Terry Bollinger

Terry Bollinger 05:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC) - Nothing much to talk about yet!

Your article

I just tagged your article at Terry Bollinger with an 'importance' tag - it might be a good idea to get some credible references in there about you and your work; as it reads now, it doesn't really indicate notability as required under the biography requirements. Tony Fox 06:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting...

Hopefully you will see this; I'm still trying to get the hang of the interactions part of this. I didn't like the idea of adding to your discussion page until I find out if that is really the right way to do it.

I'm scratching my head a bit, but I believe I should qualify for a brief entry under:

... Published authors, editors and photographers who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work

and/or: ... engineers, and other professionals whose work is widely recognized (for better or worse) and likely to become a part of the enduring historical record of that field

Notable historical items? Publication of the report on U.S. DoD use of free and open source software, which very specifically derailed a multi-year DoD lobbying effort by a particular firm to get open source software banned outright in the U.S. DoD, and next (very likely) from the entire U.S. government and beyond. Some people were very, very unhappy with me about my report, and were not shy about it. On the positive side my name is now recognized by a fairly broad international community, including some folks in Ottawa to whom I still owe a promised class on dos and don'ts of government use of open source. Whatever else I may have done or not done, that report counted for something in the overall scheme of things. Terry Bollinger 07:11, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: Browncoat? Cool. Movie introduced me to the original series. Never got into Galactica, no big reason, just don't have much TV time.

Some notability stats

Goggle on "Terry B. Bollinger": 301 hits, 44 unique. All appear to be me.

Google on "Terry Bollinger": 988 hits, 299 unique. My best estimate is that about 280 or more of those are me. The first hit that is not me is hit number 48, which somewhat ironically happens to be on my Dad's deceased cousin, after whom I was named.

The current first five Google hits on "Terry Bollinger" are:

1. My personal web site
2. The Canadian/US Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK)
3. Wikipedia (the entry in question; it is clearly getting play)
4. O'Reilly
5. The DBLP list of publications by software engineering authors

About two months ago the above top-five list included a link from Bruce Schneier's blog pages regarding a very recent white paper of mine on quantum encryption.

I'm pretty sure that Eben Moglen, Bruce Schneier, and at least one or two U.S. Congressmen, as well as others, would vouch for my notability.

Those are appetizers. Googling on MITRE FOSS (no quotes) gives: 29,440 hits.

Minus a small number of hits on sites that somehow managed to discuss both religious hats and people named Foss on the same page, the above number is a pretty accurate upper limit for the number of international sites that link to, talk about, or quote from the report I wrote in 2003 on use of free and open source software in the US Department of Defense. The international variety is quite good.

Notably, the above hit number has continued to increase over time. In mid 2003, a few months after the report was posted on a U.S. DoD web site, the same hit count was at about 2,000. This 15-times growth in in hits over three years would seem to be a good argument that the relevance of my work should endure well over time.

What I still am not sure of is how any of the above translates into "credible references" for the actual text of what I wrote as a stub. Tony Fox, are you reading any of this? I'm still new at this. What kind of references am I supposed to be adding?

Terry Bollinger 22:55, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

A question about flag timing

Yesterday was the first time I've ever devoted a full day of personall time to adding information to articles in Wikipedia, specifically to the Fredericktown, Missouri, Bollinger County, Missouri, and George Frederick Bollinger. The information was extensive, I think fairly well written and organized, and based on personal and older reference materials (both geological and historical) to which I've had some fairly unique access. In short, I hope and like to believe these were worthwhile additions.

My question is this: After sitting unnoticed for months, was it a coincidence that my name site was flagged for importance literally as I was doing final saves on my first full day's worth of donations of text to Wikipedia? Or did I somehow do something that attracted attention?

If so, could someone please explain what it was I did?

