to historical figures -I'm sure that you can understand it , and as it regards to Einstein he truly didn't consider ethnicity for much but still he saw himself as a son for the Jewish people .We can endlessly debate but if you would answer my question it will be easier : you wrote that you are willing to delete the ethnic clause -but what about the other part of the question- are you willing to put the sentence "German (scientist/born) (born into/into) a family of Jewish ancestry (or just Jewish family)" in the opening paragraph?-its really don't much and it is the most precise description (if you have your own suggestion or your own formulation for the intro paragraph-please let me know). --Gilisa 08:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"German scientist born to a Jewish family" would be fine with me (and, I think, proper English). Does this acknowledge his jewishness enough for you? --Stephan Schulz 09:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Let me think on it for a while (I will answer it shortly -for now I have positive opinion about it but I want to be sure).Best Wishes--Gilisa 09:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

After I discussed your proposal, which at first I consider to be good ,and was actually one of the solutions that I asked you about , I get to a conclusion that it wouldn’t be better than the recent status quo for both sides and especially not for the people which use Wikipedia for knowing more about Einstein. This, for the following reasons:

Describing Einstein as a German scientist would be at least incomplete:

1.He had the lion's share of his education at the Swiss polytechnic , from the first degree to the PhD. (and , any way, the physics and mathematics he learned there was universal and not only or mostly German made).

2. He also had his famous "Annus Mirabilis" due his working at Swiss patents office.

3.Its true, how ever, that he published his works in a German Jouranl which was, back then , worlds physics No1 journal- but surely it have nothing to do with is being or not being a German scientist since it was , off course, an international journal, i.e –like Nature,The Royal Society Proccedings ,Science and many others.

4. The uniqeness of Einstein works, which actually made a new physics , cant be attributed to Germany nor to Swiss.Its a valid fact that without a stimulating enviroment Einstein revolution could been never happened , but still , no body can tell it for sure.And , any ways , any well devlepoed country back then could probably supplyed einstein with the right tools for being a famous physicst .

5. The "Annus Mirabilis" took place while Einstein had only Swiss citizenship- the German was already renounced at 1896.He returned to Germany (which he left when he was 16) and stayed there trhough 1914 to 1932 (18 years) , after he allready was a world known scientist.Later he left Germany and settle at USA , where he lived untill his death at 1955 (23 years) and had major contributions , like the EPR paradox.

Taking into account all the mentiond above , Einstein could probably best described as : "A German born Jewish and a(opetionaly American and) Swiss scientist ", and this is just too awkward formulation. Considering that the discussion about Einstein origins is allready last too long and have new participants , making new changes now will only gain with new problems . So, in second thought , its better to live the status quo as it is for now , even if not ideal. --Gilisa 08:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear Stephan, can you answer my suggestion-i.e. -mentioning Einstein as a "German (or even German scientist) -born ( into a family of Jewish ancestry" in the opening paragraph (and deleting the ethnic entry)?It would be very accurate and less controversial .And by the way , thanks for your last comment-but still, I realy do have a long way with my English (If you can even call it English rather than organize Gibberish).Best--Gilisa 07:54, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with having no ethnicity entry at all, especially for a person with such a complex biography as Einstein. But if we have one, it should be as accurate as possible.--Stephan Schulz 08:12, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• Deleting my comments:Ok ,Schulz -I delete it only because they have bad spelling and gramer (like most of my comments-as I said to one user:I have to take an english class) and because I dont think that they made the right messege I wanted to make-any way I also changed my last comment to you.--Gilisa 07:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I prefer "Stephan". Anyways, nobody objects to minor typographical or grammar changes. If they become relevant, it's customary to use strikeout (achieved via <s>strikeout</s> for corrections. --Stephan Schulz 07:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Einstein's uniqueness

This comment have nothing to do with the answer that I owe you (and will soon come). It comes to my knowledge that to define Einstein as a "classic German researcher" is inaccurate since he was a complete revolutionist not only with his own ideas about motion and space , but also in the way in which he came to this amazing insights .By the traditional European (especially German) establishment Einstein methods for proving the theories he made were considered as very unconventional ( i.e. Gedankenexperiments ) , he was later , at the late 20' and the early 30',accused by his German fellows for making a "Jewish physics " (which Einstein is considered, by them, to be the father of), and this claims came from some of the most prominent German scientists (see: Deutsche Physik ) .To assume that the Jews were only get influences but didn't influenced on the way of science making in Germany ,back then-is just don’t fit with the common sense. Even the Austrian philosopher (not a scientist) Ludwig Wittgenstein, which wasn’t a Jewish according to the Jewish religionus law and any ways came from a completle assimilated family , said that he was probably get influenced by the Jewish Talmud when some similarity between the logical structure of his works and the logical structure of the Talmud came to his knowledge.( see: The Jewish Heritage of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Its Influence on His Life and Work .Abramovitch and Prince ,Transcult(ure) Psychiatry .2006; 43: 533-553) So, saying that the Jews came to the world of science without having already their own way of thinking which was affected by their own culture ,to some extent , even if was neglected by at least some of them, is Just not true.

• For further reading about the German establishment reactions to Einstein's works you might enjoy the Einstein auto biography "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson.--Gilisa 17:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"Jewish physics" was, essentually, a Nazi concept. "Deutsche Physik" was likewise, and it had little support among respected scientists (of course, many had left Germany by then, or had been removed from their positions). There is no question that there was a fruitful mixing between Jewish and other ideas wherever Jews were accepted in a society. This is particularly true of pre-Nazi Germany. But in my view this mixing became a property of German society, it was not a permanent outside influence. And you might want to rethink the auto part of the Einstein biography by Isaacson ;-).

Check out Gedankenexperiment. The term comes from Danish Hans Christian Ørsted and was refined by Austrian Ernst Mach. Of course Einstein was famous for the extensive use of thought experiments. But as far as I can make out, that was particular to Einstein, not to Jews. Einstein was very much an individual enigma. I don't think it is useful to assign his various traits to different isolated ethnic influences.--Stephan Schulz 17:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, this discussion is only for discussion (I can bring the coffee if you like).As I already admit countless times-my English isn't perfect :).Any ways , Jews were and still are prominent scientist, artists and etc in many different places and different periods , for my opinion, from the days of the first and second temple trough the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula and to this very days, and people like Gersonides (which is contribution is not well reviewed by Wikipedia) influenced the European thought long before Einstein. I'm very well aware for the "Deutsche Physik" was a nationalist concept-but still it can tell something about the extent of which the Jews affected the German way of thought (and vise versa) , even though , I do agree that among scientists racist views were significantly less prevalent (i.e. Max Planck,David Hilbert, Erwin Schrodinger and etc might be because of their mutual relations but not only).It might been , off course , that Einstein wasn’t the first one to use his mind for making experiments (we are all do) but the magnitude of thus experiments that been done by Einstein – have no equivalence (and if you are saying that Einstein is an enigma which have nothing to do with cultural influences –so how does the German history of him have something to do with his works apart from his high school formal education? do you think that it's all about his genes?). I don't understood way do you think that the Jewish achievements are the property of the German society-its sounds like you are saying that without the German culture they wouldn't take place and I don’t think so , in the same way that I don’t think that for Gauss (i.e not Jewish scientist) it would made any different if he were born at French for example -so, please explain me.--Gilisa 18:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I'm not claiming that "Jewish achievements are the property of the German society". I'm claiming that Jewish influences have become part of the German society (and vice versa - is Jiddish German property?). And I think that both Einstein and Gauss have been heavily influenced by their surroundings. Different cultural influences would have made them very different (and quite possibly unremarkable) people. But conversely, putting an arbitrary person (wether German, Jewish, neither or both) into Einstein's place would not have given us general relativity. And I usually prefer tea, please ;-) --Stephan Schulz 18:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ummm...well , I can agree that had you put Einstein at a 4 world country (and there are such countries...) than we both would probably never heard about him.And as I'm now reading Marcus du Sautoy "The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics" I can also agree that Germany do had the right environment and was the right place for great minds-but not allways with big difference from other progressive countries of that time (mainly French and Brittan back then) and there are few astonishing examples , like this of Ramanujan which had no normal formal education and which lived until age of 26 (he died when he was 33) at a poor region of India .About Yiddish , well about 2 years ago I met a German student then study in Israel due a students exchange program , when she first heard this language she was amazed because she understand very much of it (but the accent and etc was strange for her) .For my understanding -Yiddish is not a property of the Germans , since it don't serve them nor do they want it to serve them. But evidently , Yiddish is mostly made of the German language -so , if one would tell me that this is a German property I would have hard time to claim against it. By the way , most of the Israeli higher education institutes were built upon the "German Model " at the Technion the lectures were originally given in German (you are a computer scientist , I assume that you know , at least by name, some counterparts in Israel).And regarding the tea , considering my bad English-lets compromise on a can of beer :)

Foiled again. My Germanicness has been diluted to a degree that I normally prefer wine, especially to canned beer. But Karlsruhe has a number of microbreweries for which I make the occasional exception. If you ever come here, I'll take you for a real beer ;-). --Stephan Schulz 09:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Largely

Wikipedia is not "largely an American undertaking". Even the English Wikipedia has significant non-American contributors.

For the most part; mainly; chiefly

I fail to see how pointing out a few non-American computer pioneers negates "largely". Perhaps you feel that Jimbo's project should not have any US leanings at all, that the English Wikipedia should not serve Anglo-American readers but must be (or is de facto) the International Wikipedia.

Indeed. At least that is the official position of Jimbo and the foundation. But you are mixing up a two things. Wikipedia is not "largely an American undertaking" because it has a very significant and valuable fraction of international contributors. Computers are not chiefly an American invention because many of the key inventions have been made in Europe. And "Anglo-American" is a red herring in this context, as the Anglos know just where Boston really is.

How many Americans don't know that Vienna is a European city? Must every article mentioning the politics or culture of Vienna be linked to Vienna, Italy? Are all non-Europeans so stupid not to recognize a major Italian city? (Just kidding, I knew it was in Switzerland all along. ;-) --Uncle Ed 15:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. That's why I said I agreed with the edit - Boston, Massachusetts is sufficient for all but the terminally stupid. But bad reasoning reaches a good conclusion only by accident, so it's worth pointing it out even in these rare cases. --Stephan Schulz 15:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Deutschland

I see you lived in Kaiserslautern a while. I used to live in Erfenbach. But I liked Schwäbisch Gmünd much more. --Blue Tie 01:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Were you there as part of the US armed forces? We used to get our burgers illegally from the on-base Burger King restaurant (which sported an extremely small sign that it was for US army members and dependents on the inside of the exit door - of course they liked the extra revenue ;-). --Stephan Schulz 06:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I had a job at Einsiedlerhoff and then later at Pirmasens. I had girlfriends at Ramstein and Landstuhl. I really liked Landstuhl -- there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken that sold beer -- something you never see here in the US and a little art shop that sold Dali paintings. Up on the hill in Landstuhl, out past the hospital and the housing area, there was this place in the woods that was amazing-- huge rocks, huge trees, in a huge valley. Little caves under the rocks. It was great -- like something out of a book. I used to hitchhike around. I remember often waiting for a ride out at Siegelbach and across the street there was a sort of hippie commune place. Well one day there was a police raid and bust. I remember watching the German cops picking these hippies up and throwing them on the ground, and then into the paddy wagon type van. Once the door got in the way and they threw a guy against that door. They just opened the door, picked him up and threw him in the truck. Merciless. --Blue Tie 07:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

RFCU

I didn't mean to start an argument with you. Sorry! I just made a comment on the RFCU but didn't know that it would start a debate.VK35 01:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem. As I read it, a "community ban" is one particular instance of a "community-based ban or block". Working around blocks is one of the most frequent sock uses, so I assume it has to have a recognizable category. --Stephan Schulz 07:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Kyoto Protocol

Moin, moin, Stephan. I didn't want to put this on the Kyoto talk page, since it might just add fuel to the fire. I find it sad (and harmful to Wikipedia) that some pages (including, apparently, all the pages that relate to global warming issues) have become, at least in part, blogsites where people with opposing agendas slug it out. I am quite reluctant to do any editing on those pages, since the desired end product, an informative NPOV article, is impossible. I am happy to edit pages on astronomy or theoretical computer science. Vegasprof 02:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You are right about the "slugging". Unfortunately, with the open model that is one of Wikipedia's strenght, this seems to be the only way to keep articles reasonably neutral.--Stephan Schulz 06:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw your post saying that all the POV complaints on the Kyoto page had been resolved. Thanks for checking this out. But, I still don't want to join that scuffle, at least not yet. It is clear to me that the primary motive of many of the people who edit there is to support their POV. This is especially clear when an editor removes material that has references but conflicts with his own POV. Since it is hopeless to expect this article to be written from NPOV, I believe that Wikipedia should tolerate having opposing POVs on the same page, clearly labeled as such if necessary. This would require that editors refrain from deleting material they don't like because it conflicts with their agenda. At present, that does not seem to be what's happening. BTW, the "global warming" related pages are not the only pages where this happens. It's a disease that can afflict any page where editors have conflicting viewpoints: typically, in politics, religion, and history. Vegasprof 10:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Request For Mediation

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/David Irving, and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Wikipedia:Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible.

