Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 10:16 PM 9/4/2009, you wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: think you are quibbling. This is a bit like saying there is no Democratic Party because the Democrats are unorganized and they seldom agree among themselves. Okay, the Party may be nebulous but they have a headquarters and they welcome contributions so that makes them a Party. Mainstream media, where ever its boundaries lie, consists of television, newspapers, magazines and books that sell in the millions and that most people watch or read. Perhaps you have to draw an arbitrary line and say a newspaper is mass media if it has more than 200,000 readers. Okay, but the "mainstream" I was denying has any defined boundaries isn't actually "mainstream media," that's relatively easy, but "mainstream science." The point is that such media has enormous influence on society and it reaches far more people every day than I have reached with LENR-CANR.org in 7 years. This tremendous difference in scale gives them abilities and influence far beyond mine. I hand out 5,000 or 10,000 papers a week, year after year, and have no measurable effect. CBS "60 Minutes" devotes 15 minutes to the subject and doors fly open to researchers all over the country. Sure. Look, there are pathways to that kind of influence. There are people who know how to access them. Media is hungry for content. It can be provided. The New Scientist probably depended on what authors provided, my guess is that the bias was that of the authors, the magazine made its choices based on interest, not on some editorial policy about cold fusion, per se. Providing well-written articles on cold fusion to publications would be one way forward, if we want to accelerate the process. Or press releases, like the ACS release. The media that picked up on that would not have gone out and sought that information on their own. "Hey, the ACS is running a seminar on cold fusion on the 20th anniversary of the original Fleischmann press conference, lets send a reporter and pay their expenses, etc., etc. Some did go, I think, but probably because of the press release. Others just used the material from the press release. You might compare the mass media to "very large animals." Yes, there are many different sized animals and it is impossible to say where on the continuum you reach "very large," but when you get up to elephants, let us say, you find radical differences from the rest of the animal kingdom. Such as the fact that few predators can hurt a healthy elephant. (One of the largest animals is Homo sapiens, although we tend to think of ourselves as small.) Also, whether mass media reporters mean to attack or are merely being lazy, the effect of their articles is to hurt the field. And they will not accept information "spoon fed" from me. Maybe not from you. You are trying to feed reporters, feed editors and publishers. My favorite example of a journal with a split personality was the Journal of Fusion Energy, September 2004 issue which has an attack on cold fusion on page 161 and a long paper about cold fusion in China by X. Z. Li On page 217. What is the attack paper? (I know about Li's paper.) Is it available on-line? It was an editorial comment. I do not know if it is available on line. I did not upload it. I will scan it and post it here. Remind me if I forget. Editorial comment. Not peer reviewed. Editor's opinion. Not a quality source. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Please note that I did not say that all mainstream media is opposed to cold >> fusion. >> > > Nor did I say that they were. I said "there is no mainstream." It's a myth, > an appearance, a phenomenon without boundaries. However, sometimes these are > useful. I think you are quibbling. This is a bit like saying there is no Democratic Party because the Democrats are unorganized and they seldom agree among themselves. Okay, the Party may be nebulous but they have a headquarters and they welcome contributions so that makes them a Party. Mainstream media, where ever its boundaries lie, consists of television, newspapers, magazines and books that sell in the millions and that most people watch or read. Perhaps you have to draw an arbitrary line and say a newspaper is mass media if it has more than 200,000 readers. The point is that such media has enormous influence on society and it reaches far more people every day than I have reached with LENR-CANR.org in 7 years. This tremendous difference in scale gives them abilities and influence far beyond mine. I hand out 5,000 or 10,000 papers a week, year after year, and have no measurable effect. CBS "60 Minutes" devotes 15 minutes to the subject and doors fly open to researchers all over the country. You might compare the mass media to "very large animals." Yes, there are many different sized animals and it is impossible to say where on the continuum you reach "very large," but when you get up to elephants, let us say, you find radical differences from the rest of the animal kingdom. Such as the fact that few predators can hurt a healthy elephant. (One of the largest animals is Homo sapiens, although we tend to think of ourselves as small.) Also, whether mass media reporters mean to attack or are merely being lazy, the effect of their articles is to hurt the field. And they will not accept information "spoon fed" from me. > My favorite example of a journal with a split personality was the Journal >> of Fusion Energy, September 2004 issue which has an attack on cold fusion on >> page 161 and a long paper about cold fusion in China by X. Z. Li On page >> 217. >> > > What is the attack paper? (I know about Li's paper.) Is it available > on-line? > It was an editorial comment. I do not know if it is available on line. I did not upload it. I will scan it and post it here. Remind me if I forget. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 05:36 PM 9/4/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: There is any amount of anti-cold fusion material from mainstream sources. It has no depth. "Mainstream"? Jed, you've swallowed a bill of goods. There is no mainstream. Or, rather, there are many. Is the ACS "mainstream"? Is Oxford University Press . . . Please note that I did not say that all mainstream media is opposed to cold fusion. Nor did I say that they were. I said "there is no mainstream." It's a myth, an appearance, a phenomenon without boundaries. However, sometimes these are useful. That has never been the case. Every year there have been one or two articles in mainstream mass media sympathetic to cold fusion. However, mass media articles attacking cold fusion have greatly outnumbered those supporting it. I have not made a careful tally but that is my impression based on Google alerts, Google searches, and other sources. This year the ratio may have shifted somewhat to more favorable articles but there are still many from the opposition. That matches my impression, except that I wouldn't say that a "mainstream media" article that repeats the old canards is "attacking cold fusion." An important difference. They merely are doing what mainstream media do, repeat stuff because it is cheaper than doing new investigative reporting. You want to change that, you have to spoon-feed them. My favorite example of a journal with a split personality was the Journal of Fusion Energy, September 2004 issue which has an attack on cold fusion on page 161 and a long paper about cold fusion in China by X. Z. Li On page 217. What is the attack paper? (I know about Li's paper.) Is it available on-line?
