NOTE: If I left a message on your talk page, I am very likely watching it for a few days, so you can reply there if you prefer to have a coherent discussion.
My welcome message |
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Welcome! Hello, Hans Adler, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place You may be interested in joining WikiProject Mathematics, you can add your name to the list at Contributors and join discussions at the talk page. Good to see another Leeds mathematician. --Salix alba (talk) 12:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
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I try out the "helpme" template |
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Login to sister sites?
My login information does not seem to work in de.wikipedia.org or in en.wikiversity.org. I succeeded in creating a user of the same name in de.wikipedia.org. Is this how it is supposed to work, or is there a way to sign up for additional projects with the same login? (That's what I expected from having worked on ODP ages ago.) --Hans Adler 13:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
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My first conversations with CBM and Zero sharp |
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Math ratingsI noticed you have been doing a lot of good editing on math logic articles. The entire field of model theory is, as you can tell, not well represented. It's good to see someone working hard on it. I also noticed you added some {{maths rating}} templates to talk pages. When you do that, it would help if you take a second to assign quality and importance ratings. The details of the rating system are here. Otherwise, someone else has to do the thankless job of ranking lots of unranked but tagged articles. Even if you wrote the article yourself, you can rate it; anyone else may change the rating later, if they disagree. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC) Structure (mathematical logic)I noticed you marked that article for deletion and then reverted yourself. Did you want to move the article to a different name? — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC) Thank you......for your recent edits to various Maths articles, in particular Model Theory and friends. Please do use the Edit Summary, even if you're just making small edits. This makes it easier to see what's going on with these articles w/o having to do a diff (which, yes, is an extra two clicks, but still). Zero sharp (talk) 00:33, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
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Two technical matters |
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Contact Us (Village Pump)Thanks for your input on this. I've got the entire "Contact Us" lined up for a review in December; when I do, I'd enjoy hearing your view on it. I'm a bit busy for a week or so till then though. Thanks again! FT2 (Talk | email) 12:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC) zeteo ToolHallo, der Bug, den Du beschrieben hast, ist jetzt behoben. Fröhliches Referenzieren... Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:30, 22 November 2007 (UTC) |
The two most unlikely editors discuss gay nightlife in Leeds |
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RE: edit to the Leeds articleIMO it looks like a brochure or advert, and in the general overview of Leeds is not notable. I certainly have never heard of Leeds been described as some sort of "gay capital of the UK" or anything along those lines, which that section seems to portray and advertise it as. I think it would probably need some vertification for such a claim (perhaps to be found on Google.com) though I'm quite squeamish and would have reservations about searching such terms, since this is the internet some of the results are bound to be explicit. - Yorkshirian (talk) 09:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC) |
Feedback from a site owner whose links I removed |
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deletion of external links -please explainHello, I have a question about your recent deletion of external links which has been added to some city pages such as Sydney. The external link was pointing to a video site which shows recent videos of cities, in very good quality, and updated several times a day. Here you can see an example of these links: http://www.earthtv.com/en/location/sydney In my opinion, this is a nice resource for someone interested in Sydney, as I don't know any other site who has almost live videos in such a quality to offer. Moreover, I read the WIKI guidelines for external linking, and I don't see why a link to this site should be inappropriate (the site has free access, free content, no ads, no offending content...) I would like to get to know your reason for deleting these links - don't you like the content? Maybe you could explain this to me - I don't want to push here these links, I really thought it would be a usefull resource for people interested in a city.. I wrote you an email a couple of days before, but haven't got an answer from you yet, so maybe I will get feedback when using the talkback page here.... Seeing forward to your reply
