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Brews ohare's incivility, disrespect, and bad faith toward others

• "probably four or five editors who cannot tie their shoes steamrollering a flatly incorrect statement into the intro."
• "There is no consideration for sources, logic or whatever: you just have to round up a lynch mob and away it goes."
• "simply subject to sneers from the civilized persons pretending to be editors."
• "dealing with completely intransigent editors suffering from both idée fixe and groupthink, and no concept of sources."
• "It's probably tendentious of me, but I attribute this to a lack of desire to really engage the issues (and the brain) and instead a preference for adrenalin and artful put-down."
• "A number of them are incapable of thought, and the rest are uninterested"
• "It is a really disgusting display of mob rule. The only reason to remove it is vendetta, I am afraid."
• "It was a bit of an eye-opener to find that some cannot understand plain English, and that some want only to attack me personally, nevermind the topic."

Tendentious editing by Brews ohare

These are just ones involving me. The pattern has gone on for months with others.

• Baiting me to get involved in an obsessive argument. Compare before and after my article edits to see that Brews ohare's "commentary" did not address anything I changed. I did not alter the first paragraph in any way.
• Purposefully misrepresenting my comment by changing indenting levels and position, thereby altering context. See my original context. Yes, I certainly did undo this gross abuse by the "page owner", as explained in my edit summary.

David Tombe has repeatedly brought his own original research into discussions

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Concerns from others about David Tombe's original research

• "This is a difficult situation, because Mr. Tombe backs off when administrators put a foot down hard, but he does not ever seem to get up his goal of inserting his version of the truth (which is not even a notable fringe view as far as I am aware) into centrifugal force and related articles."
• "I suggest you submit your physics reasoning to a physics journal, so that after it is published we can use it to explain to the readers of the wikipedia how David Tombe overturned basic physics"
• An editor inserting a section heading to indicate that the contributions are Davis Tombe's original research

Fringe views of David Tombe

• "the old real physics", before "the new nonsense physics" of Einstein's theory of relativity.
• "It is likley that Einstein misunderstood Maxwell's equations."
• "Einstein on the other hand appears to have totally failed to grasp anything that Maxwell said at all."
• "[t]his most important chapter of scientific history has now degenerated into the abominable post-1983 new physics that is summed up in the lead to the vacuum permittivity article."

Brews edits super-aggessively to push his idiosyncratic points of view

Brews attacks one article at a time, totally dominating both the article and the talk page if he doesn't get his way. When he directed his attention to Wavelength starting June 10, I stood up to him, and it was a painful four weeks, with support from User:Srleffler. His edit stats there tell the story: wavelength stats and the corresponding talk page stats.

The pattern has been repeated on various other articles, but probably none with numbers as big as what we currently see on speed of light: [9] and [10], where he edits about as much as all other editors combined.

Stats or histories for articles and talk pages at Centrifugal force, Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) (1943 edits on the talk page there!), Electromotive force, Matter, Wave, Frame of reference, and many more. Most of the dominant edit counts indicate edit wars.

As another example, here in 112 consecutive edits, he rewrites and bloats Electromotive force, focusing on one use of the term and adding unsourced assertion that other uses are "confused". When I noticed and tried to fix it to represent other points of view in a balanced way, edit warring ensued as he dug in to defend his particular POV. He summarily removes sourced information that doesn't fit his POV as "confusing material and incorrect statements".

When Brews can't put his stuff one place, he'll put it another

See Talk:Dispersion relation#Dispersion and propagation of general waveforms. Material that was rejected as off-topic at Wavelength was then put in this place where it's even more off-topic, with a new stated purpose. None of the cited sources there mention the article topic.

Brews ohare's contributions do more harm than good

For example, in 10 days last November (this net diff), Brews expanded Capacitance from 10 KB to over 28 KB, largely by the addition of the wonderfully complex and idiosyncratic section Capacitance#Capacitance and 'displacement current'. The article was desparately in need of a cleanup and simplification of the lead before he touched it, and it remains so; but this new main section, the first section after the lead, is wonderfully inappropriate and such a great illustration of what he like to do.

In Speed of light, he was not content to put his junk in a section; he continually pushes to influence the lead, and even the first sentence of the lead with his unique POV; sometimes like here he buries his idiosyncratic unsourced complexifying asides in footnotes.

In Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame), he added extensive (that is, bloated) quantities of examples and explanations that make the article the steaming heap that it is today. I had to start a new summary-style article, Centrifugal force, to give the typical reader a place to go to learn about centrifugal force (initially this 5 KB article), and then had to defend it vigorously against both David Tombe (e.g. this POV push) and the Brews bloat for several months; with edits like this one, Brews and David pushed the article to over 46 KB before I was able to spin off some of their stuff as subsidiary articles and get it back down to 24 KB, which is still bloated for a summary-style article, and it further expanded the system of Brews-created articles around this topic. The history shows that numerous other editors (FyzixFighter, Woodstone, Headbomb, ...) tried to help me hold back both Brews and David.

I tried for several months to talk with Brews about the problems with his editing style and contributions, culminating in my rather negative assessment on his talk page at User_talk:Brews_ohare#Your "record of contributions to Wikipedia".

There is very little disagreement about the speed of light

As far as I can tell, the only substantive disagreement is whether there are two different concepts called the speed of light; Brews says there are, and David Tombe agrees; that the speed of light that is the defined value in SI units is not the same thing as, or is conceptually distinct from, the "real, physical speed of light". So far, as far as I've been able to find, he hasn't produced any source that represents this point of view. Everthing else seems to be understood and agreed by all, in spite of Brews repeatedly asserting that nobody understands him or the issue. For examples, search for "real, physical" in Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_8 and Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_9. In Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_9#The_numerical_value_299_792_458_m.2Fs_is_not_measured_in_SI_units he expounds at length on his "two different meanings" idea; his sources are all OK, but they don't appear to support the interpretation that there are "two different meanings", or even that the detailed meanings before and after 1983, due to subtleties of what the standards organizations chose to do, deserve more than a brief comment in a section. It seems clear that everyone hears and understands his point; but it's his idiosyncratic interpretation of sources, not something that any reliable source actually says; nonetheless, he dominates the discussion and the editing to try to get wikipedia to represent this weird POV of his.

Remarkably, in spite of my extensive comments directed to him and his edits on Talk:Speed of light (now Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_8 and Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_9) and my filing a plea for help at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics/Archive_August_2009#More_trouble_brewing, Brews says he doesn't recall disagreements between us on speed of light. Maybe it's because the disagreements were about his editing, not about physics. Dicklyon (talk) 06:18, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tim Shuba removed an important sub-section [11] from the history section at speed of light, hence leaving a gap in the chronology. I did not insert that sub-section in the first place, but I substantially modified the paragraph about James Clerk-Maxwell's role in linking the measured speed of light to the measured values of the electric and magnetic constants. That was virtually my only contribution to the article.

Martin Hogbin removed material from the history section concerning Maxwell's 1861 paper [12] and replaced it with confusion that was written by somebody who didn't know the difference between Maxwell's 1861 paper and Maxwell's 1865 paper. In doing so, he stated in the caption "No crackpot physics". This material was eventually restored, but it was removed again a few weeks later when Tim Shuba removed the entire section. David Tombe (talk) 15:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Specific issues

My attempts to insert a sub-subsection into Speed of light have been resisted by reversion without comment and generalities not related to the actual content of the submission.

My views on the 1983 definition of the speed of light were supported by Steve, but drew a barrage of criticism from many based upon not what was written, but what people imagined was written. For example, Finell took the opportunity to chastise me for bringing the subject up at all and accused me of "spewing pseudo-scientific nonsense all over WP" (a substitute for specific critique of specific statements), TimothyRias read into it a treatment of general relativity that was amazingly off-topic (GR is not involved at all), and Dicklyon interpreted it as "idiosyncratic synthesis", although he could not support his claim because the entire thing is sourced at every point.

Editor Tim Shuba's mistaken view of my activity on Speed of light

Editor Tim Shuba made what amounted to a major rewrite of Speed of light ending approximately here. I mistakenly concluded that the page now met his approval, and referred to it as "his" page. His response was heated and from that moment on it was downhill. He reverted my edits on the talk page with the Edit summary "undo dishonest editing by Brews ohare. I never answered him. More tendentious editing". I was amazed.