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
> There is no page titled "jzq". jzg, not jzq. Hard to see. somewhat case sensitive. so "JzG" is the optimal way stands for "Just zis guy," slang for "just this guy"
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 12:07 PM 9/4/2009, Steven Krivit wrote: I was unable to make contact with Wikipedia Administrator JzG (Guy Chapman), but some of his fan club has some things about him at encyclopediadramatica.com. Just type in jzg in the search box. Don't go to encyclopediadramatica.com if you are easily offended by words or pictures. ED is pretty much an attack site, or parody. There is a more serious criticism site at Wikipediareview.com. This has participation by administrators and even arbitrators. It's not censored, it also gets a bit wild and wooly, but there is also thoughful writing there, from some highly experienced editors, people who have been around Wikipedia much longer than I. JzG, who originally blacklisted your site, Steven, stopped editing entirely during the Request for Arbitration that I caused to be filed. His last edits were the beginning of May. He has now started to edit again; I welcomed him back, sincerely, and he deleted it with a weird comment. Too bad. It seems he took it all personally Writers here may, if they like, take an interest in the article; but I'm not necessarily recommending it. As I wrote, if anyone wants advice from me as to what can and cannot be done on Wikipedia, ask me by email, probably better not to ask here. I don't subscribe to the "the worse the better" argument from Rothwell et al, but neither am I very hopeful for accomplishing much in the short term. My work was primarily with site structure, overall, and I've managed to accomplish a great deal that way, but not a great deal with the Wikipedia article itself. Still, what I did may have made it a little easier for others to come. The Cab won't be quite so able to sit on the article as they once did. The ACS Sourcebook just got a serious thumbs-up from the Reliable Source Noticeboard. Of course. The idea that this wasn't usable was totally preposterous, but the arbitrators haven't put two and two together, they need to consult an expert. Or find a reliable source, to figure out what was going on when attempts to propose the Sourcebook as a source were being so seriously opposed because you were an editor. Totally stupid, the kind of thing that can't survive being exposed, laid out in the open. Something you should understand about Wikipedia. The level of education among senior editors is fairly high. The level of skepticism about cold fusion among them is also high. My proposal that cold fusion is "mainstream" is based, not on the general opinion of people, including scientists, who think of themselves as "mainstream," but on what happens when you sit an expert down, give the expert a special opportunity to become informed, and *then* collect the opinions. However, most senior Wikipedia editors are, in fact, dedicated to neutral point of view, and dislike repression of legitimate sources even if they disagree with the perceived POV of those sources. The ScienceApologist approach is still popular among an active faction, but that faction is quite unpopular when the circle of discussion becomes large, they have power mostly because they are very active, as you noticed with SA. You might notice that ScienceApologist was also banned and blocked. Wikipedia is not *entirely* stacked, and the problem the CF community faces is how to convince the great unwashed, so to speak, how to move beyond that barrier of rejection. It's deep, it's persistent. And it's not based on science. I've been debating cold fusion on Wikipedia Review, and (1) Apparently knowledgeable (as to general science) editors make outrageous claims on the negative side, with no evidence. (2) I make positive claims with evidence, acknowledging whatever is true about the negative, and point to the known problems. (3) Those claims are rejected or ignored and new negative claims made without evidence, often becoming very personal about CF researchers being deluded, greedy, etc. (4) I respond to all the negative claims with evidence, and the evidence is derided, but no negative evidence is presented except very old canards, i.e., "That was conclusively shown to be false by an MIT study in 1989." Right. They really don't know! I described that study, citing it, recounting the problems, and I might as well have been copying the local phone book, in one ear and out the other. Actually, not even in one ear. They aren't actually interested, which is fine with me; I'm taking the opportunity to practice responding to certain arguments. It will likely go nowhere, visibly. Invisibly, there is other value. (5) At least one of the editors arguing against cold fusion is one that I've considered one of the "good guys." I've been pretty hard on him. But he should know better, and he obviously doesn't. (6) The likelihood is that, for most of these editors, I'm twice their age. Some are old and should know better (7) The discussion there and here has been taken onto Wikipedia in an
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 12:33 PM 9/4/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Steven Krivit wrote: > > I was unable to make contact with Wikipedia Administrator JzG (Guy > Chapman), but some of his fan club has some things about him at > encyclopediadramatica.com. Just type in jzg in the search box. Typed in "jzq" in the encyclopediadramatica search box, and it said: > No page title matches Right. The letters are J z G. Not Q. The z is lower-case. On Wikipedia it makes a difference. However, I'm just obsessively correcting a blatant error. I do not, in fact, recommend reading ED, it's pure insult, taken as far as possible and then further. The Wikipedia Review page (list of threads) on JzG isn't easy on him, but bears some relationship with real problems. http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showforum=44. Researching the RfC, I unearthed the origin of JzG's contempt for cold fusion