On Global Warming and the Quat. Assn and 'few'

I have responded to your recent (generally excellent edit) here with one strong objection. I also would wordsmith your edit a slight bit, but otherwise I kinda liked your change. However, the word "few" I have a problem with. --Blue Tie 02:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/David Irving. For the Mediation Committee, ^demon[omg plz] This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

This message delivered: 04:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

Saintrotter

Thanks for changing the offensive use of the nazi flag on User:Saintrotter's user page. I expect he will keep reverting edits, though. I'm keeping an eye on his pages and contributions. Parmesan 22:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I wouldn't usually edit other peoples user pages, but this is clear vandalism (if self-inflicted). --Stephan Schulz 22:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The Global Warmig Swindle on C4

I hope this is on the right place, I still haven't got the hange of talk-pages. When you said on my talk page about why not write "about" soemthing, I thought i'd be best to clarify. Our new GCSE Science form is 21st Century Science, which has come under alot of critiscism. Anyway, we have to look at the "ethics" of science and for the topic of the case study, we have to argue for and aganst a subject. I chose Abrupt climate change as it is a topic I know about. However, this is linked with Global Warming, with less ice melting, it wouldn't create it to happen. So, the end of my coursework is to question wether it is possible currently. There are arguments to say the ice is melting, thus slowing the thermohaline circulation, but if it isn't then it should go in. And that is the future of science! More like a RE/Moral issues class but there you go! Should you reply, please do so on on my talkpage. Thanks St91 16:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Answered at User talk:St91 as requested.--Stephan Schulz 16:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Citation auto-creater

Heya,

Just to let you know I've repaired the citation tool you were looking at yesterday!

Feel free to test drive it, and do let me know if you have any more problems with it!

Cheers, | Verisimilus T 12:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, don't bite the newcomers!

Please! Assume good faith and let them be bold, and if they did some thing wrong, explain it to them. Cheers, ~ UBeR 19:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi UBeR. Thanks for the reminder, but what edit do you refer to? --Stephan Schulz 20:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[18] ~ UBeR 21:24, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Global Warming Swindle

Excuse me, but I did not revert - Williams did. Twice. My next edit was an effort at compromise between the two - I even left his reference. And I see now that Williams reverted a second time. If I understand how 3RR works, if he does it again is HE in violation of 3RR?

Again, my second edit was nothing like my first and was an attempt at a compromise. I ask you to please look and see what I did. Williams seems to be steadfast against any changes to the paragraph. Is he against any compromise or is he really attached to his sentence? Because I feel that the passage exaggerates a minor point. And I don't appreciate his preemptive 3RR threat when I hadn't even made any changes - hell, I wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't made the notation on my Talk page. --Corwin8 20:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:3RR allows for three reverts within a 24 hour period, but no more. That doesn't mean, however, you should go around reverting three times day. When you find your material being reverted multiple times, it's best to bring the contentions to the talk page. ~ UBeR 21:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I did bring it to the talk page. Please see [[19]]. Look at the differences between Williams' paragraph and mine. Exactly what is the problem? And *I* did not revert - Williams did, TWICE! --Corwin8 21:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

3RR is not a right, it's a hard upper limit. And your second edit is certainly a partial undoing of William's revert, i.e. a 3RR-revert. I've not had time to look these over in detail, but, indendend of this special case, please make sure you understand 3RR. Especially the global warming related articles are a bit of a minefield. --Stephan Schulz 22:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Three Revert Rule caution...

I've just blocked Rotten for 24 hours for violating the Three Revert Rule regarding his edits to the William Connolley article, but it's only fair that I point out that you are now at your three reverts as well; please be cautious.

Atlant 15:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Atlant! Thanks, I was aware of this case. I try to avoid edit warring, and WP:3RR problems in particular. However, in this case I would have claimed the WP:BLP exception to WP:3RR, as explained in WP:3RR#Exceptions. I'd be interested in hearing opinions on this, of course. --Stephan Schulz 15:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Atlant 16:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

I just wanted to say 'thanks' for all the work you do on global warming. It's very much appreciated. R. Baley 10:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It's nice to get positive feedback. --Stephan Schulz 13:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Orr et al. and ocean acidification

You reverted my edit in which I removed the reference of Orr et al. from the claim that pH is expected drop by .3 to .5 units by 2100. After skimming through their paper I could not find evidence of this claim made by Orr et al. I am wondering in which page then, since you claim they support that conclusion, they claim future pH levels could drop up to .5 units by 2100. Thanks. ~ UBeR 21:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi UBeR. Right on the first page they write "By the end of the century, it will become another 0.3–0.4 units lower undert he IS92a scenario.". C&W have 0.3-0.5, and the RoyalSoc has 0.5. So all three are compatible with the range we gave. --Stephan Schulz 21:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I removed Orr because, in their paper, they do not support the higher range of .5. It might seem like quibbling over a .1 unit, but since we already have two independent sources stating .5, it's borderline redundancy to cite three, especially considering they don't support the given range. ~ UBeR 21:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

But then the RoyalSoc does not support 0.3 (at least not in the introduction). Orr's range is qualified by the emission scenario, so it does not contradict 0.5 either. But I'm not fanatical about it... --Stephan Schulz 22:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Point taken. However, if you're looking for the lower range, the IPCC only suggests "between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st century." I think we only need two references there (the high and the low), not three. ~ UBeR 23:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

And oh yeah, Caldeira and Wickett already suggest the .3 to .5 range, "simulated SRES pathways produce global surface pH reductions of ∼0.3–0.5 units by year 2100," making the other two refs superfluous. But I think I will add the WGI SPM low of .14 and keep it with Caldeira and Wickett to represent the .5 range. Does this sound fine? ~ UBeR 00:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Eradicate C++ completely!

Boy, I'm on your side! While there's no question that Bjarne Stroustrup started out on the right course, his language got hijacked somewhere along the way and turned into a rubish tip of everyone's crackpot suggestions about everything. A friend of mine was on the ANSI standards committee that standardized C++ and he used to tell the joke:

"C++" is to "C"

as

"lung cancer" is to "lung"

C++ gave a license to kill to a lot of programmers who would have been only mostly harmless in their native Visual Basic/VBA environment.

Atlant 16:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of languages, but I only liked C, Scheme, and Python enough to do major projects in. I have the subtle feeling that I might like Haskel or OCaml if I spend some time with them. C++ is to C what Perl is to AWK - bloated beyond control. --Stephan Schulz 20:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I can reccommend OCaml highly. I use it for most of my projects. It's clean, expressive, and has a good set of libraries. --Nethgirb 03:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought so. My main projects, both commercial and scientific, are in C. It's unlikely that they will move soon, as there is to much sunk into them now. But I'll check OCaml out in my copious free time. I had a go at Pre-O Caml before I properly understood functional programming, and still liked it. --Stephan Schulz 03:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Closure of UCfD on Category:Wikipedians who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming

Hi Jc37,

while I agree that "no consensus" is a reasonable result by numbers, I am concerned about your reasoning, in particular: A remaining main concern is that it's essentially unfair to single out one support/critic category, and not the rest. So I think at this point, the next step, if someone is still interested, would be to nominate all the subcategories of Category:Wikipedians by political issue in one or more group nominations. To me, this looks very much like WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. --Stephan Schulz 11:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The thing to remember is that WP:AADD and it's subheadings are just essays, not guidelines. So while they're fine for expressing opinion during a discussion (for space saving reasons, among other things), they aren't better or worse than any other reason. Also note that many of the sub-headings are more intended for AfD, and don't work as well for CfD or UCFD. This is one of those occasions. Since categories are often created as part of a "scheme", individual categories are often related and singling one out is often counter-productive.

And we've had more than a few of these types of categories nominated, and the comments at this one were typical of the lot, hence my closing comment. I think at this point, to discern a "true" consensus, we should stop looking at individual trees, and decide about the forest. Hope this helps clarify : ) - jc37 11:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the clarification. --Stephan Schulz 11:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I must admit, Stephan, I was surprised to see you listed here. You had me fooled all along :-) --Nethgirb 03:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Damned! The secret is out ;-). But indeed, I am, and my sceptical analysis of the evidence and the literature has lead me to accept the mainstream consensus as the most likely explanation.... --Stephan Schulz 03:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tag - Riverboat

(Answered on talk:Riverboat - please keep the discussion in one place. Thanks. --Stephan Schulz 21:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC))

simultaneous comments

I hope that you will understand my almost simultaneous comments at the AFd on Connolley and the MfD on the FAQ as indicating a desire to be objective in the face of extreme difficulty on a subject where I feel very deeply.DGG 04:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

No problem. These are, in essence, unrelated isssues (except for people with a certain grudge), so it's reasonable that people come to different opinions. Yours on the FAQ is wrong, of course ;-). --Stephan Schulz 06:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Magical me

Thanks for [20]; FWIW I took myself off my watchlist so didn't know what was going on; I think its better that way William M. Connolley 09:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably wise. At least it was fast and relatively painless this time. --Stephan Schulz 09:38, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I should never have got involved with it at all. Still I leanrt something William M. Connolley 09:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

User Page

Hi Steve, Thanks for trolling my user talk page. I enjoyed it very much. --Britcom 13:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, thanks for returning the favour. And while my first remark was the result of exasperation, the second one was intended to be genuinely helpful.--Stephan Schulz 13:15, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

ADS-B

Hi Steve, You edited the ADS-B article to indicate that Europe has selected 1090ES as the single physical layer for ADS-B. Could you provide a reference/citation?

I've been trying to document assertions made in the article, and it appears that Sweden, at least, is still using VDL Mode 4. This according to various web pages by LFV. --Aarky 06:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct about Sweden. I was thinking about the future, Europe-wide deployment. The CASCADE trial, which is supposed to lead the way, uses only 1090ES for ADS-B[21], and as far as I know, this is where things are moving to.--Stephan Schulz 07:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Decay of the Hockey Stick

Steve, I have not only read the post from von Storch, I created an entry in Hockey stick controversy quoting portions of his post on Nature's blog. I also responded with my own post on Nature's blog but it seems they are censoring comments. So I posted it on ClimateAudit, where they do not censor comments. See comment #13. [22] Just in case von Storch and Zorita did not see my post, I also emailed it to von Storch to get his comments. I know Zorita reads CA but do not know if he has seen this thread. I may email him as well. RonCram 13:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I decided to email Zorita and asked him to comment on the ClimateAudit thread. RonCram 14:02, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Of course, CA is not a particularly useful venue, so he may just ignore it. I fully agree with von Storch that M&M should (try to) publish their criticism in a serious peer-reviwed venue, so that the wheat (if any) can be seperated from the chaff. --Stephan Schulz 14:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Zorita does post on CA on occasion, but he chose to reply to me by email rather than post his reply. Unfortunately, he did not really deal with the issues much. He seems to only want to address himself to peer reviewed literature. And I am not sure he has read all that M&M have published. BTW, the gatekeepers are at work again. Nature even withdrew their offer to let McIntyre post on the blog. McIntyre says his last time he submitted an article, one reviewer said his facts were all wrong and it should not be published. The second reviewer said the facts were all previously published and well known and so it should not be published. Naturally, the journal decided not to publish. The biggest problem is that CA has more credibility than most of the journals these days and is better read. The advantage the journals have is that is it easy to access. RonCram 18:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

"He seems to only want to address himself to peer reviewed literature." My, my, what a horrible thing. Raymond Arritt 18:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Raymond, the great thing about CA is that it is completely open. The peer review happens right in front of you. That is why it gets more than 20,000 hits a day. RonCram 19:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

That's quite a stretch. ~ UBeR 20:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

UBeR, I'm talking about ClimateAudit (CA), not RealClimate (RC) which is a PR site that does not allow open debate. The number and quality of scientists on CA is far greater than RC and they come from all different disciplines, backgrounds and camps. RonCram 22:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Ron, you are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. There is no more polite way of telling you this. CA has roughly zero scientific credibility. --Stephan Schulz 23:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, that is quite a comical comment since I see so many top scientists post there regularly from all different camps. I do not think you have spent enough time there if you still have that opinion. BTW, the one issue Zorita did address in his email to me was his comment to M&M 05 in GRL. He says they published a response in the same journal. I did not know that. I went back to ClimateAudit and McIntyre does show a reply as "Von Storch and Zorita, 2005, Comment on MM05." Unfortunately, the link to the response does not work. I am sure I tried to read it in the past but never could. Somehow I got the impression they never replied. I am eager to read it. Zorita did not address why he says McIntyre may be right about the bristlecone pine series but that no one has looked at it. NRC looked at it (at the request of Congress) and agreed that the bristlecone pine series is not a temperature proxy. So I am very confused by Zorita's comment on that. RonCram 23:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a detailed quote about the Bristlecone issue? I searched the NRC report, and while they spend some time discussing potential and alleged problems, they seem to come to the conclusion that there is some risk, but that they can indeed be used. --Stephan Schulz 23:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I too think that Ron is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. However, he has made a testable assertion: I see so many top scientists post there regularly from all different camps. Lets have the names of 5, and refs to 3 posts each William M. Connolley 08:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, it appears von Storch and Zorita have not published a rejoinder to M&M after all. Zorita sent me a link to his publications [23] and I find this:

H. von Storch and E. Zorita. Comment on "Hockey sticks, principal components and spurious significance" by S . McIntyre and R. McKitrick. Geophys. Research Letters, 32 L20701 (2005).