Terry Bollinger 23:07, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Posting to other user talk pages is indeed the right way to get someone's attention around here - I forgot to watch this when I left last time, so good call there. I noticed your article after following it from the article you posted about one of your children, which I noticed while doing new page patrol; often, when an article is posted by a registered user that winds up being speedily deleted for not meeting notability, there may be other articles connected to it that need consideration. Basically, it was a simple coincidence that I wound up there.
The main concern I saw with your article was that the links you provided were either self-referential or as part of a group, but did not include any real outside sources giving substantial indications of notability. You mention meeting the published authors category of WP:BIO; if you can turn up and include some media references to specific reviews of your work, references to awards received, or other media coverage to affirm what you've mentioned above, then that should be just fine. It sounds like you have some links you can attach. (I'd also suggest that while you're at adding those links, you take a look at adjusting the style to better conform with other WP articles. The style manual can probably help with that. The way the article is now is kind of hard to follow.) Tony Fox 00:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, now that makes sense. The timing coincidence was on my side. My son came by as I was busily typing, and he didn't believe what I was telling him about how easy it is to make an entry in Wikipedia. I demonstrated by adding a factually correct one-liner about who he is. I then discovered an interesting point: The help pages don't seem to explain anywhere how to delete a page after creating it. I ended up simply removing all the text about a half hour later, but by that time it had already activated the rapid-response immune system of Wikipedia.

WikiPhages

I cannot help but think of the members of that rapid immune response team as WikiPhages. The idea, after all, is for them to provide an ultra-fast front line of defense for detecting and removing invasive, intrusive, terminally damaged, or otherwise flatly unacceptable pages before they can cause any real damage to the main Wikipedia corpus.

The existence of the WikiPhages -- whose existence, BTW, someone needs to mention to newbies a lot earlier in the Wikipedia intro pages -- was both surprising and fascinating to me. In free software, the self-correcting mechanisms are generally centralized around a core configuration control mechanism, and run by a small number of people who are generally extremely familiar with the overall design and structure of the (software) corpus. While that sounds impressive, it's actually quite limiting: there is no easy way to scale up the size of core-based free software self-corrective mechanisms. In contrast, the Wikipedia use of WikiPhages allows true scaling up to global sizes by training more people in how to recognize and deal with terminally damaged pages.

The WikiPhage function seems to have self-developed over the years; I don't recall it being there in the earlier years. I also note that back in those earlier years, the articles were awful as often or more often than they were good, so there is something very interesting going on here. My suspicion is that without both WikiPhages and other associated long-term Wikipedia immune responses (banning and such, based in part on the "antigen" signatures that the WikiPhages and others collect), the Wikipedia corpus was unable to reach a point of sufficient internal trust for it to function well. The emergence of the immune system then allowed the Wikipedia to move fairly abruptly (2005 seemed to be the year) from an interesting but too-often unusable exercise in collecting essays to a true and exceptionally effective global encyclopedia.

So... If I try adding a short page on WikiPhages, will the WikiPhages immediately remove it (and likely flag me as a Dubious Entity) because it is a new term that does not yet exist in the literature... even though the very act of removing the page would be a prime example of the WikiPhage concept that the page defines?... 8^)

Terry Bollinger 13:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting concept - and seems rather correct, on a fairly quick read-through of it. And yes, the way things work, a neologism like that would probably get dinged pretty quickly. (Take a look at the Articles For Deletion section some time. These are articles that either don't fit the speedy deletion guidelines or have been contested for some reason. Neologisms crop up there a lot.) Tony Fox 15:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, good. If the description seems at least somewhat plausible, what I'll do is put together a little white paper on my personal web site. I'd love to do an editorial or article on the Wikipedia process for IEEE Software too, even though it's not strictly software. It's the process side that's relevant to global development in general, likely including software.

And anywho, if I understand rightly how Wikipedia archiving works, this dialog sort of captures the origination of the term anyway, yes? That would be nice if perchance the WikiPhages terminology worked its way into broad use.