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: There is any amount of anti-cold fusion material from mainstream sources. It has no depth. "Mainstream"? Jed, you've swallowed a bill of goods. There is no mainstream. Or, rather, there are many. Is the ACS "mainstream"? Is Oxford University Press . . . Please note that I did not say that all mainstream media is opposed to cold fusion. That has never been the case. Every year there have been one or two articles in mainstream mass media sympathetic to cold fusion. However, mass media articles attacking cold fusion have greatly outnumbered those supporting it. I have not made a careful tally but that is my impression based on Google alerts, Google searches, and other sources. This year the ratio may have shifted somewhat to more favorable articles but there are still many from the opposition. There are some instances in which some authors in a journal or magazine attack cold fusion while others defend it. The best example is New Scientist which has printed appalling attacks against cold fusion and outrageous distortions. They won the prize for that in 1993. Yet that same magazine has printed accurate and sympathetic articles such as their Miles interview. My favorite example of a journal with a split personality was the Journal of Fusion Energy, September 2004 issue which has an attack on cold fusion on page 161 and a long paper about cold fusion in China by X. Z. Li On page 217. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Terry Blanton wrote: > On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > >> Dunno -- I'm not sure I was on the same wavelength as their search box. > > > I think it's case sensitive: > > http://encyclopediadramatica.com/JzG Oops. Thanks. >
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > Dunno -- I'm not sure I was on the same wavelength as their search box. I think it's case sensitive: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/JzG
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Steven Krivit wrote: > Abd, > > Thanks for the corrections. I would be hard-pressed to argue with you > about the policies, procedures and practices of Wikipedia. > > I was unable to make contact with Wikipedia Administrator JzG (Guy > Chapman), but some of his fan club has some things about him at > encyclopediadramatica.com. Just type in jzg in the search box. Typed in "jzq" in the encyclopediadramatica search box, and it said: > No page title matches > > There is no page titled "jzq". > > For more information about searching Encyclopedia Dramatica, see Help. > No page text matches > > Note: Only some namespaces are searched by default. Try prefixing your > query with all: to search all content (including talk pages, templates, > etc), or use the desired namespace as prefix. So I followed their suggestion and typed in "all:jzq" in the search box, and it said: > No page text matches > > Note: Only some namespaces are searched by default. Try prefixing your > query with all: to search all content (including talk pages, templates, > etc), or use the desired namespace as prefix. Dunno -- I'm not sure I was on the same wavelength as their search box.
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Abd, Thanks for the corrections. I would be hard-pressed to argue with you about the policies, procedures and practices of Wikipedia. I was unable to make contact with Wikipedia Administrator JzG (Guy Chapman), but some of his fan club has some things about him at encyclopediadramatica.com. Just type in jzg in the search box. Don't go to encyclopediadramatica.com if you are easily offended by words or pictures. Steve
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 01:40 AM 9/4/2009, Steven Krivit wrote: Steve and Vortex, About a year ago, I think it was, the Wikipedia "cold fusion" haters blacklisted New Energy Times because I added some links to - heaven forbid - the NET site which I thought would be useful. You know, the Internet is good for Wiki, it's good for NET too - we're both vehicles that ride on the same highway, founded on the same principles of open information, I thought. It was in December. Not so, apparently. Somehow, the Wikipedians think they're the smartest cats on the Internet. (Shhhlet them keep thinking that.) The strange thing is - since OR (Original Research) is verbotten on Wikipedia, you have to ask, well then, where do they get their facts from? Answer: They take (steal) it from other people who have done OR. But they reword it so it doesn't appear to be plagiarism. Nifty, eh? This isn't an accurate description. Explaining Wikipedia to someone who hasn't extensively edited it is a bit like trying to explain cold fusion to someone who hasn't read the literature, but who has some strong opinions. The hype is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the sum of all human knowledge." The reality is that those words must be understood in certain ways, or they are very misleading. Also, so long as OR is verbotten on Wiki, it will ALWAYS been behind the leading edge as other publications who do use OR diligently will maintain the leading edge. That's where it's at for me. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a description of the bleeding edge. It's not "news." The model has to have some standard of notability, for starters, it isn't going to describe what's in your refrigerator. And the basic policy is Verifiability. Which means that, in theory, what is in the project should be verifiable by anyone who does the research. "Research" doesn't mean "experiment," that's "original research." Wikipedia is a tertiary source, which means that it is based on secondary sources. Wikipedia depends on independent publication for "reliable source," if something appears in "reliable source" -- which means little about the ordinary meaning of reliability, some reliable sources aren't "reliable" -- it is considered "notable," thus it belongs in the project. *how* it is included is a matter for editorial consensus to determine, but the other basic policy is Neutral Point of View. And the theory of this was never well worked out; I do know how to get what was intended, but the oligarchy that formed dislikes it. My view is that you can measure NPOV by the degree of consensus that it enjoys. The more the better. If you have complete consensus, you have neutrality, absolutely. As long as you haven't excluded people. Complete consensus may not be attainable, so certainty about neutrality may not be attainable, but we can get close. Most editors think of NPOV as an absolute, and imagine that they can determine it by themselves. It's impossible, for nearly all of us, if not absolutely all, because we can't see our own limitations, we may think that something is perfectly neutral and, in fact, it shows a strong point of view, which will be recognized by someone with a different point of view. That's why we need consensus for neutrality. It's in how things are said. "Bush was a jerk." POV. "According to Randi Rhodes, Bush was a jerk." Might be neutral, especially if balanced by other information that one might need for context. You could verify the second statement. The first isn't a fact, it's a complex judgment. I learned to do this stuff with interreligious debates I ended up interviewing ScienceApologist (perhaps the most destructive "contributor" to the cf page) a while back and was planning on publishing a comprehensive investigation. My sense after tracking him (Joshua Schroeder, Columbia Univ. student), watching a video of him conducting one of his science-hating meetings and speaking with him on the interview (yes, he consented and we both recorded it) was that I was dealing with someone who was hell-bent on a censorship and book-burning crusade. Real scary siht. I won't make any analogies here - use your imaginations. I've not compiled and pub'd the investigation yet...fortunately I've had better and more important things to do. It would be interesting. I may meet him at some point. He is a student at Columbia? That is a little different from what I'd been led to believe but maybe I wasn't paying attention. He has called himself an NPOV-pusher (which is an oxymoron, it depends on believing that one owns the neutral point of view -- while it's possible to advocate for NPOV, which is what I've done, it cannot be determined alone.) He has said that he'd be on the side of the church against Galileo; he is basically pushing for what some might call "constituted authority." Very anti-fringe, and cold fusion is somewhat of a peripheral issues for him, he was more concerned
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 09:57 PM 9/3/2009, you wrote: I just checked Wikipedia for the first time in months. Their latest shenanigan is to delete Dieter Britz's site. They made up some strange sounding reason. It is kind of funny because Britz is on their side. He is a "skeptic" who does not believe cold fusion is real. That's transient, Jed. The removal is being shot down, I think it's back already. Since we cannot do anything to improve the article I hope these people keep making it worse and worse, so that it will apparent to unbiased readers that the article is wrong. Yeah, you've said that. It makes you really popular on Wikipedia. Not. I do not worry about the people who read it and believe it. They are a lost cause. If they miss seeing Wikipedia they will be taken in by Scientific American, the DoE or some other organization that opposes cold fusion. Jed, with that attitude you really missed something. The 2004 DoE report was a stunning reversal in favor of cold fusion. By protesting against it, you helped validate the impression that it was concluding that nothing changed. Sure, it concluded that. Nothing changed, but with what? With the overall recommendation: no special program, modest funding for specific projects to establish the science, encouragement of publication in peer-reviewed journals. For the DoE, both panels were really setting out to determine one question: should we pour vast sums of money into this thing? And both panels concluded no. But the basis, the thinking underneath that, was radically different. In 1989 there was only one member of the panel, besides the Nobel prize-wining co-chair, who supported cold fusion. The report that recommended further research was only issued because the co-chair threatened to noisily resign. In 2004, the recommendation for research was widely supported by the reviewers, plus, as you know, half the reviewers considered the evidence for excess heat to be convincing, and one-third considered the evidence for a nuclear origin to be "somewhat convincing." That's a massive reversal from 1989, but because of our collective disappointment about no big funding, we overlooked the silver lining. The cold fusion community's response to the 2004 DoE harmed public perception of it. We should have been all over the positive, mentioning it over and over. Consider this: If you are totally convinced that cold fusion is impossible, you will be very skeptical about excess heat, unlikely to accept it based on evidence that you would ordinarily, without such a bias, accept. At least one reviewer was clearly biased, didn't give the idea that this might be real the time of day, wrote about fraud in the field as a problem, etc. But that reviewer was more or less isolated. Still, clearly, most of the physicists weren't about to change their minds based on a shallow review, it would take much more work with them. As far as I'm concerned, excess heat is well-established in the literature, it's a scientific fact, so someone who doesn't accept it is holding on to a belief in the presence of contrary evidence, or, more charitably, for whatever reason, has not become aware of the evidence. You know what the big evidence is, even better than