See also the response by McIntyre and McKitrick here.

But I do not find a rejoinder to M&M's response. I am forced to conclude that the Artificial Hockey Stick does apply in the case of Mann et al. RonCram 17:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Aha! That explains a lot of things. Try to get away from whoever forces you, or maybe call 911 if he or she is distracted. Seriously, though, "Huh?" --Stephan Schulz 17:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Was it that poorly written? :) Comments, responses and rejoinders in a "he said/he said" situation can be confusing. Let me try again. M&M published their comment on MBH98/99. VS/Z published a comment saying M&M were right in that the method Mann used would create an Artifical Hockey Stick (created from trendless red noise) in principle but it did not matter in this particular case. M&M published a response in GRL saying why it does apply in the case of MBH98/99. Those are the publications. I thought Zorita was claiming to have published a rejoinder to M&M, but they evidently have not. I am forced to conclude M&M are correct as they have the last word on the issue. RonCram 17:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Your belief that "having the last word" equates to "correct" explains a lot. Thanks. Raymond Arritt 18:01, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, you beat me to it. OK, here we go: M&M are clearly wrong. So now thats true William M. Connolley 18:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't always think the last word is correct, but I do here. I may address this issue more at a later time.RonCram 04:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, in response to your request for an exact quote from the NAS report, I did a little re-reading. It appears the NAS is saying the "strip bark" form of the bristlecone pine series should not be used and care should be given on the "full bark" form. While “strip-bark” samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions, attention should also be paid to the confounding effects of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition (Vitousek et al. 1997), since the nutrient conditions of the soil determine wood growth response to increased atmospheric CO2 (Kostiainen et al. 2004). (page 52). Support for a direct CO2 influence on tree ring records extracted from “full-bark” trees is less conclusive. (page 51) Thank you for making me re-read this. I will be more careful in my statements. RonCram 17:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, I am under the impression Mann used (and the rest of the Hockey Team continue to use) the strip bark form of the bristlecone pine series that the NAS panel condemned. RonCram 04:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!

Hi Stephan,

The photo of the Thermopolis specimen of Archaeopteryx looks great! Thank you very much for uploading the photos. Best wishes and happy editing, Firsfron of Ronchester 23:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Glad you like it. --Stephan Schulz 23:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Problematic editor

There's a guy (gal?) Dkowalski who is continually inserting blatantly POV (and grammatically dire) material at TGGWS. I've fixed some of the material but am concerned about 3RR. Maybe best to let him have his fun for a while? Raymond Arritt 00:43, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Several others have reverted him as well. Most of the redlinks go away after a short while, so it might be most economical to just watch him for a day or two. There seems to be more-or-less consensus that his edits so far have not been helpful. --Stephan Schulz 07:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Mediation

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/John Christy, and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Wikipedia:Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible. --Zeeboid 23:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Just a courtesy note to let you know I moved your decline summary to the talk page, with a link there. If this is a problem, or you have any questions about my actions, please feel free to ask on my talk page. I also substituted the above message, whilst I was here leaving this. Cheers, Daniel 06:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, fine with me. --Stephan Schulz 06:30, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/John Christy. For the Mediation Committee, ^demon[omg plz] This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

This message delivered: 12:17, 25 May 2007 (UTC).

Thanks

Just wanted to drop a note to say that I appreciated your taking the time and effort to give a 3rd opinion on Talk:Shakti mantras. TheRingess (talk) 20:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad to be useful ;-). --Stephan Schulz 20:06, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanx.

I didn't want to thank you for the Reference Wikification tool you mentioned, until I had actually tried it. Now that I have, it is a real help. -- thanx, --Africangenesis 12:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, the real kudos go to User:Verisimilus. I only pointed out some bugs and gave him some use cases.--Stephan Schulz 20:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

THANK YOU

Thank you for responding to my comment about pluto as a binary planet and my title question--Cbennett0811 22:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

As I wrote above: I'm glad to be useful! --Stephan Schulz 22:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

vandalism

Please refrain making threats on my user page. --Britcom 14:49, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't, as everybody can check. And I object to the implied claim that I did. --Stephan Schulz 15:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

It always amazes me when people can't take a dose of their own medicine. I suppose you think you were being "fair". I disagree, I think your comment came across as snippy and seeming to defend the trollish behavior of Prince William. --Britcom 15:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Do be aware that spurious accusations of vandalism and trolling are frowned upon. Just some friendly advice before things escalate in a way not necessarily to your advantage. Raymond Arritt 15:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Thanks Raymond. --Britcom 07:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you claim I have made "spurious accusations of vandalism and trolling"? If yes, can you point out where? If no, why do you create all this hot air here on my talk page? --Stephan Schulz 07:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Where did I lose you? You accused me of vandalism and trolling after I [PA removed - WMC] --Britcom 21:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

No, I did not. I still assume you talk about this edit, but I'll gladly check if you can provide any other diff where you feel I have made either accusation against you. I've made only about 40 edits so far in this months, as I was offline the first two weeks of June. My edits are easy to check.--Stephan Schulz 22:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Planet defnintion discussion

Well said! McKay 22:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I liked your answer so well that I nearly refrained from adding my points, though. --Stephan Schulz 22:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Volcanoes

Your version is better. There must have been some edit conflict that it didn't warn me about, possibly due to the change of header size William M. Connolley 21:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I assumed something like that (I edited the section and changed the header, which may have confused the DB).--Stephan Schulz 21:42, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Overdue for a mop

Please consider accepting this nomination, answering the questions, and adding it to the top of the RFA page. Dragons flight 05:32, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I just did. --Stephan Schulz 09:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

What alcoholics refer to as...

... a moment of clarity. "Big room with the blue roof".. Took me a minute but I got there :) Good luck with the RfA.. Deiz talk 14:31, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It's more or less standard hacker humor, a bit like the OUTSIDE THE ASYLUM sign in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Thanks for the thumbs up. --Stephan Schulz 15:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

NH/SH

Its not just ocean inertia (I was surprised to learn too). There is quite a lot of land-is-dry-ocean-is-wet in there too (hence land can only cool by sensible not latent heat). See Rowan Sutton somewhere William M. Connolley 15:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Once you got your nose rubbed into it, it becomes blindingly obvious! Thanks for pointing it out. --Stephan Schulz 15:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Junk Science at Steven Milloy

[Deleted message by Peroxisome, 11:10, 22 July 2007 (UTC), repeated from and answered at Talk:Steven Milloy#Junk_Science. Please keep the dicussion in one place. Thanks! --Stephan Schulz 11:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)]

Congratulations, your RfA was successful

Congratulations, your RfA was successful and you are now a sysop! Good luck. --Deskana (talk) 13:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a good day for Wikipedia! Congratulations. Raymond Arritt 14:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Nice going. Deiz talk 14:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Congrats, and btw: You may want to archive your talk page as there's probably going to be even more incoming traffic now that you're a sysop. —AldeBaer (c) 14:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the mop club - enjoy. Vsmith 15:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot to all of you! My head feels bigger already! ;-) --Stephan Schulz 15:53, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

May I add my congrats to that above. At your age too... --BozMo talk 18:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

:-) Another sysop emerges from the global warming field of death. Dragons flight 20:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Congrats you are ready to procede Rktect 17:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yep, and amazingly quite it was! Thanks for the nomination! --Stephan Schulz 20:38, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Congratulations! — Slade (TheJoker) 21:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Environmental Record Task Force

Dear Stephan,
Thanks for your input on the climate change denial dispute. I hope you will consider signing up with a task force several editors have recently started.

You are being recruited by the Environmental Record Task Force, a collaborative project committed to accurately and consistently representing the environmental impact of policymakers, corporations, and institutions throughout the encyclopedia. Join us!

Warm regards, Cyrusc 01:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. But my interest is not particularly in environmental topics, but in a fair presentation of science in those fields I know something about. Global warming just happens to be a field where the science is particularly clear and under permanent propaganda attack.--Stephan Schulz 11:57, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The Zen Garden Award

I hereby present you with The Zen Garden Award for Infinite Patience for discussing Holocaust denial in a calm, rational, civil and good-humoured manner in the face of severe provocation ;) EyeSereneTALK 19:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I'll proudly display it, though my apparent patience in this case was helped by 4.5 days offline during a cycling trip through the German alpine foothills ;-) --Stephan Schulz 18:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I can think of worse ways to de-stress... regardless, it was still an impressive performance though ;) EyeSerene^TALK 20:32, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Oops. Thanks.

Thanks for [24] William M. Connolley 17:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Not your problem. We have a new bot that signs everything in talk... --Stephan Schulz 17:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Invitation

You are being recruited by the Money and Politics Task Force, a collaborative project committed to ensuring that links between government officials and private-sector resources are accurately displayed in relevant entries. Join us!

Cyrusc 15:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation. But while this is an important angle, it's not one I'm particularly competent in. --Stephan Schulz 12:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

GW

Hello, I do not mean to be evil but I removed a comment to which you responded to earlier. In order for the talk page to make sense I also had to remove your comment. I am just scared that the discussion will grow out of proportion on a tangible topic and I am trying to keep in line with the tightening of TPG proposed earlier. Thanks, Brusegadi 19:17, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I thought about removal myself, but rather decided to answer it instead - I'm a bit more tolerant about borderline discussions than the consensus. --Stephan Schulz 19:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

RFC

We had an edit conflict! I added more content to flesh out the format. I would be glad to have you as co-initiator. Since I have only made two interventions in the page, could you fill in the gaps, especially other people's attempts to reason with him, and resolve the conflict amicably? Also, more edit history of anti-semitic rants? I appreciate your help, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

...and another edit conflict. I've added what I think is a reasonable summary to the description now. I'll be offline for a while while going to my office, and will do some unrelated science there. I suggest to continue on it and I chip in again in an hour or two, when things have stabilized. I have made some remarks on User talk:Salom Khalitun that you might want to mine for examples of his behavior. Good luck! --Stephan Schulz 16:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I think you need to be a co-signatory, or else it may just be dismissed, se this comment[25] Slrubenstein | Talk 16:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

RFC

Everytime you remove text to the proper section, he will revert you. Perhaps you should just leave it, and allow people to see exactly how he has chosen to respond. I think what is important is that content added by him or moved by him is clearly identified (signed) as being his.

I appreciate your neatening up the page in general. I just hope a fairly diverse bunch of editors see it. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, he is indefinitely blocked. This was almost too easy. It almost makes me wonder if some bunch of guys out there didn't create a fake anti-Semitic persona, just to see how long it would last at Wikipedia. I don't think I have ever seen someone self-destruct so quickly. Anyway, thanks again for confronting this problem. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I do agree with MastCell that he is probably a sock. But anyways, the outcome shows the quality of the immune system. --Stephan Schulz 18:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

climate of mars, canals

The canals of mars belong as a historical mistake which led to a lot of nonsense climate speculation. It's a part of the historical record and part of popular imagination about fictious Mars within living memory. Historical stuff isn't always accurate. So long as we're not passing them off as real, I don't see the objection. TMLutas 19:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I disagree. Even in the historical section, the relation is extremely tenous - and the discussion of the translation issues is even more remote. --Stephan Schulz 19:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

So if there were a treatise on how the canals would have an effect on martian weather/climate, this would be a fair addition, it's just that you just don't see the relationship yet? TMLutas 21:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

sandbox

Could you possibly give me a lead on rules for sandbox usage? Is your revert a personal aesthetic judgment or did I step on a guideline without realizing it? Personally, I think it would be a powerful addition to the NPOV templates to autocreate sandboxes so that alternate texts could contend with each other. It might just cut down on edit wars. TMLutas 21:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not the sandbox that is the problem, it is the introduction of editorial comments and non-encyclopedic content (beyond some formalized tags) into the main article. The idea is to seperate articles and discussion about them. For discussion, use the talk pages. See WP:TPG. --Stephan Schulz 22:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem

With your revert was that you are assuming that it had nothing to do with improving the article. But it was clearly about the article. It was about the name of the article. The only problem you had with it was that you did not agree with it. But that is not the same as it not being about the article or about improving it. For your revert to stand, one must absolutely assume bad faith in the editor. That is contrary to WP:AGF.