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Two people cleaning up the Freiburg mess in parallel |
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Freiburg history section editsHi Hans- You and I were doing the same thing at the same time! I got an edit conflict when I went to save, so I looked at what you'd done. I was doing essentially the same changes, plus a few, so I overwrote yours with mine. Hope you don't mind, and let me know if I got anything wrong. -Eric (talk) 19:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
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Personal discussion with Gregbard, metalogic |
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Talking down to me.Hans, I have been studying logic (and apparently metalogic) since 1996. I'm betting that's as long or longer than many of these people. I learned using these terms. It seems some of them may be different than the terms that many have used by this crowd before. I don't know if you have heard or seen any of our discussions at WP:MATH and Talk:Theorem, and other places about the relation between mathematical logic and logic, (or in some minds philosophy v math). The motivation for deleting this category is POV not accuracy. Furthermore, it is obvious that this is the case, and I don't have to pretend it isn't. I would think this is their chance to learn about a new perspective on familiar things, but they are hostile instead. That is a very close-minded, ignorant, arrogant, not to mention very non-intellectual way to be. We have a source for these terms I'm using, and I am using them correctly. The source is an excellent one (still being used a source for this subject, not obsolete). There is no reason to reject the category, or any of the terminology that I am weaving into articles about this subject. You should learn to respect the different terminology and perspective that others have on things, and not be so hostile it. This deletion debate is only about territory and personal identity as a mathematician (not being a lowly philosopher). Arthur is a troublemaker plain and simple, and his talk page tells the story. Exactly what makes you believe I don't "really understand[...] the full context of the book"? I invite your correspondence on that issue particularly. Maybe you could quiz me? I think you are really just ramping up your sensitivity (read:intellectual snobbery) level a bit much there. I wouldn't be awaiting Arthur's opinion for anything. He is a trouble maker plain and simple. I learned these concepts from within the context of metalogic. Others may have learned them in the math department. Why is the existence of this category such a threat? I'm pretty sure you don't understand the context quite frankly. Carnap and Tarski both wrote on the metamathematics v metalogic issue. It's not a neologism and its not obsolete. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
In fact, as conversational subjects I prefer religion to philosophy, and polytheism to monotheism. (Less abstract and more colourful.) I have chosen my field because it is a very abstract and efficient way of doing generalised hardcore algebra. I respect the historical connections to philosophy, but I don't really want to know about them, because I have never been interested in the meaningless questions that philosophers ask. In my opinion philosophy has been in decline ever since Plato started hallucinating about "ideas". Things got even worse with Aristotle, and I don't even know what happened after that.
No problem with that. When I noticed that you recategorised some of the articles I am most interested in from Logic or Model theory to "Metalogic", which I had never heard of before, I thought: "It looks strange, but these philosophers will know what they are doing with this category. Not a good idea to remove the articles from the other categories, but I can fix this later." Up to that point I assumed, on your part, competence, good faith, rational behaviour, good manners, basically everything positive.
I think you are being a little harsh and really over-dramaitizing to a degree here, however, I take your advise seriously. You are giving me the straightforward and forthright view that you have. So, Thank you for that. Arthur and I have managed to exchange plenty of civil discourse, some of it productive too. I think we all are capable of putting the interest of the content above the personalities at this point. However, I sure wish he would leave me alone. I'm not really concerned about recognition in any regard, I just want the material on these topics out there. I stand by my mainspace edits. I do not play around. I really just want the tools that I use available to me when I wish to use them in the future. These are the terms I use to explain things, so lets work them into the scheme here.