Enough, I need to get a (stub only!) new web site in today, as it's a holiday on this side of the 49th parallel. I remain unclear about whether it must be you, Tony Fox, or someone else who removes the "importance" flag... although I did get the distinct impression I would be rapidly and throroughly fricasseed in racid butter fat by the Collective Powers That Be if I had the audacity to remove it on my own after making my own attempt at changes... and certainly deep fried in axle grease to boot if I simply removed it without first doing any changes... 8^) Cheers, Terry Bollinger 22:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh. You've got a good start on understanding the process for things like this. That most changes are done through discussion is something a lot of people don't get until they've been blocked repeatedly (if at all). As you mention it, the process here does certainly sound like it might be an interesting one to discuss in an open source context. You might want to touch base with a couple of active administrators if you do decide to get into that. (Drop by the Administrators' Noticeboard to find some of them.) And in the meantime, I'll pull that notability tag now. You're obviously making good faith plans to get some citations there. Cheers! Tony Fox 23:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! The vote of confidence that my intentions are in the right direction (however flawed my initial execution may be) is much appreciated! Cheers, Terry Bollinger 00:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Identity function and null function

Hi. For now I reverted the text you added to Identity function where you mention that in programming an identity function is called a "null function".

I think things are a bit more complicated than that. Here, null function means what you say it means. Here, a null function is "one which does nothing and returns nothing". While from here one may think that a null function is a function which returns the null space. See also here, where "null function function that does nothing other than returning ag = 0."

If you wish, perhaps you could elaborate on all this at null function. But either way, due to the ambiguity of the term, I think mentioning at identity function that it is the same as a null function is not a good idea I think.

You can reply here if you have comments. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

No problem. Your analysis is apt and your reversion appropriate. I equivocated whether null function even merited an entry, and opted for redirecting.

Your first example does indeed match the mathematical meaning of an identity function. However, your second example in which nothing is returned is the dominant meaning in programming languages. Since that one does not meet the definition of an identity function, it should not be included there.

I think your suggestion is the best. I'll create a short direct text entry for null function, redirect null operator to that, and provide a link to identity function—the latter in hopes that it will entice some readers into looking at the far more precise world of mathematical terminology.

Terry Bollinger 22:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. For now I redirected null function and null operator to null. When you create that short article, you can undo these, of course. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. I've added a (hopefully) more precise definition of the relationship to between null functions and identity functions, based on state spaces. Your actions/suggestions are welcome. Terry Bollinger 06:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

JavaMage

A "{{prod}}" template has been added to the article JavaMage, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. B. Wolterding 10:44, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

No problem; 'twas naught more than a reference in passing, relevant to a nice external reference to an animation. Terry Bollinger 03:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Azurite

Hey thanks for the note on my drastic surgery on azurite. If you have any suggestions on where I should not have cut, please let me know. The extended discussion on bonding and clearly the associated pics were below the current standards, at least in WE-chemistry. Also the section had been tagged as being sub-par. Obviously I agreed with the tag. I've placed the main chunk that I removed onto talk:azurite. Again, I felt that the level of discussion was beneath WE and some of the topics (crystal field theory, bonding) where either inappropriate (no place to attempt to describe the basic optical properties of d⁹ ions, or to discuss which end of molecules bind to copper) or archaic (the descriptions of the formulas as two parts this and one part that kind of thing). But I stand ready to re-rescue useful content that might have overzealously axed. Actually, in my own defense, I think that my revision a rambling article by succintly getting to the main points: that at low P_CO2, the stuff is unstable, and that if you want to understand the colors, one should go to ligand field theory. Cheers, and most importantly, thanks for caring about our project. --Smokefoot (talk) 05:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like you might be on the right track to get the structure drawn well: User:Benjah-bmm27‎ is very good and can advise you. One further suggestion, don't try to use azurite as the platform to explain elementary bonding or basic optical properties, instead try to expand crystal field theory or ligand field theory or molecular orbital theory for this purpose. These articles could benefit from you insights. If editors try to re-explain basic optical/bonding properties in each coordination compound (= all compounds containing transition metals, right?), the encyclopedia would become hugely redundant and unwieldy. Also, usually higher symmetry species (say CuCl₄^2-, vs the sites in azurite) are used to discuss optical propertis since the principles are more clearly discussed when the selection rules are more rigid. Just some suggestions.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Please dont eat rocks...