My revert is not personal. A few days ago someone removed one of your comments and I objected the same way. See here. Note what TPG says: It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Do not strikeout the comments of other editors without their permission. (If you do not strike them out, you should not delete them either). Never edit someone's words to change their meaning. Editing others' comments is sometimes allowed, but you should exercise caution in doing so. I do not think you exercised caution in removing those words. If you do not like them, why not ask the original editor to remove them? So now... I will go and revert Arrit's revert, because I think it is wrong to revert another innocent editor on a talk page. --Blue Tie 03:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Be serious. This was not a useful comment intended to improve the article in any way, it was a stupid (my opinion) and snide remark that served no useful purpose at all. Cherry-picking parts of WP:TPG is not really helping your position, either. I'm going to revert this again. I also strongly object to your out-of-context suggestion of vandalism attached to a completely unrelated dicsussion. I suggest you either remove this or elaborate it in a reasonable manner. --Stephan Schulz 03:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S.: Someone else was faster and more thorough than me[26].--Stephan Schulz 03:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I was being very serious. The comment may not have been useful to you, but that does not mean that you should remove it. I did not cherry pick the comments. I do not mind that you object to my comment about vandalism. I will not remove it though, I do not mind admitting that I might be wrong also. However, I think I have elaborated in a reasonable manner. --Blue Tie 03:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The comment was "not relevant to improving the article", and as such its removal is explicitely supported by WP:TPG. Apparently a number of other editors agree. --Stephan Schulz 03:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The more a given user invokes Assume good faith as a defense, the lower the probability that said user was acting in good faith. - Carbonite's law Raul654 03:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Translation help needed

Hi Stephan. I understand you are fluent in both German and English. If you have time, would you kindly help out at Freedom of panorama. I'm having a tough time translating some of the work of German attorney David Seiler and other references to determine both accuracy of the current content, and also weed out any remaining original research in that article, which was originally brought over from a page at the Commons. Thank you very much-- I hope you have some time to help briefly. ... Kenosis 20:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Kenosis! I briefly scanned the (rather lengthy) articles. Quite a lot of the material consists of except of laws or court opinions. Which parts do you need translated? --Stephan Schulz 21:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to make sure I understand David Seiler's summaries correctly. If I read the automatic translations correctly, Seiler mentions Austria and concludes that its laws are not harmonized with Germany's laws. He also briefly mentions France and Cyprus, and concludes the situation in the European Union is "spintered" and in need of harmonization. In other words, if I understand correctly, he is observing differences from German law in other nations and advocating that they be harmonized. Am I wrong about any of this? . ... Kenosis 22:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

He is describing the European law as splintered, yes. He is not himself advocating harmonization, but seems to expect it to come sooner or later as a result of European free trade legislation, and discusses some legal mechanisms of how this can be achieved. The concrete case in question is a picture of the famous Hundertwasserhaus in Viena taken from a building on the other side of the street. Under Austrian law, pictures of permanent buildings part of the public landscape are never derivative works of the building. In Germany, this only holds for pictures taken from public ground. So while the image was taken in Austria and not a derivative work under Austrian law, it was a derivative work, and could not be sold without the copyright holder's permission, in Germany. Some complication arises from the fact that the images can be freely traded in Austria, and that European free trade legislation seems to require that whatever can be traded freely in one EU country can be freely traded in all. The court noted that discrepancy, but did not follow the argumentation (if you need more details, I can recheck the source again). I don't know if the verdict is final yet. --Stephan Schulz 22:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I suppose the main problem I'm having at the moment is that Seiler's two online brief commentaries are the primary source for the article. The rest appears to be the WP editors' interpretaion of how the German law does or does not apply to other jurisdictions. But you have been very helpful in clarifying this. Thank you very much, Stephan. ... Kenosis 22:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No problem. One thing that Seiler points out is that local copyright law (at the place of distribution) determines if a violation occurs or not. So the image was legally taken in Austria and can be legally sold in Austria, but not in Germany. That may seem weird, but is not really suprising. Books can be under copyright in one country and not in another as well. The King James Bible is, e.g. under perpetual crown copyright in the UK, but public domain in much of the rest of the world. --Stephan Schulz 00:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

NPOV not required in Talk?

Hi Stephan:

I see you changed Definition of Holocaust back to Racist Definition of Holocaust.

I have a couple of comments/questions about this.

I think Racist Definition of Holocaust is not just a stupid title, but a racist one, given the context. Isn't there something in the rules about some rules being more important than others? How about the "ignore all rules" bit. Can't I invoke it here?

Is it true that NPOV policy does not apply in talk pages?

If the people who like to vandalize Wikipedia find out that no one is supposed to change a section title after it is created, they can have a lot of fun.

Thank you, Wanderer57 20:17, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Wanderer. See WP:TPG, especially the section on "Editing comments". There are exception, and of course plain vandalism can be reverted under WP:Vandalism. But it is generally strongly discouraged to edit comments (both yours (!) and other's) that people have already replied to, as it changes to context of these replies. And no, WP:NPOV does not apply to talk pages. From the summary on that page: "All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view" - that does not include the talk pages. The talk pages are where we hash out the different POVs. Also, of course, NPOV is not the same as political correctness. This particular header is rather stupid - something I gladly admit - but it is part of one contributors rather stupid POV. See it this way: Do you want to give extra weight to his POV by making him sound more reasonable than he is? --Stephan Schulz 20:27, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Stephan: Thank you. That makes sense. Being new to Wikipedia, I'm still learning as I go. Cheers, Wanderer57 18:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Clarification

Thought I'd drop you a note in case you werent watch Durova's page. You talked about me using a bogus argument. Please clarify. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I did there. --Stephan Schulz 14:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Adnan Oktar

Slrubenstein thought you might be good evaluator to assist in the dilemma at Talk:Adnan Oktar. I visited this page in response to a request at 3rd Op. --Kevin Murray 17:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. I took a glance, and it seems to be quite a mess at the moment. I don't know a lot about the particular topic - it seems to suffer from a general lack of good sources in English. If I come to a reasonable conclusion, I will state it on the talk page, but I'm not certain that I can find the time. --Stephan Schulz 03:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Igor the otter

I would appreciate it if you would comment here or at least look at the larger edit history on the burning of dresden article for which I provide a link, or comment at Talk:Bombing of Dresden in World War II or just tell me what you think. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 11:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Igor has been a low-level nuisance for a long time. However, apparently someone has already done something about it. I endorse the block - even if Igor always just skirted the edge of blockability, looking over his contributions, he was not only a little Nazi asshole, he also made practically no useful edits, and as such was a negative influence. --Stephan Schulz 19:30, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to restore my contributions

I am admittedly new to Wikipedia, and don't yet know the protocol, but I'd like to restore my contributions, for example the retaking of Lisbon by a combined Crusader/Portugese force in 1147 during the Second Crusade, among my other contributions. If it's just a matter of citations I can add those easily enough.--Gunslinger1812 19:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I suggest you do so piecewise, and be prepared to argue for your additions on the talk page. Also keep in mind WP:SUMMARY - more detailed information should go into the more specialized articles, e.g. Second Crusade. The aim used to be to keep each article at or below 32 Kilobtes of text. Crusades is already twice that. Wikipedia is a collaborative endeavor - expect that not everyone will agree with all of your edits. Many editors react badly to claims that something "must" be included. Good luck! --Stephan Schulz 21:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Scientist is an occupation, not a degree

This is in response to your recent revert. I don't really care about the revert per se, but this particular statement I question. Can't someone be a hobbyist scientist? I find the term a little vague, I guess. One doesn't necessarily have to have a degree to be a scientist (although it obviously helps your credibility), and I'm not sure if one has to be gainfully employed, either. Of course, maybe I'm assuming too much on the use of the word "occupation". Perhaps I don't disagree at all, but I thought I'd leave this comment anyway. Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Note that I wrote "occupation", not "job". You are a scientist if you do science. If you stop doing science for a longish while, you stop being a scientist. If you are paid for doing science, good for you! If not, you may just be a grad student doing science, or someone doing science on the side. --Stephan Schulz 21:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

sedition

You are quite right! personally, I think sedition against the Romans was a noble thing! Inter alia, plenty of people would say blasphemy is a good thing to. That said ... in the spirit of NPOV we have to admit that at Wikipedia there are no absolute standards for good or bad. "Criticisms" are always "Someone's criticisms," they are criticisms according to a certain POV. According to the Gospel record, Jewish authorities criticized Jesus for blasphemy. Because he was punished by crucifixion, most historians believe the Romans criticized Jesus for sedition. But this character - that the criticism is that of a particular person or group and reflects a particular point of view would be true of any criticism, no? Most of the world (I hope) would say one criticism of Hitler was that he was an anti-Semite and inspired genocide. Obviously Naziis would not consider that a criticism. Many people consider Margaret Sanger a saint for promoting birth-control and sexual freedom ... but you know there are plenty for whom these admirable (my POV) acts are themselves objects of criticism. .

I think there is a bigger issue here: In many cases the nature of praise and criticism are connected and intelligible in terms of the point of view they express. For this reason I have never believed that the best way to achieve NPOV in an article is to have a separate criticism section. I would rather have separate sections for each major POV on a person or topic, I think this would promote a more nuanced portrayal of different POVs. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I very much agree. What I can stand better is a "controversy" section, if indeed there are major controversies that can be clearly seperated from the main topic and are notable individually. --Stephan Schulz 09:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

UWU

I have removed the message I left here earlier and am sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused User: King of Nepal

Anthropogenic Climate Change

"Consensus is attested by the AAAS, the AMS, and about 20 National Academies of Science, including the US NAS and the Royal Society" - S. Schulz, 2007.

I suppose if all those organizations have agreed than of course it must be true - how silly of me. I didn't realize that the scientific method has been reduced to taking a poll. I think a compromise is in order when referring to global warming. Instead of the phrase "Scientific Consensus on Global Warming”, it should read "Scientific Consensus on Global Warming Theory". I'm willing to leave that pesky consensus word in there if you're willing to add theory. After 150 years of Darwinian thought, naturally selective species evolution is still referred to as a theory. Perhaps the same treatment is in order for anthropogenic climate change? - --Azcat90 00:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay - please place yor comments at the end of a talk page, where they are not so easily overlooked. Just like evolution, global warming is an observable phenomenon. And in both cases, there is a predominant theory that explains that phenomeon. The overwhelming scientific consensus agrees that this predominant theories (variation, recombination and natural selection in the one case, the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases plus several minor effects in the other) are essentially correct and heavily supported by the available evidence. The scientific method needs qualified scientists applying it. Wikipedia does not do original research, we rely on published opinions. Nearly all scientists and scientific organizations support the scientific consensus on global warming - and this consensus is that the AGW theory is essentially correct. --Stephan Schulz 15:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Interested?

Hey, last night I started an article on the Suess effect. You asked about this a while ago, so I thought you might be interested in contributing to it. Raymond Arritt 04:23, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

HI Raymond! Thanks. I went over it once. It reads ok, but needs some more sources. It would also be great if we could have a diagram showing the different isotope concentrations over time - I suspect if we can find the data, DF will make us an image from it. --Stephan Schulz 07:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

By "more", I assume you mean "any". :) Still, good job, RA. (I hope you don't mind me butting in.) I've added it to my watch list and will help clean up any references (formatting, etc.) if it's needed. I don't know much about the effect itself, although I had heard of it before (but not by name). Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:06, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

global warming revert

Regarding this diff where you reverted an edit, This was a good faith edit and you might want to consider Wikipedia:Reverting specifically

Do not revert changes simply because someone makes an edit you consider problematic, biased, or inaccurate. Improve the edit, rather than reverting it.

In fact, the effort is ongoing (as the edit stated) and was the subject of a talk by Mr. Watts at CIRES/UCARS recently. The raw data is there for everybody to see and you can bet that if there were funny business going on with surfacestations.org it would have been debunked by now. The results are too inconvenient for them to be left standing. TMLutas 13:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

In contrast, you might want to read WP:RS. A lack of public refutation is not sufficient. I checked the site out. I could find no sign of independent editorial review. I also could not find a statement similar to your summary. --Stephan Schulz 14:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Let me start off by saying you didn't answer my point about jumping straight towards reversion. That's not the preferred way to deal with edits and people (certainly not just you) seem to be getting very trigger happy on this.