claims that the calorimetry was solid: the helium/excess heat correlation. Hagelstein et al were not skilled politically or polemically. I don't blame them, it's not their field. They allowed the panel to miss the most important evidence; the correlation simultaneously validates the calorimetry and the helium measurements. It's the stuff of high certainty. It took me months to realize the importance of this. Why? This should have been in my face immediately as soon as I started to read about this topic in January. (Again, i.e., I'd been very aware of it in 1989-1990.) So, half the panel didn't find the evidence "convincing." A great deal depends on what questions are asked. What if they had been asked, "Is the evidence such that you consider it "possible" that the excess heat is real?" If half think it convincing, unless there is some religious difference involved, surely some of the remaining consider it possible. However, if you don't think the excess heat evidence is convincing, you are not going to consider a nuclear explanation necessary at all. The second question, nuclear origin, really depends on the first as a precondition. So, of those who accepted the excess heat evidence convincing, two-thirds though it was likely of nuclear origin. My guess is that if one were to go through serious consensus process with a panel like this, it would come to a much clearer consensus, because there are contradictions and unclarities in what they expressed. No attempt was made to resolve these. Bad governmental process, for sure. There is any amount of anti-cold fusion material from mainstream sources. It has no depth. "Mainstream"? Jed, you've swallowed a bill of goods. The
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 06:33 PM 9/3/2009, Michel Jullian wrote: Indeed, thanks for the most interesting summary, Abd! So you have now logically decided to see by yourself whether CF is real or not? Well, I'm pretty well convinced, from the published evidence, that it's real. However, that conclusion isn't actually important, it merely explains why I'd try this idea rather than something else. And it finesses the problem, because it doesn't matter if it's real or not, what's important is to find out, and not just for me to find out, because I'll only be here for a few years, but for everyone to find out. So that, on one hand, the "diehards" among us, if it's not real, might spend more time with our grandchildren, and, on the other, if it is real, our grandchildren and on and on will have either cheap power or at least better science. I still don't know if it's going to be cheap power, it is not intrinsic that LENR can be scaled up, except possibly in certain cases. For example, if Vyosotskii's technique of transmuting radioisotopes into stable elements using certain bacterial or yeast cultures actually works, that could be scaled We are not going to get the massive funding probably needed for serious exploration of scaling up the technology until we can see small, reliable demonstrations of LENR effects. If I just wanted to prove to myself that CF works, I could visit some labs. But what I'm aiming for is much bigger than that. Small, but big.
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 07:07 PM 9/3/2009, you wrote: At 02:26 PM 9/3/2009, Terry Blanton wrote: Thanks for expounding on that, Abd. I'm curious, are you typing or using a voxrec s/w like Dragonspeak? Typing. I bought Dragonspeak when I had a carpal tunnel release, but never used it. brevity? naw!
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Steve and Vortex, About a year ago, I think it was, the Wikipedia "cold fusion" haters blacklisted New Energy Times because I added some links to - heaven forbid - the NET site which I thought would be useful. You know, the Internet is good for Wiki, it's good for NET too - we're both vehicles that ride on the same highway, founded on the same principles of open information, I thought. Not so, apparently. Somehow, the Wikipedians think they're the smartest cats on the Internet. (Shhhlet them keep thinking that.) The strange thing is - since OR (Original Research) is verbotten on Wikipedia, you have to ask, well then, where do they get their facts from? Answer: They take (steal) it from other people who have done OR. But they reword it so it doesn't appear to be plagiarism. Nifty, eh? Also, so long as OR is verbotten on Wiki, it will ALWAYS been behind the leading edge as other publications who do use OR diligently will maintain the leading edge. That's where it's at for me. I ended up interviewing ScienceApologist (perhaps the most destructive "contributor" to the cf page) a while back and was planning on publishing a comprehensive investigation. My sense after tracking him (Joshua Schroeder, Columbia Univ. student), watching a video of him conducting one of his science-hating meetings and speaking with him on the interview (yes, he consented and we both recorded it) was that I was dealing with someone who was hell-bent on a censorship and book-burning crusade. Real scary siht. I won't make any analogies here - use your imaginations. I've not compiled and pub'd the investigation yet...fortunately I've had better and more important things to do. So after the blacklist, I said, enough - these clowns are hopelessly immature and any efforts on my part to help them will be just wasted. I didn't even bother asking them to remove NET from the blacklist. Someone else eventually ended up doing that, I think ABD. He's a noble warrior. Wikipedia is too easy for aggressive, singular-interests to manipulate. It is also often used as a last-ditch battleground for losers of conflicts in the real world. I'm all for the progress of science and communication and I don't have a 20-year axe to grind like some of these players. So playing cat and mouse with the Wikipedia losers is pointless for me. Jed is right, let them fester in their own cess. This way the gap between Wiki and reality will stink so bad, grow so wide, the dysfunction of Wiki will become ever more self-evident. I watch the Wiki CF page and the discussion page now and then to see what is going on. The most prolific and aggressive recent Wikipedia editor on the "cold fusion" page lurks on this (Vortex) list and is probably reading all of these messages. If he weren't such a coward he would uncloak. He probably couldn't withstand the (mostly) intelligent scrutiny that he would have to subject himself here. If he wants to control the Wiki cf page with his POV, he can go ahead knock himself out. He and his heels-in-the-mud buddies can have Wikipedia. Me, I'll put my attention and efforts in real encyclopedias and peer-reviewed journals thank you very much have a nice day. Steve
