User talk:Hans Adler/Archive 2

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Archive 1

Around mathematical logic The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

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

${\mathfrak {A}}_{0}\models \phi [a_{0}]\Leftrightarrow {\mathfrak {A}}\models \phi [a_{0}]$

is part of the metatheory, and sign $\Leftrightarrow$ 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)

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

1. sleeping lazily on the ice floe,
2. swimming west
3. swimming north
4. floating in water with its head bent down

…

And besides of all this, they have also a general word for "walrus" as well.

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, 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)

Another model theorist

Hi Hans. You put this message on my talk page a long time ago now. Sorry for the slow reply, but I have been really busy and not been on Wikiedia for a while. I am also not sure if we have met. It is good to have people working on the model theory articles. I will help when I can, but I tend to edit in bursts - when I have time on my hands. Nice to hear from you. --Thehalfone (talk) 09:04, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Axiomatizable class

Would you have any objections if I redirect axiomatizable class to elementary class? Is there a distinction between these that I'm not familiar with? — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I think there are two ways in which the terms differ: 1. Historically and in finite model theory, elementary classes are those defined by a single formula, while there is no such confusion for axiomatisable classes. 2. "Elementary" can only be used for the first order case, while "axiomatisable" only has a strong bias that way.

I remember thinking about this before, and I think the reason I didn't do anything was that I was undecided about the direction of the redirect. "Axiomatisable" / "finitely axiomatisable" are self-explanatory terms with no ambiguities except the usual first order bias. "Elementary" is a bit problematic, but it harmonises with "pseudoelementary". If there was a notion such as "pseudoaxiomatisable" I would prefer "axiomatisable class". In any case I am happy with the redirect as you propose it. We can still change it later if there is any need. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:11, 14 March 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)

Free algebra check

Can you check if the text at free algebra#Universal algebraic free algebras is free from egregious error? If you happen to have a source for it, the article could use more sourcing too. Actually, if you wanted to write that section... :) I just copied it from the talk page, and don't feel qualified to judge it (and don't have time to track down, read, and absorb an intro to universal algebra). It looks believable at least. JackSchmidt (talk) 12:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It's OK, although the style is problematic. But I am not sure both topics should be covered on the same page. It's like having an article on dogs (algebras) and animals ("universal" algebras), when there are also other articles on cats (rings), birds (groups) etc. The homonymy is very unfortunate. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks good (still short of course) at free object, an article I had not noticed. Thanks for fixing it up! JackSchmidt (talk) 13:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't previously aware of that either. Thanks for noticing the material on the talk page! I noticed that you had changed the wording in a paragraph, so I didn't revert that. Perhaps you can have a quick look if I missed anything else. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks good. The only change I remember making was algebra->algebraic structure to cut down on confusion. Free object already appears to use "algebraic structure" so the change fits well in that article too. Most things to do with rings have horrible terminology problems. Groups are better, though "section" is used often and in two radically different ways (subquotient and transversal), and pi-soluble can mean 3 or 4 different things that vary on just how soluble the group is. Anyways, thanks again. It's nice to feel like I can make a shot at improving an article outside my area of expertise, since there is a big group of us working together. JackSchmidt (talk) 14:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It's the same for me (as a model theorist). By the way, we have a relatively recent new meaning for "simple". Unfortunately this can be applied to groups, and so there are two opposite ways in which a group can be simple, but not simple. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Signature redirects

Strictly speaking, it isn't necessary to change the links in articles when another article is moved; the redirect will take care of them. If there is a redirect A → B and then B is made a redirect to C, all that has to be done is change A (which is then a double redirect) to point to C as well. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:35, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I know. I just felt it's cleaner that way. And it's a way of avoiding what I should really be doing (offline). --Hans Adler (talk) 18:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Interpretation (logic) dispute

Dear Hans, could you please try to be more concise in your posts about interpretation (logic), and try to avoid repeating the same point twice? This is not a criticism, this just that i cannot keep up with all the posts to that discussion page any more. Not that i am really trying. I think that the shorter a post is, the more likely people are to read it entirely and to get the point. (Of course, this does not apply to Gregbard.) Best regards. --Cokaban (talk) 12:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

You are right. Thanks for reminding me. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Please look at new lede of interpretation (logic) and make any comments at new section at end of 50 pages of discussion. Bless, --Philogo 00:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC).