Regarding the figures, all I did was read the pie chart at the bottom of the page linked and added the category 4 & 5 sites together. Basic arithmetic in interpreting a pie chart is not original research otherwise it would be impossible to make the nice graphs that wikipedians have made in the rest of global warming. Does it make any difference to your judgment that Watts was invited to present his data to an academic conference? That's on the front page of the site but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it in the article because of the previous revert complaining about undue weight. This is still, after all, preliminary data. It's just that it blows out of the water the previous assertions that statistical correction was sufficient to manage data quality without physical inspection and that's a significant finding that deserves to be noted (with the appropriate caveats that they've got 2/3rds of the data set to work through which I did).

I think that you may misunderstand the nature of the effort. Watts set up the rules for submitting data but he isn't personally going around and looking at all the sites. Individuals are volunteering for this and the raw data, including site photographs, are submitted by those individuals. All the data is kept in the open so anybody can offer corrections and the site maintainers are told what's going on and how to check that the audit was fair to their particular site. Nobody is complaining that their site was given a raw deal and since the data is turning out so bad for the USHCN, you can bet that sites have an interest in making sure that they're not being misrepresented. The page you might have missed that explains all this is here. Specifically rule 3:

Clearly state that pictures of their site, any diagrams of their site, and the survey form will be on a publicly accessible website. Ask them if they wish to have their approval of any pictures, diagrams or survey form which will be posted on the website.

Thus editorial review of the data is offered to every USHCN site maintainer as part of the standard data gathering procedure for this project. Of course, these are the only people who reasonably could catch a misrepresentation because nobody, but nobody has done this before. I can't imagine a better procedure, can you? It is certainly more thorough than any normal academic journal peer review where you might only have 3 reviewers. This data has had 400+ who have either actually reviewed it or have the opportunity to cry foul and get better data in at any time.

Besides the reliability of the source (publicly available data with editorial checking by site maintainers who risk reputational and possibly financial loss if they allow sloppy reports about their site to go into the database) do you have any other objections? If not, I'm going to put this back up and move this conversation on the talk page to hopefully slow down the next fellow who will be in a revert mood. TMLutas 17:49, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

As for the reverting: As far as I see it, there is nothing useful to gain from the survey in its current state. If an edit has no useful substance, it's pointless to bend over backwards to "improve" it. UHI has been analysed in several peer-reviewed papers, and has been found to be essentially insignificant for the global temperature record in all of them. Watt's effort is interesting, but its done by non-experts, not peer reviewed, and incomplete. As you may know, we don't accept Wikis as sources, and are very reluctant about blogs. So "all the data is kept in the open so anybody can offer corrections" is not an argument (even assuming this is so - how do you know that it is in the open? There is no independent oversight...I don't claim they hold something back, but we just have no way of knowing). And your speculation about what station maintainers could, should, or would do is exactly original research. There were other problems with your edit - e.g. a classical case of WP:WEASEL, but as long as there is no reliable source about this project, there is no point in working on this. --Stephan Schulz 23:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you're being a bit harsh in your standards for evidence. Nobody else has actually done a physical review of the stations to look for UHI. This is the first and thus it's very significant that an open data collection process is finding very different results than all the statistical correction models. And it's not about bending over backwards. You went straight to the revert tool which is not the way things are supposed to go. At the very least, you should have opened something up in Talk.

Academic journal peer review in this case is a crock. The only meaningful review of a survey form, pictures, and diagrams is by someone else with personal knowledge of the instrument site who can provide a meaningful correction. That's baked into the design and I've already shown you where it is. For you to subsequently wave around the phrase "peer review" as if it would somehow provide something superior to the current system (where the current system has insufficient independent oversight yet adding 3 busy scientists to review the data for a few weeks would somehow make it worthy of wikipedia) is just mind boggling. Peer review is useful because you usually can't get 1200+ people to review your data. You can keep repeating "no independent oversight" and "not peer reviewed" but that doesn't make it true.

We know they keep their data in the open because there's a database you can hit from your internet connected computer and *get the data yourself*. Their openness does not depend on your willingness to look.

As for WP:WEASEL Did you look at the first revert? It was a claim that I wasn't being weaselly enough. Preliminary data was showing this trend for quite some time. At a certain point of completion, the writing's on the wall and we should mention it even in advance of publishing in a journal. 400+ stations are done. The trend is holding. We have an unbelievably bad set of stations that everybody has been assuming were very good. By unbelievably bad I mean that the station induced error (according to CRN standards) exceeds computed global warming for a strong majority of the network. So much of what we think we know about global warming depends on that station data. It's a major change if that data comes under a cloud and it's worth mentioning it already. If zero other stations are bad in the entire country (doubtful) we still have a large number of stations that are bad. TMLutas 02:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Being the first study is not a quality indicator at all. If it is not reliable, there is no value in it.

You misunderstand the purpose of peer review. It will not review each individual data point, but the procedure and the overall synthesis. A good reviewer wold e.g. insist that the "2 degrees" error is described appropriately - is it the average error? the maximum error? the range of error? is it a systematic bias or a random error? what is the influence on the national temperature record? and on the global one? As you may or may not know, it is very easy to get a good signal from a large number of noisy sources if the noise is reasonably well-behaved. None of these issues is addressed. They might also ask for a random control sample evaluated by specialists to see how good it matches the volunteer effort.

I cannot follow your argument about weaseliness. The first revert complained about WP:WEIGHT. And as long as there is no clear description of what the CRN error means, there is no way to figure out what influence this measure has. Since studies done on the actual data show no serious overall influence of the UHI, the assuption is that the error is either random or occurs very rarely (i.e. there are some reaonaby rare conditions where it occurs) and thus is not relevant for the overall record.

Anyways, since there now seems to be a discussion on talk: global warming, I suggest we continue this (if you want it continued) there - that't where it would have belonged in the first place. --Stephan Schulz 15:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

replying over there TMLutas 21:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Revert of my addition to Global warming controversy

You have removed my addition of a link to and description of a recent not yet published reply by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen because of (Rv. This reply is self-published, see WP:SPS. As long as it's not properly published, it is not reliable - it has not been peer-reviewed, and it is unlikely to attract a formal response)

According to WP:SPS, Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so.

I think that all these criteria have been met here. S&F-C have published before and are now adding new evidence. I think I exerted the required caution, and I think the information is worth reporting given the significance that is usually attributed to the Lockwood and Fröhlich paper.

Further, I don't understand your expectation that "it is unlikely to attract a formal response". Replies are a standard form of publication in peer-review journals, this reply is prepared as a formal reply, and if it gets accepted in PRSA, the authors of the paper concerned may be given occasion for a response if they in turn have something to say which reviewers can accept.

I would therefore welcome if you revert your deletion of my contribution and perhaps edit it further if you still have some issues with parts of it.

N.Nahber 19:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Since there is an active discussion on talk:global warming, I'll reply there. In general, if you plan to discuss the topic on the original talk page, there is no need for a long statement here - I'll typically watch the page. If don't reply there, a short pointer is sufficient. --Stephan Schulz 21:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

To say it is unpublished a little misleading, because I reckon it's published by the DNSC. It is, however, in all likelihood, not peer-reviewed. ~ UBeR 19:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say it was unpublished - I wrote it was not "properly published", i.e. not published in the sense that it is part of the scientific literature proper. Technical reports an similar documents from universities and research institutes are typically published without editorial or peer review. --Stephan Schulz 21:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Right. That comment wasn't directed towards you or anyone in particular--just those who have stated it is unpublished, which there have been. ~ UBeR 23:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Third opinion

Hello Stephen,

Sorry to have entered my request for a 3rd party opinion in the wrong format. I am not experience with Hyper Markup Language,, or Wikipedia Markup.

For entering my request for a 3rd party opinion, can you provide me a wikipedia link to an ACTUAL page where I can copy the format of the "request for a 3rd party opinion" and just change the wording.

I greatly appreciate your help and feedback.

Sincerely,

Steve Ross Stevejross 22:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ross! There is no fixed format. But there are a couple of requirements (as described on that page):

1. Make sure there are oly two participants.
2. Provide a concise and neutral description of the disagreement.
3. Sign with five tildes (~~~~~) to add the date without your name. This is important to maintain neutrality.

For more, see Wikipedia:Third opinion, and in particular the example in the box just above the Active disagreements header. However, from what I can make out from Talk:UST Global, there are 3-4 participants to the dispute, so it is not suitable for WP:Third opinion. Anyways, looking over the mess, I will bring it to the attention of WP:COI, as both you and User: Chella123 seem to have a conflict of interest there. --Stephan Schulz 23:22, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Question - Cannot Find Your Link that discussed "Bad Sources"

Dear Stephen,

In your edit today of [27], your Edit Summary said:

- "Discuss on Talk why sources are bad"

Question - I cannot find where you placed your comments re: bad sources. I've looked on the UST Global discussion page, your discussion page, and my talk page.

1) Thank you for letting me know where your comments are. 2) What, in your opinion is required for me to keep the post that shows I was the founder of the company? I notice in your revert, that you did not re-post that Stephen Ross is a founder.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Sincerely,

Steve Ross Stevejross 14:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Steve! Please let me say first that I don't know anything about the company at all, and I have no particular interest in this topic. I've reverted Chella123's edit because by now it is clear that (s)he edits in conflict with our conflict of interest policy and because the sources given seem to be plausible, i.e. my edit was from apurely from a procedural motivation. Since you also have a certain conflict of interest, you should be very careful when editing the article. Read and follow WP:NPOV, our neutral point of view policy, and use and reference reliable sources for your edits. See WP:V and WP:RS for a discussion of sources and sourcing. If you have a legally binding verdict online, as I think I saw you claimed, that would be a very good source. --Stephan Schulz 15:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Rv., misleading. Most _industrialized_ countries have, and they generate most CO2

Keep in mind that the statement you reverted was for currently accepted obligations. If all industrialized countries had accepted kyoto treaty obligations then most of the worlds emissions would indeed be in countries that had accepted treaty obligations to reduce CO2 emissions. However in addition to the entire world that doesn't get labeled as "industrialized" including such industrial powerhouses as India and China the US is a very large portion of the industrialized emissions and it and and a couple smaller industrialized countries have not accepted any obligations either. Currently, as of 2007 most of the world's CO2 emissions occur in countries whose governments have accepted no treaty obligations whatsoever to control their CO2 emissions.Zebulin 21:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you have source for your claim (in the last sentence)? I also asked for further clarification on your talk page. ~ UBeR 22:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Over 60% of industrialized country emissions are from countries which have agreed to restriction. And nearly all industrialized countries have agreed to restrictions. China, India, the US and Australia are the only major emitters who have not. I have no source for the percentage of total emissions from restricted countries, but your statement is at least incomplete. --Stephan Schulz 22:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

would you accept the contribution I made with a source that shows that the countries that have ratified a treaty controlling their CO2 emissions contribute less than half of the global CO2 emissions?Zebulin 22:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern.

Yes, I am aware of the 3 revert rule. I believe if you check my edits I have not reverted any other editors changes in whole or in part more than the 3 times allowed. In fact if you take the time to inspect the flow of the edits and the actual changes you will find there I have been very respectful of others changes and have provided justifications for my actions in the talk page. The majority of my edits are changes to try and find common ground wording for my points. Please feel free to contact me again if you have any additional concerns.

--GoRight 22:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

No problem. However, I have some experience with WP:3RR, and I am fairly certain that most admins would interprete all the following as reverts, even if you sometimes try to accomodate others remarks (which I appreciate):

1. Readding material deleted by another user
2. Readd the same material once more
3. Readded a slightly different version of the same material
4. ...and again
5. partially undid another edit

The best way to avoid this situation is usually to discuss these topics on the talk page first. --Stephan Schulz 22:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for the delay in a response but as you surmised I would be, I was blocked. I don't believe that my edits were a true violation but it is the admins whose opinions count as you know.

With respect to characterizing the positions of the RealClimate scientists as being pro-AGW you may be interested to know that I asked them directly on their site and received the following response. I interpret this response to agree with my proposition but I am likewise asking William M. Connolley to also weigh in on this point.

In your opinion, would the direct response on the RealClimate site as well as any response provided by Mr Connolley (assuming he concurs) satisfy the requirements of WP:RS?

--GoRight 20:17, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about the 3RR issue. You might want to spend some time at WP:AN/3RR to get a better understanding about the standards applied.

As you can see for yourself, no-one has made the statement you want to reference. I also think a blog comment, even on a blog where the posted stories are reliable, is a fairly lousy source. And finally, I don't see any benefit in mentioning this at all - it's exactly what you would expect from a group of climate scientists, its not relevant to the issue, and whoever wants to know more about RC can just click the link. --Stephan Schulz 21:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

As you can see for yourself, no-one has made the statement you want to reference. What are you talking about, I have a direct response from the very people we are discussing and you don't consider that to be credible? How much more credible can you get? The issue isn't where it was hosted, the issue is the credibility of the source, in this case the individuals in question. Direct from the authors of RealClimate. At any rate it may be moot because the statement I was concerned about has been removed by someone else.