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 05:23 PM 9/3/2009, you wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: If I'm banned from Wikipeida, as may happen in short order, the biggest reason will be prolixity. No, the biggest reason will be the message you just posted here, plus the fact that you are part of this discussion group. Nah. Prolixity. If I'd been willing to throttle it way back (which is a lot more work!), I'd have been "successful." I didn't do it largely for, I think, emotional reasons. I'm tired of dealing with much of that community. There are some really good people, but it's toxic dealing with the others. At a certain point I just don't want to do it any more. Understand, Jed, that before I posted this message here, I explained my plans on the Proposed Decision talk page, having been asked what I'd learned as a result of the arbitration case. At that point, ArbComm had made a series of weak responses, none of them really close to passing. Immediately two arbitrators proposed a complete site ban, much stronger than what had been only weakly supported before, and a total of five arbitrators voted for it immediately. That's one short of a majority, given the short panel. Maybe there will be one more, and even maybe an arbitrator will withdraw a support, but I don't think it likely. One of the major reasons given was that I intended to continue to write what I think, at length. Which is allowed, actually, and I was careful to qualify it as "as permitted by my mentor," -- I'd accepted "mentorship," or was at least willing to try it, and was going to go ahead with it even if it wasn't required -- and the proposal for mentorship was being rejected, even though that would provide an experienced editor to monitor and restrain me. I.e., it would have actually solved any real problem, or would have "failed" demonstrating that I really should be banned. I also noted that I'd use techniques to make my long posts less objectionable, such as layering them as hypertext, with summary at the top level, which is easily done on Wikipedia. But the idea that I would continue to put personal effort into detailed expression, as I do, was just too much, it blew some fuses. I've seen this for years, it was utterly unsurprising in that sense, but some of the arbitrators were more sophisticated, and it looked for a time as if I might have a majority. See, Jed, non-resistance, go with the flow, do what is natural and relatively easy, and it all comes out right. The people who would be banning me, if it happens, a majority of ArbComm, are not "cold fusion skeptics." They are simply ordinary people who have risen above the level of their competence, they don't know what they are doing, but because they have some narrow experience, they imagine that they do. They've been working on dealing with Wikipedia for a few years at most. I've been working on the generic organizational problem, anticipating activities like Wikipedia, for more than thirty years. It makes a difference. It's probably right that I be banned so that I don't waste more time in ineffective struggles to improve wikipedia one sentence at a time. I'll put my efforts elsewhere, including going "meta," which means working above the wikipedia level, both with the wiki where overall policy and concepts are discussed -- and where lenr-canr.org is blacklisted, I won't be banned there, ArbComm has no authority there, discussing proposals with Wikipedia's founder, Jimbo Wales (there is some possible interest), setting up off-wiki coordination -- legitimately! but the medium is the message -- and also going back to my work before I got stuck on Wikipedia two years ago, setting up demonstrations of free association/delegable proxy organizational technology, which is about fixing not only the Wikipedia problem but a whole lot besides. Some of the FA/DP principles are involved in setting up the kit company, as will be seen. The community of interest, represented by joining the mailing list, will be what I call a Free Association. It will not make decisions, control property. Rather, it will advise its members and anyone interested, and most especially the Company, which will be, I assume, a traditional business organization of some kind; and there may even be more than one Company, if investors want to set up more than one. I've announced my conflict of interest on the topic of Cold fusion, which would mean that I wouldn't be editing the Cold fusion page any more even if I'm not banned from the page or topic. But there was still an attempt to use my post here against me. These folks are definitely watching closely, it wasn't one day before that was cited on-wiki, with the admin I'd dinged for action while involved, based on his ban of me from Cold fusion, and who is also sitting at five votes to lose his administrative privileges, gleefully adding a note to the kit company thread on the Evidence page as if it was going to save his
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 02:26 PM 9/3/2009, Terry Blanton wrote: Thanks for expounding on that, Abd. I'm curious, are you typing or using a voxrec s/w like Dragonspeak? Typing. I bought Dragonspeak when I had a carpal tunnel release, but never used it.