This paraphrased statement ("Minerals in general should not be ingested.") was inserted to preclude ill-advised essays on toxicity by amateurs or those that might paraphrase MSDS's or googled info. The pertinent issues can simply be handled with a ref to copper.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

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Garrett Lisi

You comments are a bit saddening. I am a physicist, I love physics, and I take this page very seriously, given that I studied very well Lisi's theory and I even admitted to have respect for some parts of it, of course recognizing that the theory at its current stage is incomplete and doesn't work. We are all just trying to avoid that some users hide facts and truths. It doesn't matter if we aren't using our real name. If you really think about it, not even Garrett is using his real name here on wikipedia, and he's also requesting for an action from fans on his websites. That is bad for wikipedia because it attracts a lot of people that will want to edit the page without understanding its content. Do you think that affirmed and serious physicists would post such things on social networks to push people, like you did, to intervene? Please, if you see any of the changes that we make that doesn't look well referenced or NPOV help us improve the pages. But seeing editors pro-Lisi that delete referenced sentences on Lisi's pages just because they would make clear that the theory at its current stage does not work is very contrary to the whole point you are trying to make. It's those edits that damage wikipedia. It's a page about Lisi where a reader goes and doesn't even find straight up that his theory has lots of problems and at the moment doesn't even succeed at reproducing the Standard Model of particles. Also, if you look at my edits, you can also see that I defended actively the existence of the page and the fact that the theory is a serious attempt, even if hasn't succeeded so fare and the theory is incomplete. If you really want to give a contribution, look at how Scientryst and SherryNugil edit the Lisi pages. And tell me if that seems to you a neutral point of you. Always trying to hide or to smooth every sentence that isn't supportive of Lisi. Thanks 24.7.128.58 (talk) 17:23, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the long response you gave me. It is uncommon to find people willing to dedicate some time to personal responses, so I'll try to respond to you with the same positive attitude. Of course you aren't talking to a lawyer, who would ever have money to spend to hire lawyers to edit Lisi's pages? :-) It's not like a fight between multinationals... also, don't you think that I understand a little too much physics to be a lawyer? haha... anyhow, about the specific aspects, you touch many interesting topics, and of course it's hard to respond to all of them as if they were all involved in editing Lisi's page. I don't think that thinking so high is necessary to be able to edit Lisi's page, which should just state the truth. Anyhow, let me give it a try. As far as I'm concerned lots of theories are wrong and there is nothing bad about it. And even if I don't think so, it could be possible that 100 Lisis could be better than 100 academics (I think that we need both kinds, but not a majority of Lisis). The point is that string theory maybe has done some damage, who am I to judge, but they also teach classes and help our younger generation to learn some basic physics (like Lisi himself did for a while). Although, there is a big difference between string theory and Lisi's theory. Lisi's theory is very premature and doesn't reproduce even the known particles, it answers to a lot less problems than other theories.

There is then a different level of having a wrong theory. Some theories might be more wrong than others. The geocentric model of the solar system is wrong, and also the Newtonian model of the solar system is wrong. In fact it fails to reproduce the precession of Mercury and we need general relativity. But it's obvious that the Newtonian model is *less* wrong than the Ptolemaic system. But this is an interesting, but different topic.

And my point certainly wasn't about not wanting Lisi around. Why would you think that? I believe that people like him, slightly away from the strict academic world are important. He is not a complete outsider, having a phd in physics. So yes, maybe we spent too much money on string theorists, but it doesn't mean that we should misrepresent a theory just because the author is bullying other editors. The Wikipedia deal is then more related to simply representing the state of things of Lisi's theory. The most neutral point of view possible.

The negative aspect that I see here is dual. The fact that there is one user that is editing these and only these pages for years (that doesn't sound like a neutral point of view by definition, if it's just one user to sustain certain choices). And the fact that a reader should clearly understand the situation.