I am curious, would you make the same claim about editors who seek to discredit people by referring to them as "skeptics" and even worse "deniers" in an attempt to equate them with Holocaust deniers?

--GoRight 21:34, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

You are aware that RC is not operated by a hive mind, but by independent scientists from various instituions and from various countries in the world? I wouldn't be suprised if several of them have never met. David wrote (emphasis added): "I think we all buy the argument that the warming of the past decades was caused rising CO2 concentrations" and William writes "I don't speak for RC, of course". Being called a sceptical is not discrediting at all, its the mark of a good scientist. Yes, we insist on good sources for all sides of the debate. You mght want to check the various discussions about Pielke on Talk:List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming (several of which are probably in the archives by now). --Stephan Schulz 22:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

(Resetting Indent)

OMG, that's hilarious stuff. People are fighting to keep scientists off the skeptics list! Connolley goes way out of his way to try and take Pielke off the list. Some might consider this to be professional courtesy but I am not at all convinced it is such. I see it more as trying to dwindle the list of skeptics as much as possible in support of the "consensus view". Maybe I'm just cynical in this regard.

I was aware of Pielke already. I have visited his site. Contrary to what you might think, my motives are not at all sinister. I just see so much of the discussion from the pro-AGW side as being so much mischaracterization, and from people who are ostensibly supposed to be objective and educated and know better. So I seek to challenge that where I perceive it.

Of course I know that the contributers at RealClimate are not of a hive mind. They are in different disciplines and such, but from the perspective of AGW I doubt that there is a "skeptic" or "denier" among them. Note that none of them are on the list you referenced above. THAT's the point, nothing more. I also understand that being critical and skeptical makes for good science, and that TOO is my overall point. Just because someone is critical of the IPCC viewpoint doesn't make them any less rigorous or scientific. Yet when people characterize them in negative terms by calling them "skeptics" and "deniers" or question their funding sources the intent is very clearly to discredit them with such associations, and THAT is the part of the pro-AGW agenda that I find so disgusting. It is inherently being intellectually dishonest, IMHO. Are you honestly of the opinion that when people are referring to these people as "skeptics" and "deniers" that they mean it in a good way? I guess that could be the case but for the lay people it will not be understood that way. And I think people in the scientific community should acknowledge that.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to share your views.

--GoRight 23:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Regarding this edit

I just fell in love with you. Please, may I have your babies? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 23:01, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have any yet. And I think society would expect me to keep them, anyways. But thanks for the sentiment. --Stephan Schulz 23:07, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which

Please do not engage Callmebc on his talk page. It was unprotected for a limited purpose, which was not to continue a content dispute. Thank you. -- But|seriously|folks  02:55, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the point (and you probaby have noticed that I have not discussed content issues). But since I was the unprotecting admin, do you really think I have to be told why it was unprotected? ;-) --Stephan Schulz 08:34, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Few vs. some

Although I really don't care much about how this is worded, I have to say that I particularly enjoyed your most recent comment in this discussion. :) I was even more impressed when I discovered that German is your native tongue! Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:25, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll join into the choir here. I almost choked on my coffee from laughing. --Kim D. Petersen 13:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I can't stand a bad argument, whether for or against my position. And by now I have probably read more English than German texts, so I am reasonably fluent in either language. You should hear my accent, though ;-). --Stephan Schulz 15:15, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

What an honor...

... to be featured as the quote of the day on your userpage. I never win anything! MastCell ^Talk 00:16, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

And in fact, I even created that section for you! ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:21, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Cbrown1023 talk 18:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

AIT:Talk

I see that you have been busy while I was away.

I must formally ask you to stop censoring the discussion on the AIT page. The content you deleted is valid material for discussing on the AIT article. If you don't wish to participate in that discussion then feel free to refrain from doing so. Others are free to discuss matters without your participation and you do not have any right to squash this discussion. I intend to escalate this matter if you persist.

--GoRight (talk) 04:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You might want to learn about censorship. Anyways, I have no interest in suppressing the discussion, but I think it is better to have it in just one place. Indeed, I think duplicating it is rather pointy. And it seems as if several other editors share my concern, including the uninvolved admin at 3RR. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You are, of course, ignoring KDP's request that we discuss AIT on the AIT talk page and TGGWS on the TGGWS page. Are her concerns no longer concerns for some reason?

The fact that ElHector was blocked for violating the 3RR is no indication of agreement with your position either way. The block was not in support of your edit but rather in support the the stated policy.

Per the request of KDP and I assume others, we are asked to keep the discussions separate. Since the data in question is applicable to the discussions on each page it should appear on each page. Please stop censoring the AIT talk page as deleting the text is, in fact, the equivalent of burning books as shown in your censorship link. --GoRight (talk) 16:36, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

To quote myself: "I can't stop laughing". You might want to try the Guiness Book of Records in the category of "most hyperbole". Indeed, I agree with Kim (who, as I already pointed out to you, is male). It's you who tries to draw a unsuitable analogy between the two movies and articles. If you want to call AIT controversial, find reliable (and notable) sources you can attribute that opinion to. If you want to claim that TGGWS is uncontroversial, refute the sources who say otherwise. What you are doing is a classical case of original research - you yourself are trying to draw the conclusion that either both should be called controversial, or neither. Well, that's not how Wikipedia works. See e.g. WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. If you cannot make your case for each article independently, you have no case. Your (rather pointless) googling is not useful. Spamming it over two pages just means any discussion of it has to be duplicated or incomplete. I don't know if you want that - I don't. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:01, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I stand corrected on the gender of KDP. If you mentioned it earlier I missed it.

You know as well as I do that having a good reference to state that AIT is controversial, or even a list of such references, is insufficient because KDP will simply claim WP:WEIGHT which brings us directly back to this data.

For example, the Federal Way School District incident discusses the film as being controversial, as does the High Court Case. You are familiar with both. We have solid references for both. Yet you (collectively) won't allow me to add the word controversial in the summary. So how is your suggestion relevant to resolving this dispute? --GoRight (talk) 17:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

A minority at Federal Way called it controversial (thats why it was overturned). And in both cases the controversy is/was over the showing to children. Saving Private Ryan is not controversial - but if it was to be shown to my 7 yo child - then i can assure you that it would be a controversial decision. (and one i'd fight). This has been pointed out before. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The fact that it was reversed doesn't alter the fact that it occurred nor alter the fact that the film being "controversial" was sited as the reason for the (temporary) ban. I fail to see how your point negates these facts. Now, if you intend this to be a WP:WEIGHT argument against inclusion well I anticipated as much above which brings us back to finding some object way of assessing WP:WEIGHT which is what the Google data attempts to do in an objective way. I have stated that if other more objective or credible forms of data can be used to support your WP:WEIGHT complaint that I would be happy to consider those as an alternative. Thus far no such alternatives have been proposed.

You may have pointed out something similar to the Private Ryan example above but that does not mean that I automatically accept your assertion, with all due respect. Something becomes "controversial" when there is "controversy" directly associated with it in some way. In the case of Private Ryan, since they have not tried to show it to your child, the film is not (yet) controversial. If they tried to show the film to your child and you fought that showing then the film would "become" controversial by virtue of its having raised a "controversy". As you point out, the "decision" to show the film would also "become" controversial at the point that you objected, not before. --GoRight (talk) 19:35, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You fail to grasp the argument. Private Ryan would never become a "controversial film" - even to my eyes if it were to be shown to my daughter. The decision to show it would be controversial. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

With all do respect, I do grasp the argument I simply reject it as vacuous. When you complain about a particular film being shown to students it makes BOTH the decision AND the film "controversial". Neither the film nor the decision would have been considered "controversial" before you complained. The film may have been shown for years without objection and during that time no one would categorize either as being "controversial", but AFTER you complain BOTH the film AND the decision can rightly be termed "controversial". --GoRight (talk) 21:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Clearly the film is controversial in some sense of the word. However, it being controversial is not a salient enough aspect for it to be in the opening sentence. Unlike the TGGWS, AIT was not primarily designed to be controversial. It was designed to educate and to entertain. Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I can appreciate your stance given your views and those with whom you generally agree. Can you accept that I, in good faith, don't agree? Your point too essentially boils down to a WP:WEIGHT argument. What is the relevant difference between "weight" and "salience" in this context? How are to we gauge the "salience" of this point objectively so as to avoid the subjective argument here? What objective bar must I surpass to convince you?

Given your numbers, whether you intend to use such to stifle the minority or not, your view is clearly reflected in the current text and, in some sense, reflects the consensus. I merely seek to change the consensus through discussion and objective data. If I fail then the text will remain as it is. --GoRight (talk) 19:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I can accept that you, in good faith don't agree, and you're right that it basically boils down to WP:WEIGHT. What your table fails to capture is that there are 2 components to weight: (1) the weight of the item in question, and (2) the weight of everything else. In the case of TGGWS, the controversy is a big part of what it is, because that's what it's about. In the case of AIT, there is a lot of other material there besides the controversy. So, even if they have the same level of controversy, the controversy is not as proportionally important to AIT as it is to TGGWS. I have no intent to "stifle the minority", and the controversy you're talking about is discussed in the AIT article, so it's hardly stifled. It's just not in the first sentence, as it is not a defining quality of AIT. Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that you were trying to stifle anything, but for the record the "stifling" comment was more about what appears in the article itself than in the discussion page. No one other than wikipedians tend to read the talk pages.

Of all the arguments thrown back at me on this point, your argument on the proportionality aspect of WP:WEIGHT seems to have the most merit, IMHO. KDP's arguments have alluded to this in some ways, I guess, but this is a good crystallization of the point.

On the other hand I wasn't meaning to imply that the appropriate objective measure would be some absolute count of objectors, but rather the percentage of such as a portion of the whole. The Google queries clearly draw this out by discussing the percentages of the hits which were controversy-related vs. not, correct? So if 10% of the discussion on TGGWS is of the "controversy" type but 15% of the discussion of AIT is of the "controversy" type, how is it fair to call TGGWS "controversial", given these figures, and AIT not? (I am just using the numbers as examples, I know you contest their validity.) Does this not directly address your point though? --GoRight (talk) 21:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Talk:New York class battleship

Just letting you know if you don't watch the page that I've replied to your question there. -MBK₀₀₄ 19:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I do watch it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Found an image that reasonably shows what you're looking for: Image:USS Texas-5.jpg -MBK₀₀₄ 18:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Found another image: Image:USS Texas-6.jpg -MBK₀₀₄ 21:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

"Baby kissing"

Actually, I had the same reaction when I wrote the statement. I was very close to taking out the last part. The only thing that saved it was that I really couldn't think of anything else to say there that wasn't even more saccharin. In this case it also had the rare advantage of being a genuine sentiment. Running for ArbCom is unfortunately political; I do hope it never devolves to the point where we actually need to do baby-kissing to run. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:27, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with most of the last paragraph. It's the last sentence that looks a bit too much like speech-writer material. But anyways, I voted for you - and I find the Durova drama of the opposition rather overblown. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to take that

''I see a good case for WP:DICK..."

I'm responding here as opposed to the talk page, since I'm not actually talking about the article, just about your response. Are you saying I'm being a dick? Note I'm not sensitive enough to object to the word in this context, just that I didn't think I was being one.
CygnetSaIad (talk) 00:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd say you are in danger of becoming one. Whenever someone on Wikipedia demands to see "the exact piece of policy" that applies, he is missing the point. Wikipedia is not about the policies. From Wikilawyering to WP:DICK is only a small step. If you want to argue for inclusion of the name, do so on the merits. Don't debate policy. If, on the other hand, you don't want to argue for the inclusion, let it be. You are wasting time. --Stephan Schulz 01:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for that clarification. I'll return any further response to the article talk page. - CygnetSaIad (talk) 01:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc

I've started a discussion about unblocking Callmebc, per a discussion I've had via email with him. There's a thread here which you, as a blocking admin, might want some input in. --08:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC) --Haemo (talk) 08:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I only blocked him for an hour for WP:3RR, but I'll check it out. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Wishing you the very best for the season - Guettarda 05:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! All good wishes to you, as well. I'll be online only rather sporadically for the next days, but I'll be back full-scale in January. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:13, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Belated Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year William M. Connolley (talk)

Who?