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Personal discussion with Zenwhat after a WQA incident |
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Please relaxPart of this conversation took place on Zenwhat's talk page and has in the meantime been deleted. I initially assumed Cheeser1's comment was made in good faith, which is why I said:
All Cheeser1 had to do was say, "Yes, the next step in dispute resolution." Instead, he decided to insult my intelligence by implying I don't know the definition of escalate:
I know the definition of the word. There's definitely some sardonicism there. You know, sardonicism, as in "pithiness." (I don't mean to be rude here, like Cheeser1 was -- just using his same language to demonstrate the point). I am distressed because I have come across a number of cases where Wikipedia is mismanaged. When I turn to the places I'm supposed to turn -- wikiquette alerts or the noticeboards, I'm either ignored or I'm told my comments don't belong there. I am extremely humble, polite, even to the point of being self-deprecating, but still, people have to make comments like that. At the very least, he could simply apologize and say, "I'm sorry if it came across that way," or something. Here is an example of something I put through in ArbCom a while back. [1] I've tried to address this by attempting to improve policy -- for instance, by writing extensive essays, emphasizing the fact that WP:IAR is the first rule and attempting to add clarification, and by re-wording WP:NPOV so that it encourages "objective" analysis, not POV-pushing. In this case too, I was obstructed. I cannot make any edits unless Wikipedia's collective bureaucratic democracy (despite WP:NOT, that's what it is) agrees with my edits. Since you edit stuff on mathematics, obviously, you aren't going to come across these problems because there aren't hordes of "math POV-pushers." Try editing anything either political or religious. And finally, worst of all, there aren't even any places to turn for help on this, since WP:Esperanza and every single fork of it is dead. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 10:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC) "Your version of reality"? More pithiness. Goodbye. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC) |
Personal discussion with Gregbard, continued |
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end run by math peopleDo you see the latest proposal to depopulate the category, and/or segregate it from mathematical logic? In the face of the impending results, they are taking their toys and going home. This is a total bait-and-switch operation. Do you see what I have to deal with? Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
1. Metalogic within Mathematical Logic. For example, the program to reverse-engineer necessary axioms from extant theorems. That's metalogic within mathematical logic. 2. Metalogic pertaining to, but outside, Mathematical Logic. The bit of Aristotle I hastily grepped could be viewed as reasoning to necessary logical constructions (the necessity of some first principles) from Theory of Mind, which is tied up in Metaphysics. If such thinking ever got anywhere it might be applicable to us :-) But in a way, Philosophy never gets anywhere. When they start making progress, the topic becomes a science and isn't properly philosophy anymore (as we use the term today). So Alchemy becomes Chemistry once they start having reproducibility &c. Theory of Mind becomes Psychology and cognitive neuroscience. What remains may always be vague and confused, but that's ok; it's the Chaos from which the Word emerges :-)
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I try to mediate in the Barzilai/Krantz discussion |
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KrantzFWIW, I suspect that people are misreading Krantz's tone. I don't know him personally, but I do know a lot of people in this area, and have read a great deal of the literature. Setting aside a few people like Savage, there just isn't much concern for gentility. While there is no question that Krantz has low regard for Barzilai, I wouldn't expect a discernibly different tone were Krantz simply annoyed. —SlamDiego←T 04:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
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Elementary substructure
Dear Hans Adler,
Grüß Gott! Thank You for notifying me about my writing "Material equivalence" in the newly created section of Elementary substructure article. It was a mistake: I mixed the terms, I wanted to write just the opposite, logical equivalence. I wanted to emphasize that the condition
is part of the metatheory, and sign is meant as part of the metalanguage. Now I have renamed the section completely to Equivalent valuation of formulae, using the "more restricted" assignments.
I wanted to write since long time: thank You for tidying the articles I initiated but failed to complete. I have yet only very few knowledge and overview in mathematical logic.
From Your greeting, I conjecture, You speak Hungarian? I learn two Eskimo languages: one Siberian Yupik language and the [recently extinct] Sireniki Eskimo language, and their morphological, typological similarity to Hungarian is a great help to me (genealogical relatedness cannot be proven). In generally, I like the rather "mechanistic" mythologies of hunter-gatherer groups. Some Eskimo myths are described in ethnographic literature as blurring [passive] object vs [active] subject distinctions (e.g hunter vs prey, child vs educator distinctions get blurred by assuming strange soul concepts including soul dualism, partial reincarnation etc). The years when I was busy learning Eskimo hard was also a time when I was busy in combinatory logic and lambda calculus, in generally, in functional programming. Because these calculi sort of allow functions to be arguments, and all "objects" (natural numbers, truth values, lists i.e. finite sequences, trees, instances of monads) have to be constructed as functions, thus they gave me a similar flavor of blurring familiar distinctions like some Eskimo myths.