Editor Tim Shuba has linked to a number of my comments made on other editors' Talk pages, where I was complaining to those editors about my treatment by others on Speed of light. None of these comments was directed at the editor to whom I was speaking, and none appeared on Talk:Speed of light. Brews ohare (talk) 05:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Editor Dicklyon's complaints are unrelated to Speed of light

On Speed of light I don't believe there is much evidence of disagreement between us. I supported his efforts to rewrite the lead on several occasions, and do not recall any disagreements. Nonetheless, Dicklyon has instigated a number of motions against me on the Projects Physics page based not upon physics, but his reaction to my mode of editing. I would like this motion and the responses to it by other editors to be reviewed. Dicklyon wishes to expand the scope of this inquiry beyond the mandate of the Case/Speed of light to become a forum for discussion of all his past experiences with me. That is beyond the scope of this inquiry. If it is to be broadened in this manner, a new Case/Brews_ohare must be opened where the evidence and opinions on the subject of my overall activities on WP can be properly examined in full context, with contributions based upon that topic, not this one, and I can defend myself in view of my full range of contributions. Brews ohare (talk) 21:25, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with Editor Physchim62

Physchim62 attacks my views using violations of WP:NPA and WP:Talk. A recent example is his intemperate interjection concerning Speed of light set by definition section, responded to by me at this link. Another example is here, where Physchim62 actually attributes to me a ludicrous view never expressed or supported by myself, all to justify a threat that is way beyond WP:NPA. Other examples of this behavior are pandering to vociferous soapboxers, if you don't shut up I'll ask that you be banned & so forth. The comments of mine linked in his evidence below are not nonsense as he depicts them, but perfectly reasonable statements. Brews ohare (talk) 15:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with Editor Martin Hogbin

Martin Hogbin continually violates WP:NPA and WP:Talk, using personal attacks and refusal to address content (dismissing content with the one word "nonsense" is not critique, and though technically directed at content is really a personal attack.) Examples are endless nonsense (I admit to not even reading it this time);crackpot test; panders to Brews' misconceptions; stop putting your nonsense in the article; waste of time including ludicrous claims of an ongoing edit war over the adjective "relative" to qualify an error bar, responded to here. In addition, he deleted a sourced contribution without comment or Edit Summary and steadfastly refuses to critique it, or even read it. My plea for consideration is here. Brews ohare (talk) 16:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to LouScheffer

I have made 'vacuum' link to 'free space' some time ago, but that link has been made before on this article by other authors (see here where Martin Hogbin linked to free space), and is the correct link to explain 'vacuum' in this context of electromagnetism in 'vacuum'. Other than that, I am bewildered by Lou's comments, and suggest he has no evidence to support his comments on this page. Perhaps he has become confused about what I have actually done by listening to the unsupported and incorrect statements of my views made by Finell and by Physchim62 and others? In particular, I have no stance on GR, and have not edited the lead in the article for a long time, nevermind in this regard. Contrary to LouScheffer's remarks about lack of cooperation, I have supported both Abtract and Dicklyon in their versions of the lead paragraph. Unless specific diffs can be provided, I'd say there is nothing valid in Lou's remarks. Brews ohare (talk) 01:05, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support for D Tombe

My own discussions with D Tombe at Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) stimulated me to make the first draft of virtually all the examples, figures and explanations that did much to improve that page, and similarly the examples on the Coriolis effect page. It also led me to identification of the meaning used in the first draft of the Lagrangian approach, a topic very reluctantly accepted by Dicklyon after weeks of persuasion. These discussions also led to the article Centrifugal force and absolute rotation spun off as a separate article using material from Centrifugal force first drafted by myself in a good move by Dicklyon.

I disagree with Steve's proposal to ban D Tombe, and find his ability to frame a discussion and provide examples a useful contribution to the evolution of WP. An example is Centripetal force. Brews ohare (talk) 16:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

General remarks

What has to be done to fix the editing atmosphere at Speed of light is outlined on the Workshop page.

Peripheral involvement in threads with User:David Tombe

Since David Tombe has chosen to accuse me of malicious behavior as part of his statement of evidence (diff), I'm responding here. A typical summary of his accusations towards me would be the latter half of this post(signature).