(copied from Talk:Global Warming) So how many qualified scientists does it take for Wikipedia to stop its political slant on this topic and start reporting it as a controversial topic? Here is a reference to an open letter signed by 100 eminent scientists who state that humans are having no effect on global warming: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002 Is 100 eminent scientists a large enough group to have any impact on the politics of this issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.124.129.34 (talk) 19:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Check the discussion here. In short, several of the signatories are not scientists at all, very few are either eminent or climate scientists, and at least one is plain nuts. Most of the list is recycled, anyways. Ball does not become more competent if he repeats the same nonsense a hundred times. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:43, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Just wondering who you were refering to when you said someone was plain nuts. After reading a bit too much depressing talk from some deniers I need something to cheer me up and reading about some denier who is a bit nuts should do the trick :-) Nil Einne (talk) 16:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Louis Hissink. Google is cooperative. Try the Deltoid link first... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:51, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I certainly sympathize with Nil Einne, though for me the depression is elicited by the multitude of Chicken Little's going around screaming that the sky is warming and we're to blame. I quickly get happy again though, as I remember when I was in high school they told us (in textbooks, no less) that we were headed for a "new Ice Age". Haha.

I didn't find anything about him being "nuts", as a matter-of-fact a search for "Louis Hissink is nuts" yielded nothing.

What I did find was this: "Louis Hissink (MSc, Macquarie University) is a consulting diamond geologist... Louis was recently made Editor of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists Newsletter."

He's crazy alright, crazy like a fox. Supertheman ^(talk) 00:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Bluemarine

Bluemarine (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is editing outside his unblock conditions. diff of post to Arb clerks NB. R. Baley (talk) 09:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. But as an involved user, I probably would not have reblocked him anyways. But someone else took care of this. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Re: Waterboarding

Hello. I'm sorry our paths have crossed at such a contentious article. After the last full protection, I made an agreement that if the article became unprotected again and there was renewed edit warring, I would step in as an uninvolved admin. I spoke with several other admins and we (sorry for the pronoun) agreed that a 1RR approach would be best, falling in line with other similarly hotly-disputed articles. I rarely step into the mud fights that consume a good deal of our most popular articles, however, I felt I could help here.

I know that the tone I used in my post wasn't the nicest, but frankly, it wasn't intended to sound nice. The way I see it: either we can try 1RR for a while and hopefully stop this edit warring and drama, or we can watch the article be dragged to ArbCom. In my view, it's an ugly situation that needs clean hands.

If you have any further comments or questions for me, feel free to leave them here or on my talk page. (I'll be avoiding Talk:Waterboarding as much as possible to avoid any conflicts of interest or the appearance of bias with regard to the article.) Again, I apologize that we met on such a sour note; I look forward to moving forward and hopefully (soon?) moving past this edit war and on to something brighter. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello back! Sorry for my tone as well - I tend to react badly to rules imposed "from above". I understand what you want to do, and while skeptical that it will work, I'm happy to let you try. And I quite understand why you want to avoid that page - I stumbled upon it as "an uninvolved admin" 3 days ago, and its not pleasant. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Scharnhorst & Gneisenau

The battleship/ battlecruiser debate has reopened. You may want to join in, again. Folks at 137 (talk) 18:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I have opened an RfC on whether to refer to these ships as battleships or battlecruisers. Since you have participated in this debate previously, please have a look, read the debate, and make your views known: Talk:Scharnhorst_class_battlecruiser#Request_for_Comment:_Battleships_or_Battlecruisers.3F Regards, The Land (talk) 18:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. My comment is over there. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Limnor

Hi,

I need some objective views on the Limnor article. Please see the talk and history pages: User:ESOK has a different opinion than I do about what should and what should not be on a computer language page.

Thanks, --Slashme (talk) 09:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You really take the biscuit

Stephan,

I don't know which planet you are on but if you continue to revert answers to simple questions like "why isn't there any mention of peak oil" then I will report you for your utter contempt for wikipedia rules.

It is a very valid question, and it deserves a full explanation as to why this subject was ruthlessly censored by people like you! 88.111.89.46 (talk) 00:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

• Speaking of contempt of rules, you're obviously not a new editor, you're evading a block/ban, and you're willfully and repeatedly violating WP:TPG to boot. I've blocked this particular dynamic IP for a bit. MastCell ^Talk 00:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
• You're welcome to ask questions about the inclusion of peak oil if you manage to do so without personal attacks. And as you claim to have asked this before, I assume you followed the discussion that carefully ad in quite some detail explained why it is not included. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:47, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Neo-Nazism

Look, you don't seem to understand, almost every single historian listed in that article on the Holocaust, is Jewish, therefore, the article should report that. If you want to remove the leading Jewish historians remark, then cite a bunch of non-Jewish historians. And the first source User:Cberlet has cited,[28] doesn't mention anything about volkish integralism. He's just making things up. Try searching through the entire book after volkish/völkish, you won't find anything about neo-Nazis trying to revive völkish movements and that being defined as a way of reviving neo-Nazism. Have you verified the Encyclopedia Judaica over any volkish claims? If not, don't restore it, because this is just Chip Berlet trying to promote himself here on Wikipedia. — EliasAlucard (Discussion · contribs) 00:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Look, you don't seem to understand, almost every single historian listed in that article on the Holocaust, is Jewish, therefore, the article should report that. If you want to remove the leading Jewish historians remark, then cite a bunch of non-Jewish historians. - this is an obvious case of WP:SYN. All serious historians agree about the basics and the approximate toll of the Holocaust. If you want to make a positive claim, find a source. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

If there's an abundance of non-Jewish historians regarding the Holocaust, it shouldn't be a problem for you to cite them. The Volkish thing however, is not found in any of the sources Berlet has listed so far. — EliasAlucard (Discussion · contribs) 01:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Reliable sources

Stephen thank you for your note, and I completely agree. At times it is difficult to seperate works by an "advocacy" group, versus works by an "extremist" group. The difference can come down to POV-pushing, and contrariwise, that claim can be advanced by POV-pushers against others. I try to avoid that level of specificity, those claims are *best* handled by the experts in that area of study. I just try to interpret what our policy/guidelines say in a general way. Then the editors can continue their fight on-article :) Have a great day.Wjhonson (talk) 07:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

My essay

Which part of my essay do you regard as "badly thought"? *Dan T.* (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It's full of bad-faith assumptions, unlikely and misleading interpretations, and plain nonsense. Just a few pickings:

• Assuming "a clique of high-ranking Wikipedia administrators and their hangers-on"
• Claiming "critics who are coming fast and furiously" when indeed they are at best a storm in a tea cup
• Introducing guilt by association via the spurious comparison to an (alleged) Singapore event
• Confusing off- and on-Wiki harassment
• Badly misrepresenting both the actions and comments in the "harassment example" list
• Trying to invoke the Galileo meme n a completely spurious comparison

...

That will be EUR 75 for half an hour of my service. If you have to pay in US$, I'll give you a 10% pity bonus. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How much in Iraqi dinars? *Dan T.* (talk) 00:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Crete

Thank you for your suggestion, but I would like to point out that I have tried that approach already. I added an explanation to the talk page the first time User:Kurt Leyman reverted my edits, but so far he (or she) has not felt obliged to discuss the issue. If you find it necessary to protect the "wrong version", that's your problem. R. A. Hicks (talk) 10:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Just for your information, I added an equivalent message to Kurt's page. And you should read m:The Wrong Version. There is no right version for protection. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

My point is that if there is not a "right version", why should you threaten to protect the page? R. A. Hicks (talk) 11:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Please protect the page and get these two talking constructively. There's quite a pointless edit war going on, and currently Kurt Leyman's version has the same photo displayed twice in the article. He has a tendency to get into these pointless edit wars IMHO, does not use talk pages extensively, and reverts attempts at discussion on his own talk page. Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Reference Desk Barnstar
		Thank you for your reply to my query at the Science Reference Desk regarding the History of Quantum Mechanics. Your contribution to the discussion was insightful, and helped me find the answers I was looking for. Thanks! FusionKnight (talk) 19:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I'll put it up on my user page with the other awards! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

My Rfa

Well, not this time anyway it seems...my effort to regain my adminship was unsuccessful, but your support was still very much appreciated. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Thank you!--MONGO 07:22, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, better luck next time. Go gain some more experience. People probably think you have too few edits in the talk:template namespace to be a serious candidate ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your timely revert.

I am speaking of the Npov tag on the Holocaust denial article. I am glad you are still watching that article. Please keep watching that if you can. And thanks again. : Albion moonlight (talk) 19:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

No problem. My watchlist is too long, but some things have priority. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:48, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

ASEOR 2 ...

gets all the content he has been adding from this source. He is simply on a POV-pushing campaign to put the unfounded theories from this video into articles. There is nothing else going on here. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That's how I see things, yes. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:10, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hi. A little back, after a Talk page discussion, I placed this graph on Global Warming with "Relative weight of warming/cooling radiative forcing components as estimated by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" as the description, and I had given some thought to have the description clear and brief for non-experts. But that was later changed by UBeR (while I was blocked) to "The radiative forcing in 2005 relative to 1750 as estimated by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report," but I think this description is not as informative, if not being outright cryptic, for a typical user of Wikipedia articles for this type of subject. I had created a new Talk page section proposing changing the wording back to its original, and asked for comments. Only UBeR responded a couple of days later with just I like my wording, actually. I asked him to explain that but he didn't and after a couple of more days, I finally changed the wording back to the original. He then almost immediately reverted me. I reverted back and explained on his talk page how he had ample opportunity to comment before hand but didn't. But he only reverted again, and appears not to want to get into a serious discussion. I have to avoid even a hint of getting into a revert war (which he knows all about), so I'm just requesting some other GW regulars to stop by and offer an opinion on the wording if they have one. Thanks in advance. -BC aka Callmebc (talk) 16:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi BC. I think the problem is that your caption is wrong, an UBeR's is, if not optimal, at least right. The diagram does not show the relative weight, but rather absolute values (in W/m^2) of the radiative forcing. I'm not opposed to a more descriptive version, but being correct is more important than being convenient. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're looking for descriptiveness, I think William M. Connolley's version does a disservice (even compared to my caption). I encourage you join the discussion in at least perhaps suggesting a comprise text that can be both descriptive and correct! Cheers, ~ UBeR (talk) 03:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

A majority (but no consensus) support diacrits

Hi Stephan. I'm not exactly sure why you reverted my edit. Latin alphabet does not use diacritics either, but it seemed logical to me that the Use English policy would refer to the English alphabet. As I pointed out in the edit note, the Latin alphabet is the alphabet used in the Latin Language, which is the official language of the City state of Vatican. If you check the official language use for the 53 English language user countries, you will see that all state English as the official language and hence English alphabet. --mrg3105 (comms) If you're not taking any flak, you're not over the target. 13:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Mrg. If you check out Latin alphabet, you will see that this term is not restricted to the original Roman alphabet, but includes the close derivatives like German (with umlauts ä,Ü,...), French (with accents, á, û), Scandinavian (with ligatures æ, œ, and weird constructions I cannot even name like ø ;-). As the discussion in Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Disputed_issues shows, there is no consensus about this issue, and a majority seems to support the use of diacritics. Your edit would preclude this discussion, which is why I reverted it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, in that case Stephen the policy needs to be made more explicit. Derivatives are not part of the alphabet, which as everyone knows consists only of letters. It so happens that in the English alphabet there are no derivatives. Would you like me to start a vote on how many letters there are in the English (or Latin) alphabet? I would not want to embarrass you in this way.

The problem is not in the alphabet, but in the unwillingness of some editors to use English despite clear policy to do so. I am now in the position of having to learn Romanian, Polish, and a swag of other languages because I happen to write history of the Second World War on the Eastern Front in English. And yet there is absolutely no need for me to do so, nor for Wikipedia readers to face unfamiliar alphabets. There will always be exceptions, but not in the English alphabet use. Please reconsider undoing the edit. Cheers--mrg3105 (comms) If you're not taking any flak, you're not over the target. 14:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the misunderstanding, but ä, ø and so on are letters. The alphabets that use them are, as a whole, derived from the ancient Latin script, and are considered Latin alphabets. I know how many letters there are in the English alphabet, and I'm not easily embarrassed. Do you know how many letters there are in the original latin alphabet? As for your concern about names: Proper names cannot always be translated into other languages. Some names have well-known English translations (München/Munich or Bruxelles/Brussels come to mind) or transliterations (Beijing/Peking), others don't have them. In some cases we even use a transliteration of a translation of the original version ("Christ" is an example). Many place names, especially for smaller places, have no standard English version. If you work on Eastern European articles, you will have to deal with variant Latin scripts. What's so bad about some learning anyways? And no, you do not have to learn Polish (a language), just some simple letters.