Best wishes and many thanks,
Physis (talk) 21:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Hey
Re: [2] - His static I.P. address is at User:156.34.142.110 but please bare in mind that he probably wouldn't have done it without good reason :-) Hope this helps, take care. ScarianCall me Pat 16:23, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for the info and the warning. I had already noticed that it's probably more complicated than it looks. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
First order logic
Sorry about that. It is true that for this article I when too fast, my apologies. However, it is not out of interest, it is just that I don't know much (read anything) in that field. I'll post what needs disambiguation in the discussion page. Randomblue (talk) 19:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for a clear feedback. I didn't view redirects in that manner. Indeed, redirects need to be avoided and if an article "Mathematical theory" gets created then one just has to look up what links to the page and fix the link(s) of any relevant article. Randomblue (talk) 20:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Natural languages
Dear Hans Adler,
Thank You for Your message and reassurement. Thank You also for mentioning the Language Log, I have not known about it before. Although I know almost nothing about the Eskimo words for snow, but I know a similar sophisticatedness for distinctions around "walrus": Eskimos indeed have a dozen, etymologically different words for it: distinct words for walrus
- sleeping lazily on the ice floe,
- swimming west
- swimming north
- floating in water with its head bent down
- …
And besides of all this, they have also a general word for "walrus" as well.[1]
Even more interesting in Eskimo: there are cca a dozen demonstrative pronouns as well (not only "here" and "there" but also ones like "that beyond the horizon", "on the other side [of the river]"). And, for contrast, there are just a few numerals (even those expressed in a lengthy, complicated additive and substractive way).
As for skills in reading inscriptions for everyday use in a foreign country, there is a strange situation in China. "Chinese" is not a single language, but a set of mutually unintelligible languages. This is not so painful as it sounds, because their writing system does not depend on pronunciation (has a grammar of its own, as it is ideographic), thus, it is able to serve as a common tool for the whole area (like mathematics or ideograms). This works well, but this is no help for illiterate people in China. It has happened that an old woman went to visit her relative in a remote town, failed to be met there on the railway station incidentally -- and lost her way seriously (being unable both to read the signs and to understand people for asking help), thus she had to be searched for finally by the police.
You wrote You have Hungarian relatives in Transylvania. At a time, I wanted to learn Romanian (in the 90s there were many immigrants here, and also beggars, many Gipsy children as well, and I often wanted to talk to them, listen to the experiences they narrated, learn what dialects they use etc.), but finally I learnt just a few lections in Romanian. As for most beggar children, I could talk to most of them in Gipsy. I have learnt Gipsy since my childhood, I regularly visited even Gipsy talking families. My family is of Lower Austrian German origin (although having undergone a complete language shift). But if I have to speak German then I simply keep on using our South German dialect (even on my language exam).
- ^ Menovščikov 1968: 436
Menovščikov, G. A. (= Г. А. Меновщиков) (1968). "Popular Conceptions, Religious Beliefs and Rites of the Asiatic Eskimoes". In Diószegi, Vilmos (ed.). Popular beliefs and folklore tradition in Siberia. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Best wishes and many successs to Your work,
Physis (talk) 00:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Easy, tiger...
...whilst I agree with your sentiment, this edit is probably against WP:NPA! gb (t, c) 20:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for the warning. You are right. Sometimes it's better to call a spade a shovel. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
- Or take 5 minutes and not call it anything ;-) gb (t, c) 21:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Pregeometry
Please see my answer to your remarks on my own talk page (since I thought it preferable to keep the discussion in one place). Zaslav (talk) 01:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
- Upon further investigation (including taking a look at a physics article on pregeometry) I concluded the physics concept is unrelated to the model theory or combinatorics concept. I made separate articles. See the disambiguation page Pregeometry and my talk page. I await your comments (I hope not too distressed!). Zaslav (talk) 07:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
WQA
Threads at the WQA are not archived in the fashion you seem to think they are. Do not mark them with archivetop/archivebottom. The only time we use those is to close discussions that refuse to end on their own (stubborn/argumentative editors, etc.). If you must close one in this fashion, be sure also to put the arthivetop under the section header, or MiszaBot will screw it up royally when it tries to move the thread to the archive. --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
- Ooops. Sorry, this was the first time I did it, and I thought I had done it the way I had seen it done with another thread. Perhaps that was incorrect as well. I see you have fixed it for me. What made me do this was the absurd Jeff G. vs Jeffrey Gustafson and Mr. Gustafson thread. I wanted to make it very clear to Jeff G. that the discussion is over — but perhaps that wasn't such a good idea anyway. Thanks a lot for fixing my mistake. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Responded.
I responded to your message on my talkpage.