Here are all of the edits that I've made related to these threads. There aren't many:

• At the WT:PHYS thread:
  • Attempted to clarify for Mr. Tombe what the basis of the dispute with his statements was: [13][14]
  • Request for more comments at AN/I: [15][16]
  • Other editing: [17]

• At the AN/I thread:
  • Drawing attention to Mr. Tombe's talk page behavior, in response to requests at AN/I for evidence of disruption and of people trying to mentor him: [18][19][20]
  • Brief responses to Mr. Tombe's accusations: [21][22]
  • Other commentary: [23]

I decided to refrain from further involvement, as continued participation in the threads did not seem likely to be useful. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:49, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Time wasting accusations even after back-handed admission of error

Brews argued that the speed of light cannot logically be defined in metres/second, presented this "disproof" here and demanded a refutation, claiming that he would apologise and go away if disproved. After much wrangling he finally, although indirectly, admitted that the metre-based standard definition of the speed of light was correct, but continued to argue and further waste time over an issue he has accepted was his mistake, now claiming that others didn't undertstand this now-obvious point. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:48, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Brews ohare has tendentiously edited from at least 15 July 2009

Brews ohare (talk · contribs) has accused me of misrepresenting his views both on his own talk page [24] and also at the workshop of this arbitration [25]. Now this editor has made over a thousand comments to the talkpage over the last two months… not easy to show which diff corresponds to which statement, or even to keep track of every statement posted! Still, I will post those that I can find again which support my initial summary that Brews has freely and publically supported views which go contrary to all modern mainstream physics. Whether he or she actually believes these views is something which I feel should not be a matter for this Committee (given the obvious problems of verification); I leave it to the committee to decide if such statements are actually helpfully in improving our encyclopedia.

• you are confusing defined behavior in unrealizable free space with actual observation on real media
• The statement that free space is dispersion free is a defined property of the unrealizable, ideal medium of free space. To claim that this defined property is experimentally verified is a logical error, as one cannot measure a defined property: its value is what the definition says it is. All that experiment can do is confirm whether some realizable medium, like outer space say, has this property. Such confirmation serves to support the notion that "free space" is a useful model, but it cannot change the model. It can only support its utility. These statements in the article should be replaced with something like: "According to classical electromagnetism, the speed of electromagnetic radiation in free space is the same for all frequencies. This behavior has been verified by experiment to a high degree of accuracy for media such as outer space or ultra-high vacuum, showing that in this respect these media are good approximations to free space."
• "Theory" does not predict anything about free space. It is a hypothetical medium with permittivity εo and permeability μo. With these postulated values, of course it has no dispersion. Where is the "theory" for this medium? There isn't any: not in say, continuum mechanics, nor quantum field theory. It's an unrealizable, ideal medium, untouchable and unreachable by experiment.
• You can ask some fundamental questions, like how do we know that the speed of light hasn't changed since the last time we did this? That could be answered by repeating the measurement. One might ask whether we got the number wrong for c? The answer is: that is a dumb question, we've made up our minds. We could have picked 100,000,000 m/s to make the math easier, but we didn't because there are so many bolts and nuts out there with standardized sizes it just would cost too much in dollars and in nuisance. We could ask if it wouldn't be more fundamental to say the meter is x wavelengths of some atomic transition? The answer is, been there done that. The error analysis is better at present doing it this way, but that might change if some other measurement becomes more accurate.
  More basically, one might ask if the speed of light is "really" the limiting speed in relativity? Or does the limiting speed of light apply at a Planck length? Those are interesting questions. They don't depend upon free space, or what definition is taken for the numerical value of c.

I apologise if I haven't the best "Brews quotes" that everyone wants, but I have started at 15 July, so I still have a lot of work to do. If one wishes to see how a single "editor" can influence a talk page, this diff is quite instructive.

Ownership issues

Maybe I am totally naïve in such things, but an on-wiki agreement between two parties to this dispute to "hand the article over" to a third editor [26] is hardly something which fits with normal editing practices. I would summarize the root of the problem as being that Brews ohare (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and David Tombe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) believe that they own the article about the Speed of light (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views): must I present evidence that they do not?