Anyways, if you want the policy changed, the right place is not here, but on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English), where the community can chime in. I don't know if this will lead to another result than before, but it is the best venue. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you.--mrg3105 (comms) If you're not taking any flak, you're not over the target. 14:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Re. Conflict de-escalation

I agree, although I didn't say his edits were vandalism, just that he is being rude, and yelling. One thing I would like though is to leave my question intact on the XM8 talk page, which he keeps removing. He might be interpreting my question as "forumish", but the intention of the question is merely to get information on the current status of the XM8 so it can be added to the article. Malamockq (talk) 20:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suspect that everyone who watches this article has been aware of your discussion so far. So for the small chance of a random passer-by who happens to have just this information, you risk being drawn into a major edit war. If you think this discussion is important, may I suggest to stop reverting and instead state the question in an independent section that makes it clear that you are looking for sources (not opinions) on the topics? Maybe a section of "Possible improvements" with an item "Introduction" and a question "Does anybody have a source on the planned introduction in country X?" or "Does anybody have sources about which countries plan to introduce the weapon?" --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That sounds acceptable. Malamockq (talk) 20:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I restored the comment, since I disliked the edit comment. But refactoring as Stephan suggests would be good too William M. Connolley (talk) 22:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I have blocked User:Malamockq

Please see User_talk:Malamockq#31 hour block for incivility. In his response(s) Malamockq has suggested you are familiar with the background to this matter. I should be grateful if you would review my actions.

When I reviewed the case, following this request at ANI, I saw that Malamockq was making no effort to communicate with other editors, but was re-inserting inappropriate questions on an article talkpage and then making demands of those editors who were removing those edits. I found Malamockq uninterested in conducting civil dialogue, and issued the block to prevent the situation deteriorating.

Your thoughts are appreciated. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Less. I'm just back from snowboarding. With respect to this dispute, I'm not really involved very much. I just noticed a unusually aggressive dispute (without serious substance) between User:Malamockq and User: Asams10, and suggested de-escalation to both parties here and here. I also suggested to User:Malamockq, that if he insists on having his questions on the talk page, he should state them in a way that it is clear they are not idle discussions, but aim at procuring sources to improve the article (see above). It seems like he mistook William's revert as a license to continue the unproductive revert/needle/complain game, so I have no issue with the block. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:48, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. William M Connolly discussed it with me as well, but by the time it was decided the block was too strict it had elapsed. Malamockq didn't take kindly to being blocked, but such is the job. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Waterboarding RfM

A Request for Mediation has been filed on the Waterboarding article concerning the content dispute in the first six words of the article. You have been named as a party and your participation would be appreciated. I believe this is the best approach to an amicable resolution of the dispute. Please indicate your agreement here. Thank you. Neutral Good (talk) 20:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for mediation not accepted

A Request for Mediation to which you were are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the case subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Waterboarding. For the Mediation Committee, WjBscribe 17:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management.
If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

Trying this again

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Waterboarding 2, and indicate whether you agree or disagree to mediation. If you are unfamiliar with mediation on Wikipedia, please refer to Wikipedia:Mediation. Please note there is a seven-day time limit on all parties responding to the request with their agreement or disagreement to mediation. Thanks, Neutral Good (talk) 02:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		I award you this Barnstar for the fine reasoning you demonstrated here. Your efforts to maintain legitimate scholarship as it appears on Wikipedia and prevent its obfuscation are appreciated. Keep up the good work! Regards, WilliamH (talk) 21:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll put it up with the rest. Arguing Holocaust deniers does not require a lot of mental faculties, but it does require a certain degree tenaciousness. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:02, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Frank but true?

At the latest SA item you comment that the disputed language was "frank but true". Do you mean that if a statement is true, then it cannot be uncivil? Do you mean particularly that calling that paranormal researcher a "moron" was (a) true and (b) not uncivil? Would this apply to Ronz equally, so I can call him anything I like as long as its true? Would Connolley agree with you about this? Thanks Pete St.John (talk) 22:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist struck the "moron" comment awhile back. That was 3 WP:AE complaints ago (in other words, about 4 Earth days) - see old thread. The diff that sparked the latest complaint, and to which Stephan was presumably referring as "frank but true", is this one, in which SA shared his opinion on Tom Butler as a source for the article. That opinion was frank and uncomplimentary - but sources are often discussed in frank and uncomplimentary terms on article talk pages (I would suggest you look at Talk:Stephen Barrett and Talk:Quackwatch for some examples). I would not recommend you call anyone a moron. If you have done so, then I would recommend you retract the comment and apologize, as SA did. Sorry to butt in, but I hope that addresses your questions. MastCell ^Talk 23:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

SA did not call anybody a moron anyways. He made a conditional statement: "Almost everyone who believes in this stuff is basically a moron or an absolute wacko". I think that is a true statement. I don't think it is particularly diplomatic, but neither is it particularly uncivil. I think we need to be able to make statements like these on Wikipedia without being dragged to some sort of tribunal. Name calling, on the other hand, is usually uncivil. Assuming that you mean William Connolley, I have no idea what his opinion on this is. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I'm sceptical that it would be sufficient for me to say, "any editor who would make the edit Ronz just did must be a moron" without being flagged uncivil. Understand, I've said worse things about him and almost certainly will again, but I seem to be struggling with what seems a simplistic definition of uncivil. Pete St.John (talk) 20:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think your example is valid. In the original case it is a specific property that inherently marks people as "morons or absolute wackos", namely believe in electronic voice phenomenons, a idea that is obviously completely bogus. This is not an arbitrarily chosen property. "If you think dark-skinned people are inherently inferior, you're a racist" is not an insult, even if applied to, say, David Duke (whom, for the sake of argument, I'll assume has that belief). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

So closer would be, "any editor who made an edit such as Ronz just made...". So I can say, "Any editor who thinks that spamming user pages where he is unwelcome is a jerk; and anyone who thinks that behavior promotes consensus, is a moron; and anyone who defends such behaviour because they agree with the content, but not the rhetoric, is hypocritical and eristic." Better? Pete St.John (talk) 20:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

3RR

Thanks for your comment. I'm well aware of the rules of WP:3RR. As I'm sure you know, reverting vandalism is not subjected to that rule. The edit war on Slavic Peoples is the case of one user repeatedly removing well established concepts and facts for personal reasons. I fail to see how restoring that would breach 3RR. Cheers JdeJ (talk) 12:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:3RR has exceptions for obvious vandalism only. What you have is a content dispute. I think that you are right, and the IP is wrong (and would have reverted myself if you had not been faster), but that does not make the edits obvious vandalism, just annoying. I'm fairly certain that Admins at WP:AN/3RR will share this view. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I see your point of view and will refrain from further edits to the article. I do, however, still consider deleting verifiable content obvious vandalism.JdeJ (talk) 12:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Germany Invitation

Hello, Stephan Schulz! I'd like to call your attention to the WikiProject Germany and the German-speaking Wikipedians' notice board. I hope their links, sub-projects and discussions are interesting and even helpful to you. If not, I hope that new ones will be. Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany | watch Wikipedia:German-speaking Wikipedians' notice board | watch

--Zeitgespenst (talk) 00:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Why did you revert everything I had done, rather than undo the specific issue? Can you justify the use of [10] in the lead-in, when it doesn't even contain the words it is being used to source? That was among the things you flippantly tarred over. CreepyCrawly (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

There were three separate issues in your edit(s): Removal of the sourced "overwhelming", removal of the Oreskes paper, and the removal of "some". The Oreskes paper does show that the published opinion of scientists unanimously supports the IPCC position. The Royal Society makes a statement about climate scientists in general. Both are highly relevant. "Unanimous" in this case implies "overwhelming" - we don't have to match word for word syntactically. Anyways, this has been explained again and again by various editors on talk:global warming, which is the proper place for this discussion.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"...we don't have to match word for word syntactically."

Great, then you won't mind if I change it to some other word meaning "most."

And I wasn't here when you did your explaining, but it doesn't really matter, since I am not required to ask permission every time I want to make an edit here at Wikipedia, "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." I take that slogan to mean "me." And I take it to mean "edit," not "correct spelling mistakes and missing punctuation -- you know, the janitorial stuff -- while the big dogs do the hard stuff, like thinking and formulating sentences and building content.

I'm afraid new blood is going to keep infecting Wikipedia. Forever. CreepyCrawly (talk) 15:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Gatrfan/64.45.209.57

I strongly suspect that these two users are the same, and that Gatrfan changed to anon to circumvent 3RR. (based upon edithistory both edited Lockheed AC-130 on the same date). Should it be taken to checkuser - or do we wait for more? What is the procedure? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

We could do either, although they will probably tell us it's a case of WP:DUCK. My plan is to go sleep now and see what happens tomorrow ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Legal threats - Ben Muriithi

We have retracted the threats as you advised. We did not know that it is against the Wikipedia rules. We, however, still feel that the Ben Muriithi article should not be deleted for reasons of non notability as they are uninformed and ignorant. Thankyou, Kenyan lobby group on March 26th 2008 at 9.42 EST. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bmjmureithi (talk • contribs) 01:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Waterboarding

Look Steve, its really easy to settle this; call it something other than torture in the first sentence, and then you can say in the lead that 99% of people call it torture. That is NPOV, it is accurate to the sources that you have found where basically everyone says its torture, but without the article taking a position. And by doing that, and doing whatever other copyedits were requested by FAC, you are all set to get this to FA. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 15:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

See my latest edit. It allows some wiggle room - not all applications of a torture technique are automatically torture. As an example, mild forms of Strappado are popular in S&M play. "Interrogation technique" is not only euphemistic (especially in the "enhanced" variant), it is also wrong. Anyways, if you are interested in a longer debate, this should probably move to talk:waterboarding. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:15, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

If you are conceding 1% (I think it's much less) of people do not call waterboarding torture, it would be undue weight to not call it torture, per WP:NPOV. ~ UBeR (talk)

This article failed its FAC by a large margin because it is a form of interrogation that 99% of people say is torture. To call it torture right off the bat, as I have said before, is POV because it does not acknowledge there is any debate, it makes a judgement call. To say its interrogation, (true), and then 99% think its torture (also true) allows people to make up their own minds and does not propagandize. I appeal to you and others to accept the judgment of your FAC peers who are not idiots or ideologues, and know POV when we see it. This is a simple fix, does not compromise the truth, but puts it in a more encyclopedic way. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:52, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not interrogation, and this is not the right place to rehash that debate. Take it to talk:waterboarding, please. Thanks. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually the reason I wanted you to explain it is, since you seem to have an informed opinion, I was wondering if you could briefly explain your reason, not consensus reasoning. I'll post this question on the talk page. "My question is, if it's not interrogation, why would the CIA bother with it?" I'm glad you realize that NPOV, content disputes and AFD are opportunities for discussion and understanding one another, not a vote. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 23:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I withdrew the climate denial article deletion, your argument makes sense, and with some improvement and more balance, I believe it can be high quality. :) Judgesurreal777 (talk) 23:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo and Serbia

Kosovo state, is formally recognised from [29] 36 states, this is meaning Serbia old borders are not any more recognised from 36 states. No body cane recognised two states in same land. You must chanche the maps of Serbia. Corrently the Serbian State and Kosovo State LAW.

I don't have to do anything of that kind. Of course one can recognize two states on the same land, although that's pretty rare. I'm sorry, but half of what you write cannot be parsed. Whatever "law" you refer too, Serbian, Kosovar, or UN, Wikipedia is not bound by it. We do our best to write a neutral and useful encyclopedia. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Re - blocking (possible cause of updates not being visible?)

Hi Stephan, you kindly responded to my query to User talk:Raul654. Yes, I can log-in to edit, but there is another problem which may (or may not) be related; I made some major additions to Farnham (22:38, 26 March 2008) and then made a number of minor changes to tidy up the artcle. Since then I can only see the latest amendments when logged in and, it appears, others cannot see them at all! Could this have anything to do with my recent change of ISP from BT to Sky, and the resultant block? I wondered if you may be able to advise? And are you able to see the amendments from 26 to 31 March in the Farnham article, both whilst logged-in or not? Many thanks, Weydonian (talk) 14:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I see a lot of your recent edits, and they seem to stick. There is a possible reason: To minimize server load, anonymous users are shown a static, pre-rendered HTML version, while pages for logged-in users are always rendered on the fly, as they take the localized user interface and preferences into account. A static page may linger in the cache of your proxy server or web browser. Try refreshing the page (in Firefox, press the reload button and/or hit Ctrl-R). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I've tried refreshing the page, emptying all temporary data, etc, all the usual things, but Farnham still appears at its 26th March update, ignoring all edits since that date (unless logged-in). Could it be that the static version of which you speak has not been updated on the Wikipedia servers since 26th March? Weydonian (talk) 18:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

No, the static page will normally be rendered on each edit. However, proxy servers often do cache static pages a lot more aggressively. Do you use a proxy? Or rather, does your internet provider? I've checked Farnham both logged in and out, and get the current version, with your addition on Waverley Abbey, either way. That suggests a problem somewhere on your side. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Noticeboards

Please avoid posting to the 3RR noticeboard unless your post is directly related to 3RR. Many people have the noticeboard on their watchlist. You can continue discussion elsewhere, e.g. user talk pages. Thanks. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 12:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Point taken. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)