To understand my overall frustration with Wikipedia, I suggest you see two things:
- Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Worked on the part about objectivity. -- Wikipedia holds a naive, wishy-washy philosophy which has no regard for reason and relies on ridiculous assumptions of human rationality reminiscient of 18th century Liberalism, Anarchism, and Ayn Rand's Objectivism.
- Question #9 for Aitias. [3]
Very rarely do users quiz potential admins on logic. They just ask them "what do u think about policy x" and "show me why ur a good person." It's the intellectual equivalent of running for class president in high school.
Step outside articles on logic. Try editing articles on either religion, politics, or even just more broad topics that aren't particularly religious or political-in-nature. What you will find is this: WP:Zombies. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 11:04, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Hans, you didn't respond to the above. Why? You've blatantly accused me of bad-faith and I'd like to clarify that isn't true. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 22:53, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
- I am astonished by your strange request. Sorry that I have to say this, but you are paranoid. So far I haven't replied because I was interrupted when I was writing my response. I copied it into a text file and forgot about it. Here is how far I got:
- Well, concerning the university professors, I am sure you understood my point. I don't consider myself a "fan" of Feynman, although I have a nice edition of his 3-volume "Lectures on Physics" and I read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" a long time ago. The fact that I am a mathematical logician has nothing to do with my opinion on the "Feynman Algorithm", which I never heard of before. As a mathematician I don't think it works (as it usually degenerates into the "Winnie the Pooh Method"), and I agree with Rota's account of the "Feynman method" that is cited at the end of the page.
- I can't say much about your literary references: I haven't read any of the three books. One
- I have certainly not knowingly accused you of bad faith other than in my post to ANI, where I think I have provided excellent evidence to meet the Duck test standard. Do you want me to say more about that, or can you point to another specific point in my post to you that you object to? You see you have changed the tone in which I am talking to you. I am human, you know, and I react to the way people approach me. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
You may not have knowingly did it, but in your post to WP:ANI, you assumed bad faith because (see WP:AAGF) you assumed that I assumed the assumption of bad faith, which is itself a form of assuming bad faith. Particular evidence is irrelevant if extraneous evidence is ignored (which it was, see my response there) and existing evidence is not tied together by logic (which it did not seem to be, you hand-selected various remarks, here and there). Otherwise, what you have is not a logical argument, but conspiracy theorism. Conspiracy theorists, too, could put forth a long bulleted list, of the "evidence" that the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition.
I noticed something which may explain why you are not aware of your assumption of bad faith. In your accusation here. [4] You started off by confirming that you were accusing me of accusing Markussep of lying.
Yes, I am accusing you of that
Later on, your description of events changes:
Now you accuse me of not assuming good faith because I asked you whether you want to accuse Markussep of lying?
Were you accusing or asking? Aside from our subjective biases, the definitions of both terms are quite different.
Falsely accusing of lying != Asking whether I want to make the false accusation of lying
Falsely accusing => Zenwhat has Bad faith Asking => Zenwhat may or may not have bad faith
A duck is not a duck because you say it is. A duck is a duck because it is, in fact, a duck.
I asked about Feynman because based on your remarks, I strongly suspect you believe that the conceptual root of logic is entirely arbitrary which, if it is, is fairly inconsistent. The semantic theory of truth is quite beautiful and consistent within formal analysis, but utterly useless in the real world. I have this suspicion (which is not an assumption of bad faith -- just an assumption of absurd beliefs), because you have not observed the problems on Wikipedia, outlined above and elsewhere.
The idea of critical thinking is not a mathematical or formal logical concept and it cannot be proved formally, but it is clearly the epistemological foundation for logic and, ultimately, all human knowledge. You seem to think that it is not possible to think critically, but rather, reason is something that is arbitrarily created and destroyed by meaningless, aggregate physical forces, i.e. "The world has made you a logician. Therefore, you are logical. The world has made Zenwhat not a logician. Therefore, he is a fool."
A careful examination of this yields what absurdity it is (assuming my observations here are correct). Furthermore, in the absence of recognizing this, you're never going to come up with an original idea, like this or this, but will instead merely repeat, within the framework of your limited mind, what you have heard and synthesized from the various mathematical texts of the day, making you one of many countless mathematicians and philosophers who haven't made any particularly notable contributions to human knowledge.