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
I just checked Wikipedia for the first time in months. Their latest shenanigan is to delete Dieter Britz's site. They made up some strange sounding reason. It is kind of funny because Britz is on their side. He is a "skeptic" who does not believe cold fusion is real. Since we cannot do anything to improve the article I hope these people keep making it worse and worse, so that it will apparent to unbiased readers that the article is wrong. I do not worry about the people who read it and believe it. They are a lost cause. If they miss seeing Wikipedia they will be taken in by Scientific American, the DoE or some other organization that opposes cold fusion. There is any amount of anti-cold fusion material from mainstream sources. It has no depth. There are no studies or carefully laid out arguments or refutations. They never challenge the experimental evidence because they have never heard of it. The attacks are always the same and can be summarized in a few paragraphs: i.e., the cold fusion theory was wrong (always a "theory"!); it was never replicated; Pons and Fleischmann were disgraced; pathological science; bla, bla, bla. It is more like an incantation than an argument. McKubre and others have remarked that they could present a more convincing skeptical argument than the skeptics themselves do. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
2009/9/3, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson : > From Terry, > >> Thanks for expounding on that, Abd. I'm curious, are you typing or >> using a voxrec s/w like Dragonspeak? >> >> :-) > > I would like to add my complements to the chef as well. > > I found Abd's analysis to be both informative and educational. Indeed, thanks for the most interesting summary, Abd! So you have now logically decided to see by yourself whether CF is real or not? Michel Michel
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: If I'm banned from Wikipeida, as may happen in short order, the biggest reason will be prolixity. No, the biggest reason will be the message you just posted here, plus the fact that you are part of this discussion group. In response to this article: http://www.slate.com/id/2227002/ I posted some thoughts about Wikipedia and cold fusion here: http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/3182682/ShowThread.aspx?ArticleID=2227002#3182682 And here: http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/3181809.aspx?ArticleID=2227002 Where I comment on mistakes in the Wikipedia article on the Japanese language. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
>From Terry, > Thanks for expounding on that, Abd. I'm curious, are you typing or > using a voxrec s/w like Dragonspeak? > > :-) I would like to add my complements to the chef as well. I found Abd's analysis to be both informative and educational. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 11:20 AM 9/3/2009, you wrote: >> >> Jed spoke of this on the list. He has been falsely accused of >> printing articles without the author's permission. > > I'll give some detail on that. It's a little more complicated. Thanks for expounding on that, Abd. I'm curious, are you typing or using a voxrec s/w like Dragonspeak? :-) Terry
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
At 11:20 AM 9/3/2009, you wrote: Jed spoke of this on the list. He has been falsely accused of printing articles without the author's permission. I'll give some detail on that. It's a little more complicated. The basic reason for blacklisting of the site was that it was "fringe advocacy," and the blacklisting administrator was involved with the article, and should never have been the one to make that decision, as the Arbitration Committee later confirmed. However, also added to that were a series of claims, allegations that: 1. The site hosts copyright violations. "Author permission," which Jed *always* has, isn't enough, legally, though it might protect against lawsuits, i.e., host with author permission, you might be asked by a publisher to take it down, and you'd be in hot water if you didn't, but if you did, it would be very difficult to prove willful copyright violation. However, Wikipedia policy does not require that a linked site have no copyright violations, it only prohibits a site that has "massive" violations, perhaps where the purpose of the site is to bypass copyright, such that linking to it could be considered contributory infringement. More on this below. 2. The site alters documents. This was a phony charge by JzG that Jed had edited the 1989 DoE report. In fact, he had simply prepended an editorial comment, which republishers of historical material often do. He had not altered the actual body of the report, and his comment was clearly distinguished. Wikipedia *prefers* that copies of documents altered like that not contain possibly prejudicial comments, but this would not, in itself, prevent a linke. 3. Jed had "linkspammed" his site. That was highly misleading, but easily "confirmed," because Jed was always signing his IP contributions with "Jed Rothwell, librarian, lenr-canr.org." That wasn't linkspam because it wasn't a link, and real-world titles are allowed in signatures. But someone looking at a diff of an edit, which is raw wikitext, might overlook that, and apparently did, because the evidence of linkspam presented was not noticed to be misleading by the administrator who eventually made the decision at the global blacklist at meta (a separate site where that list, and other issues that affect all WikiMedia Foundation sites, are considered). 4. Even though the Arb Committee ruled that "fringe" should not be used for blacklising, that the purpose of the blacklist wasn't to make content decisions, where a single administrator or a small handful of them would be making site-wide content decisions, obviously dangerous, but only for preventing linkspam and a few other obvious uses, like preventing links to sites hosting malware, or other illegal content (including extensive copyright violation). So the current situation is that, while it was originally blacklisted at en.wikipedia, when I challenged that, JzG went to meta, where he was well-known and trusted, and requested blacklisting there, and it was immediately accepted. I requested delisting, and ultimately that was denied. I've seen many such requests denied, when sites were very useful, because there is an administrative cabal of sorts that runs the blacklists, and they are very reluctant to undo blacklistings. I was able to get sites whitelisted on en.wikipedia, such as lyrikline.org, where the blacklisting was blatantly bad, but even administrators from de.wikipedia were unable to get lyrikline.org delisted, an obviously useful site that was never abused, the only problem being that an enthusiastic de.wikipedia began massively adding links, which technically is linkspam *even if the links are legitimate.