Intolerant attitude toward Brews and David by some editors

I think this is the main problem. This causes minor disputes to explode. You just have to see the negative language used by Dicklyon when he writes about Brews, his desire to see Brews "to be stopped", etc. etc. to see that there is a problem.

Instead of thinking about editing the wiki (physics) pages, the mindset of some editors is more driven by ways to get Brews banned. Example, Dicklyon starts a attack thread on the wikiproject physics talk page. Note that the wikiproject talk page is specifically intended to discuss physics, it is not the place to vent anger against another editor. I wrote in that thread:

I think that one can either complain about flawed physics being edited in articles or one should shut up. If Brews is editing a lot and if that somehow causes "Brews to get his way", then it shouldn't be difficult to come here and show specific examples of erroneous edits that one has difficulty correcting because Brews (allegedly) doesn't give anyone the chance to do so.

The focus of discussions here should be on the physics. But the complaint now is 100% about Brews' editing style and 0% about any problems related to the physics of the topic. I think that's unacceptable and the next time we should simply delete such attack threads here. Count Iblis (talk) 18:00, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Then I got support for my point of view by editor User:TStein and he wrote these recommendations to constructively address and solve the problem. But, as you can see, Dicklyon was not interested in contributing to that thread.

I can testify from my own experience here at wikipedia, that the attacks that Brews is subjected to will certainly be perceived as extemely insulting by anyone. This is where I was attacked in a very similar way in which Dicklyon and others attack Brews. This caused me to become really angry.

Count Iblis (talk) 15:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with editor Brews ohare

Editing style

Others have provided ample evidence of his incivility and bad faith but this is not, in my opinion, the major problem with his edits. Brews appears to have two issues with the subject. One is related to the fact that standards and theories refer to the hypothetical medium of free space but actual experiments are performed in real media and the other to the fact the the definition of the meter in terms of the speed of light means that the speed of light, when expressed in SI units, has an exact value. This would not be a problem if it were not for the sheer volume of edits that he makes in these subjects, as can be seen from the edit statistics.[[27]] These edits are done in batches of many edits ranging from a complete section rewrite to minor corrections. This editing style makes cooperative editing impossible.

Many of my edits have been removal of material added to the article to make these points endlessly over a period of many months.

Arguments pursued in the article itself

Brews has pursued many of his arguments in the article itself itself with long rambling expositions often accompanied by quotations from sources surrounded by whitespace.[[28]]

Ignoring consensus and poll results

After this discussion and consensus on the subject [[29]] Brews continued to raise the issue on the talk page starting only a few days after the poll [[30]], [[31]].

Other editors' stated views

When I came back to the page after a short break I suggested that it was time to try to get it back into shape. The problem was summed up by CrispMuncher as, 'I do not wish to be uncivil but the reason for this can be summed up simply: Brews Ohare', [[32]].

David Tombe is a fringe physicist

David Tombe has opinions about many aspects of physics (as far as I know, all aspects of physics) that are completely fringe, and has been going on about them since early 2008, (partially under other accounts, George Smyth XI (talk · contribs) and Tim Carrington West (talk · contribs)). By "fringe" I mean universally rejected by every serious physicist in the past 50 years. For example, he:

• Believes the Biot-Savart law is false [33]
• Believes that gauge theory and gauge transformations are nonsense [34]
• Believes Einstein's theory of special relativity is false, and that 19th-century aether theory is true instead. [35]
• Believes centrifugal force is a real force, essential to explaining circular motion. (This is such a well-known misconception that it's debunked on a children's television show, "Bill Nye the Science Guy"!)

He promotes his fringe physics point of views in real life as either a full-time profession, or at least an extremely intense hobby. See for example [36].

To be clear, he's sane, and he's capable of logic, and sometimes he's even capable of some mathematical and physical reasoning. You should imagine trying to discuss the death of John F. Kennedy with Jim Marrs: You would find him to know a lot of details, evidence, arguments, and rebuttals, and to have a generally sound mind, and yet he's completely wrong about everything. That's what it's like to discuss physics with David Tombe.

Brews Ohare is unwilling to follow Wikipedia conventions

This includes "no jargon in the lead paragraph", no surprise links (such as linking Vacuum to free space), the lead paragraph should specify the most important information in a way accessible to a non-specialist, etc. See for example [37]

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