Finally, "I have certainly not knowingly accused you of bad faith other than in my post to ANI" appears to be a red herring. Because my argument was, "You have accused me of bad faith," not, "You have accused me of bad faith everywhere except WP:ANI. When I said, "You've blatantly accused me of bad-faith," I was specifically talking about your remarks in WP:ANI. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 00:28, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
- "I noticed something which may explain…." It's very easy to respond to that, and mind you: The very fact that I am responding to you at all proves that I am still assuming good faith rather than intentional misrepresentation. I asked you, because I wasn't sure; 12 hours later, after you responded and blew your chance to learn from your mistake, I accused you.
- You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what WP:AGF is about. I told you about the problem before, in this thread. I am pointing you to an old version, but one that already contains comments by KieferSkunk and Seicer at the end; which I am certain you understood as validating your position in the dispute. To anyone who tried to see your side of the dispute it was so obvious that you would do that, that for some time the situation actullay confused me as well. In the end, Seicer (who had health problems at the time) admitted having used WP:SARCASM, and KieferSkunk (who was busy in real life and wasn't aware he was ambiguous) clarified his position later on my request. Search for my name on their talk pages to see the details.
- In any case I will try to be much clearer this time. Ever since the beginnings of of Usenet it was clear that there is a problem with online communication because 1) people don't know it each other personally, and 2) an important part of our communication is just not there. For the second problem smileys and abbreviations like "ROFL" were invented, but they don't help much to prevent flame wars from breaking out. The fundamental problem is one that exists in real life as well:
- To simplify, let's assume the problem is only "civility", and that "civility" is measurable: A communicative act has a "civility" somewhere between 0 % and 100 %. I know an extremely nice guy from Columbia, whose civility is always 100 %. I had never experienced this before I met him, and I can tell you it's very disconcerting when you are not used to it. For me, the civility in a normal conversation is 40-80 %, say. If it leaves that range I become uncomfortable and want to know what's going on. I would expect that for my South American colleague it's something like 70-100 %. For some people it's 30-50 %. They get furious when you are too polite to them.
- In real life the problems of communication that result from this aren't as bad as on the internet: E.g. the fact that my South American colleague is always so impeccably dressed. Seeing this makes it much harder to suspect him of irony when he is 100 % polite. On the internet you can't see the clothes of the person you are conversing with, or that the person at the other end is an internet-addicted young mother who should really stop writing now because her 5-week-old baby is crying very loudly. She is still writing instead of feeding her child, but her civility is around 20% right now (usually it's closer to 40 %). We don't know all this, we have to go by what we see on the screen, and we get a wrong mental image of the person we are talking to.
- Wikipedia's fundamental communication rules like WP:CIV and WP:AGF exist to address this problem. If you are following them in a way that does not address the problem, then you can just stop following them altogether. AGF means that you have a duty to behave in the same way that an average person behaves when in a good-faith conversation. On Wikipedia you are not communicating with your parents. You are communicating with thousands of strangers who have no interest whatsoever in your personality. (On the other hand, its perfectly consistent with AGF to privately suspect someone of being on Wikipedia for bad-faith reasons. You can make a private file on them and follow all their moves. It's OK so long as you keep it secret to all of Wikipedia and you behave as if you assumed good faith. That's because it's not disruptive. It's also not stalking if the person never suspects it.)
- If you say something that is not true, and if you should have known this, then it does not matter that everybody knows you are a lazy bastard who keeps misinterpreting what he reads and keeps jumping to conclusions all the time and who should never be taken seriously. Or whatever. With your mother this excuse may work three times a day. On Wikipedia it works three times per user account.
- On the internet, everything that passes the Turing test for ducks is a duck. Everything else would be too complicated. If you don't want to be called a duck, don't behave like a duck. On the internet the signs "No ducks please" apply to everything that quacks and waddles, not just to ducks.
- To your final remark: I was sincerely surprised. I thought you would have understood by now that your behaviour in the ANI thread was completely unacceptable, and therefore I thought you must be talking about something else. Yes, it was a red herring. But not as a rhetorical device. Stressing it as much as you did was a red herring and shows you were not assuming good faith. You see why this way of arguing is disruptive?