From one point of view it's clear the involvement that Lisi personally has in following his pages on WP. That's understandable, but it becomes clearly a conflict of interest when there is an attempt to hide the facts. Nobody wants to hide what he did and what people said about him (good or bad, and I'm certainly not trying to hide the good things said), but wikipedia needs to give a reader the common idea about the theory from the community, which is that it's incomplete (and everybody agrees with this) and also that some physicists (not only Distler) thinks that it cannot ever work because of mathematical constraints. I believe that a reader should read this even before the actual mathematical definition of the theory, because most likely they won't understand enough particle physics and advanced math to even understand how this theory is different from any other theory. When there is just one user, in this case Scientryst and SherryNugil, who for years is editing the page pro-Lisi or trying to hide little facts and smoothing sentences, it becomes clear that maybe those authors might have a conflict of interest. While there have been multiple editors that tried, in many years, to state simple truths, and that ended up giving up for the incredible amount of time dedicated to the page and reverting the changes from these two users. Same goes with Lisi's personal page. Why shouldn't the state of his theory clearly stated there? If you look at the edits from the last few days you can see that yes, the edits are not particularly positive for Lisi, but they are pretty neutral in saying the truth. The problem was that all those aspects, present in the real world, were completely absent in his page.

This brings me to the dual point of this fact. The readers, which we should consider as the most important thing here. If it's true that Lisi became a notable person for his theory, it should be stated clearly that the theory is widely not accepted by the physics community (like many other theories) and also that at the current status the theory doesn't explain almost anything of the observable world. Lot's of theories in GUTs use large Lie groups, and people have tried all sorts of combinations, including E8. Lisi had an interesting idea, but at the moment he failed at creating an actual theory built brick by brick, he sort of gives the whole picture with an enormous amount of holes. So, think about the reader that sees Lisi in tv or reads his feature articles all around the magazines and stuff. That reader might go to wikipedia to check out more details, and it would be highly bad if they wouldn't find the actual status of the theory stated clearly. Otherwise that reader could think that universities are useless (not just string theory) and that giving, for example, public money to universities is wrong because even a surfer can come up with a theory that is better than what many many paid full professors had found in the previous 80 years. Now, of course wikipedia is not the place to try to have any sort of propaganda, but we need to be aware of the possible bad aspect when we aren't representing the truth. If Lisi actually found the theory of everything and it worked, then yes, we should be happy if people read that and we couldn't complain if they stop trusting the public money going to professors. But this hasn't happened, and Lisi's theory, as you said yourself, is not particularly important in the big landscape of theories.

I honestly think that Lisi is probably happy if a reader goes to his page and thinks that his theory is a fantastic theory and that the surfer dude really stunned physicists, but what makes Lisi happy wouldn't necessarily be the truth. Why can't we have a page about Lisi that says all the truth? Why does he get so upset when people want to include facts about the theory not working? To me, it seems that he's the real person trying to hide the history of things. He wrote a theory, got a lot of attention, people started making compliments and critiques, and then eventually some of the problems with the theory became more evident and now we know that there is a lot of holes still to be filled up, or that maybe cannot ever be filled up.

A last point about anonymity, if you notice how strongly Lisi is trying to be bullying editors here, you would maybe think that anonymity is a defense. It is actually not, because as you said yourself, anybody can do DNS searches and so on. I cannot speak for all the IPs involved, but the only reason why I write as an IP is not even hiding, because the IP is not a good way to hide. Scientryst and SherryNugil are hiding more than I am, right? We don't even know if it's the same person. The reason why I write as an IP is because I have another wikipedia username that I use for all the numerous contributions that I give in physics and in some other little topics that I like, and I don't want that user to be annoyed by all the personal attacks and bullying attempts made by this Lisi deal. I observed what happened in the past (and what's happening now is even more disgusting of Lisi) and I decided that I didn't want to deal with it as my real username. Of course I could have created another user, but then I was afraid that if by mistake I was logged in with the wrong user, I could have been accused of Sock Puppetry (which I never did). Then I decided that every time I go on Lisi's page I would just log out. As I said, it's actually hiding less than more.

Anyhow, it was a pleasure to be able to exchange some broader words with you, given that in the discussion pages we are forced to just be around and fight with things like allowing or not some boring sentence in a page. Happy rest of the holidays! 24.7.128.58 (talk) 21:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposing to delete article about you

[1] Nothing against you at all, just that it's been a one-sentence article for years, and none of the references provided are actually about you. That's just not a biography. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 14:23, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Terry Bollinger. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:29, 24 November 2020 (UTC)