* Once it's listed, they will say that they need to keep it listed because "maybe the spam will start up again." And they are impervious to argument, most of the time. There is a path for lenr-canr.org: continue to whitelist pages; so far, I'd been successful with every one, only one exception, where lenr-canr.org has an actual copy of an Elsevier paper, with the Elsevier logo. The paper is by a major author (Spzak?) who gave Jed permission, and Jed is at no legal risk because of that, and Elsevier apparently doesn't really care, but I doubt they'd want to open the door, and they can always change their minds and ask for the paper to be taken down. But this, then, creates a prima facie violation of Wikipedia link policy, but just for that paper. Everything else was accepted, in spite of determined efforts by Cab editors to keep the links out. Most of them remain unused however, because I was banned before completing the task. (They are "convenience links" to peer-reviewed papers, almost entirely). When more pages were whitelisted, I'd have gone to meta and proven, with the links, that the site was useful, I'd have challenged any attempt to reassert the old canards by pointing to the article on Martin Fleischmann, where I ran an excruciatingly car
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
If I'm banned from Wikipeida, as may happen in short order, the biggest reason will be prolixity. Warning: this is long. If it does not interest you, please don't read it, it will only irritate you. At 10:44 AM 9/3/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Following up on the recent cnn.com video clip concerning erroneous entries I decided to revisit the COLD FUSION entry. I was surprised to discover that at present there doesn't appear to be any disputing going on. But appearances can be deceiving. Have most CF proponents given up trying to make it more balanced? I assume Jed has, for valid reasons. Incidentally, I also noticed that a link pointing to http://www.lenr-canr.org/ is conspicuously absent, as if its omission would prevent curious researchers from googling for the location. I'm sure the link used to be listed here. ROTFL. I do know a bit about this, having been in it up to my eyeballs from January to June, when I was page-banned from the article. That ended up before the Arbitration Committee, and it's still there, though it may be close to a decision. Right now, the unresolved issues are "remedies," i.e., on the one hand, does the admin who banned me lose his administrative privileges or does he merely get an "admonishment," and do I get admonished, page-banned, topic-banned (anything to do with cold fusion), or site banned, current maximum considered, three months. At the same time, it's been noted by some arbitrators, that I "raise important issues." But because raising important issues upsets many editors, I'm "disruptive" and "tendentious," so other arbitrators, seeing that I didn't slink into a corner and hide when facing admonishment, immediately went for a three-month ban. To me, it's all diagnostic of the problems Wikipedia faces; excellent content guidelines, quite good behavioral policies, and lousy implementation, so that editors who try to follow policies, such as reliable source guidelines as applied to cold fusion, are attacked, tag-teamed (where a collection of editors, in this case I've called them the Cab) individually revert contributions, collectively it's repetitive, an action which, if done by a single editor, would clearly be prohibited edit warring and result in sanctions), and, too many times, banned. Pcarbonn, a knowledgeable editor with a special interest in cold fusion, was banned in December. At the same time, an administrator, JzG, blacklisted the lenr-canr.org site and removed all remaining links to the site. I discovered the problem of the blacklist first, it seemed improper on its face, so I asked JzG to reverse this. He refused. I pursued the matter, and, to make a long story short, JzG was "admonished" for that action. Were it not for the fact that he had years of heavy service to Wikipedia, he'd have lost his administrative privileges. I wasn't admonished, but "advised" to, I don't know exactly what, be more nice? Be more thorough? Don't wait so long? It wasn't exactly clear. However, JzG was a member of what I called the Cab, a group of editors generally pushing for, and insisting on, and enforcing what's been called the Scientific Point of View, which, as a lot of Wikipedians know, is misnamed. It really means "pseudoskeptical point of view," or often, "majority point of view," where "majority" means "majority of Wikipedia editors who don't research the subject itself, but reject sourced material from others because they believe it's biased, fringe, pseudoscience, or whatever." Hence the problems with cold fusion. It's a case where a knee-jerk majority will differ from a considered view of experts. I began researching cold fusion and trying to improve the article. In January, when I found the problem blacklisting, I was skeptical. I think anyone with reasonable general knowledge of science, who was awake in 1989 and paying attention, but who didn't maintain involvement and awareness of the field, would be skeptical. The nuclear physicists really did a massively successful public relations number on the electrochemists! To Wikipedians, if you try to explain this, it looks like you are trying to use Wikipedia to right real-world wrongs, and that's a big no-no. Wikipedia is suppposed to represent what is found in the best sources, which, for science articles, means peer-reviewed secondary sources. (Not peer-reviewed primary sources, since all kinds of crazy stuff makes it into peer-reviewed journals initially; primary sources don't establish "notability," which means that it's worth covering in an encyclopedia.) Pcarbonn was effectively assassinated because he wrote an article for New Energy Times where he explained, correctly, how Wikipedia works and what he had done to make the article more fair, and, unfortunately, he wrote about "media bias," which are code words to Wikipedians for "fanatic trying to use Wikipedia to push his point of view." Doing something about Pcarbonn's ba
Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia's cold fusion entry, what's the status?
Jed spoke of this on the list. He has been falsely accused of printing articles without the author's permission. Terry On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:44 AM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: > Following up on the recent cnn.com video clip concerning erroneous > entries I decided to revisit the COLD FUSION entry. I was surprised to > discover that at present there doesn't appear to be any disputing > going on. But appearances can be deceiving. Have most CF proponents > given up trying to make it more balanced? I assume Jed has, for valid > reasons. Incidentally, I also noticed that a link pointing to > http://www.lenr-canr.org/ is conspicuously absent, as if its omission > would prevent curious researchers from googling for the location. I'm > sure the link used to be listed here. > > Regards > Steven Vincent Johnson > www.OrionWorks.com > www.zazzle.com/orionworks > >