- I don't even understand your Feynman/logic arguments. You seem to be thinking on a philosophical level that is very strange to me; this might be the root of our communication problems. If that is so, you might want to ask someone you trust and who is not afraid of being critical with either of us: Let them have a look at our conversation and comment on it. How about Kim Bruning, for example? In any case this is just a suggestion, and you can just ignore it. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Assuming Good Faith
You have apparently accused me of something illegal in our discussion. Could you please clarify (and I assume that wasn't exactly what you intended). — BQZip01 — talk 21:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
ROFL.
By "he knows it's illegal" I mean "he can be expected to know it's illegal because he has been told so several times by several people", and by "illegal" I mean "against the express wording of WP:USER".
If-by-whiskey. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 00:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
- It's way too late for me to read your reply to the other thing now. So I will only respond to this: I don't get it. BQZip01 was apparently concerned that I had publicly accused him of having broken the law. I am no expert on these matters, but he is in the US military and a lot of his colleagues seem to be here as well. So I am not even sure it was necessarily pure paranoia on his side to ask for a clarification. So I have clarified that I was not talking about US (or wherever) laws but about Wikipedia rules; and since he had asked nicely I also clarified that I don't think he knew about the rule when he created the page. In fact, I am assuming good faith here (really, not just for show): I think he still doesn't understand the rule, although we are allowed, more or less, to act as if he did, because he really should.
- Ah, perhaps I got it now. Do you mean that by toning it down formally, I made it stronger rhetorically? That wasn't what I intended, although it seems to have had that effect. In any case, BQZip01 seemed satisfied, so I think I addressed his real concern. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
- X = If-by-whiskey
- Y = Something else (say bananas)
When I say X, I mean Y. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 03:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the email, feel free to email me anytime. I understand your point, but it's still not really a reason to delete anything. I'm not a hardcore inclusionist, but this is so minor I can't fathom why people crusade to deleted it - except of course this whole thing. --Cheeser1 (talk) 22:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
- Wow, that looks like real work. There is a lot of stupid hate in that region, and many people have been killed by their neighbours. We seem to have some genetic programming for that kind of thing. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
- I don't know genetics, so I tend to blame the TV. --Cheeser1 (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
- I think in the US and large parts of Europe that's generally a good idea, but in that part of the Mediterranean I would doubt it. But I suppose it doesn't matter which programming is to blame, so long as we can pretend to separate it from human nature. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
As it happens...
I actually knew the German, we're doing the Brahms German Requiem this term, in German. Pure coincidence! Thanks, Guy (Help!) 22:23, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
- I saw it announced on your home wiki, and so I guessed you were singing it. This is just about the only piece of German romantic music that I like — because the combination of language and music in this piece is extremely effective. I hope that performing it can help you, I am sure that's why it was composed. The choice of bible passages is truly remarkable (and I am saying this as an atheist). --Hans Adler (talk) 23:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Rub it in
Hans, My apologies, I did not intent to 'rub it in'. I am hoping that my edit will bring closure to the chaos. 70.4.248.49 (talk) 01:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
"profess to be defending science?" & "militancy?"
I don't think you could back either of those phrases that you've applied to me [5], nor do I think it helpful for characterizing me as such. While I admire your attempts to help PeterStJohn, I don't think false, and potentially negative, characterizations of others is an appropriate way to do so. --Ronz (talk) 00:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- My post was written past midnight of my local time. I hereby apologise that my characterisation of your behaviour wasn't clear enough, nor worded with sufficient care, and didn't even come with enough defensive modifiers. I was talking about my impression. My impression is that you are one of the editors here who are very hard to get along with for people like Peter and me (who seem to be quite similar in some respects). Here is an example for the kind of action that can make me furious if I suspect it was done with conviction. And I do, because of the statements on your user page. I am sure I would have no problems justifying my use of the word "militancy". Unless I get the nuances of the word completely wrong, it can be used to describe people who see fights everywhere, find it hard to say something conciliatory to an opponent, and generally tend to escalate conflicts. Whereas I see misunderstandings everywhere and generally try to give my opponents the benefit of the doubt longer than I feel is warranted, to make up for my errors in judgement. It's not my natural behaviour; I have to force myself to do it, and that makes it all the harder to tolerate people in whose behaviour I can discern no such efforts.
- "Profess to be defending science" is more problematic, I admit. I have spent a little time looking at your recent edits, and I found nothing to justify this characterisation. My impression may or may not be the result of my failure to distinguish your behaviour from that of someone else. Unfortunately I don't have the time now to do further research and convince myself completely that it is wrong. I have toned down the statement, and I have no intention of repeating it or characterising you in any way in the near future.
- Please take my answer as a chance to learn something about the way some other people perceive you. I am not interested in a conflict with you, and even if I were, this would not be the right time, as I will be very busy in real life for the next 4 weeks or so.) --Hans Adler (talk) 12:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for your reply. Thanks for toning down the statement.
- You characterize as "militancy" the use of level 1 user talk page spam notice (uw-s1) to new editors whose sole edits have been to add the same single link to two articles. If that's "militancy", then I'm afraid you're in conflict with all the editors who use this template. --Ronz (talk) 16:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- By "militancy" I wasn't referring to that. But if you want to talk about this example: What I see is User:Alter.lego obtaining an account and making a single test edit in the sandbox, which involves this external link. Two months later User:80.35.158.73 turns "FRIDE" and "Diego Hidalgo" from text into wiki links (the only contributions from that IP). Four minutes after that User:Alter.lego turns the redlink into an external link. If I make an effort, I can see how this is consistent with a relatively sophisticated attempt at sneaky linkspamming. If you make an effort, you may be able to see how this is also consistent with a new user related to a website (presumably of a somewhat notable organisation) who doesn't yet fully understand all our rules and style guides. That a redlink is considered better than an external link is a peculiarity of Wiki culture, after all. If I haven't overlooked anything (such as persistent spamming of that particular link), please have a look at the second item under WP:VAND#NOT, and at the last sentence of that section. The vandalism templates are carefully phrased so as to be on the safe side (civilitywise) in clear cases of vandalism. But the mere fact that everybody can recognise them as templates makes them unsuitable for ambiguous cases like this one. Their language is also not appropriate in such a situation, because a good faith newbie who is greeted in this way will discern the reproachful undertone. I am not surprised that the user hasn't edited under this account since then. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, but I disagree and I think I have consensus on my side. The uw-s1 template assumes good faith. I assumed good faith. Please take the time to consider if you're doing the same. --Ronz (talk) 17:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- "I am not surprised that the user hasn't edited under this account since then." Now we're in conflict. Please chill. --Ronz (talk) 17:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- Now I understand Peter. Please chill. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- (refactored a bit above)
- You understand Peter? Great! Now both of you stop harassing me. --Ronz (talk) 18:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- I give you the chance to retract the insinuation that I am harassing you. You probably didn't mean it. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- Now I understand Peter. Please chill. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
- By "militancy" I wasn't referring to that. But if you want to talk about this example: What I see is User:Alter.lego obtaining an account and making a single test edit in the sandbox, which involves this external link. Two months later User:80.35.158.73 turns "FRIDE" and "Diego Hidalgo" from text into wiki links (the only contributions from that IP). Four minutes after that User:Alter.lego turns the redlink into an external link. If I make an effort, I can see how this is consistent with a relatively sophisticated attempt at sneaky linkspamming. If you make an effort, you may be able to see how this is also consistent with a new user related to a website (presumably of a somewhat notable organisation) who doesn't yet fully understand all our rules and style guides. That a redlink is considered better than an external link is a peculiarity of Wiki culture, after all. If I haven't overlooked anything (such as persistent spamming of that particular link), please have a look at the second item under WP:VAND#NOT, and at the last sentence of that section. The vandalism templates are carefully phrased so as to be on the safe side (civilitywise) in clear cases of vandalism. But the mere fact that everybody can recognise them as templates makes them unsuitable for ambiguous cases like this one. Their language is also not appropriate in such a situation, because a good faith newbie who is greeted in this way will discern the reproachful undertone. I am not surprised that the user hasn't edited under this account since then. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)