Hans re your:

"You seem to be interpreting what I said as something stupid that I didn't (want to) say, even though later you seem to imply that you did get my main point ("using language in a slightly different way"). The only way I can read this as anything but condescending is if I interpret you as saying that philosophers enjoy talking past each other. Is that what you mean? "

I meant to be teasing in a light-hearted way, no offence meant. In the UK we indulge is something known as banter, somewhere between mock-insults and teasing. When I lived in the states at first my neighbours took it all literally, and I had to explain the idea. Perhaps I am misunderstand in a similar way the exchanges Gregar has with what he calls "some mathematicians"?--Philogo 21:45, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hans, i suggest you to calm down a bit and think how good it is for Wikipedia and for all of us that Gregbard is editing only (hopefully) mathematical and philosophical articles, and not articles on actual events. (In fact, i do not know if he does or not, anyway...) When he says, for example, that his source for a definition is MathWorld web site, while that definition in fact is perverted beyond recognition in his article, it is immediately clear that he does not know what he is talking about. In general, it is relatively easy to determine the "limits of meaningfulness" of his comments in mathematical context. Asking for sources is usually more of a polite formality. But imagine that with the same level of (poorly founded) self-confidence and looseness in citing/interpreting, someone writes about historical events! Just today i looked at the russian version of Andijan massacre, and found the article much slanted towards the official position of Uzbek (and Russian) government, discussion page virtually non-existent, and sources like Human Right Watch not cited at all. The writing style of those who left comments there reminded me remotely of Gregbard, and i became grateful to him that he writes only about mathematics. I cannot imaging arguing with those people over an issue where all the information available is only the one from the news. I do not mean to say that Gregbard would be as inaccurate with "historical" articles as he is with philosophical ones. I just want to say that detecting users who do not know what they are talking about in those articles should be much much harder. (I am trying to be philosophical about Gregbard's issue.) --Cokaban (talk) 17:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me. I didn't know about the Andijan massacre article, but I am active at the homeopathy article, which is also very problematic (although I think it's better now than when I first got involved). Contrary to what one should expect at such an article, it is controlled by radical skeptics who are pushing pejorative words like "quackery" and extreme statements about how "homeopathy" (not just specific aspects of it) defies the fundamentals of science. They seem completely unconcerned about the fact that the deprecating language undermines the article's (partially justified) criticism of homeopathy. – If you want to see another absurd example of nationalism, have a look at Talk:Stefan Banach.

I wouldn't be so angry with Gregbard if I didn't know about two previous occasions where he was similarly disruptive. One was when he tagged hundreds of often completely unrelated articles as belonging to the WP:WikiProject Logic, and the other was when after reading Hunter's book "Metalogic" he created Category:Metalogic and moved half the mathematical logic articles there. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

more of similar now at Talk:Descriptive interpretation--Philogo 17:45, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. He also made an absurd redirect descriptive sign -> non-logical symbol. I have replaced the redirect by a stub. I am not sure how correct the text I wrote is, but I am confident it's less misleading than the redirect. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Harassment by math people alleged at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents--Philogo 20:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I suspect Gregbard is enthusiastic about Carnap 1949 as at Talk:Descriptive interpretation where I have attibuted the lede contents to Carnap on Gregbard's behalf

Is the demise of WikiProject Logic connected in some way with a Gregbard v "mathpeople" feud? If soley so, seems a pity. It seemed a good idea when I was invited to join. Still think so if collaboration is possible on articles of joint interest.

IMHO Philosophy of Logic and Philospoical Logic are distinct and neither are a type of certainly to an alternative to Logic. Citations/quotes available on request.

I would prefer to work on editing than all this, but the way new articles appear and chunks of stuff, inlcluding my own humble efforts, are cut and pasted I find most bewildering. e.g. "Three philosphers" have now flown to some other article. --Philogo 20:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The moving content is confusing to me, too. I am planning to work on interpretation (logic) once I get a sense of what it should contain. I am going to post there with some ideas about what the article could be about. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know who started WikiProject Logic, I always thought it could have been Gregbard, but I never checked. I am very interested in having a set of good articles over the full range from philosophical logic to areas of mathematics that are only nominally part of logic, and applications like database theory. Terminology, notations and conventions at the extreme ends are so different that these can't be consistent over the full range. (E.g. interpretation = structure = database, and a first order formula is essentially the same thing as a Datalog query.) On the mathematical side I have been working on standardising them as much as possible and explaining any alternative conventions. I can't bridge the philosophy/mathematics gap because of my exclusively mathematical background, but it's just as necessary and obviously very important.

In the absence of editors who are firmly rooted in both subjects (such people still exist outside Wikipedia; e.g. Enrique Casanovas is a professor of philosophy and an excellent mathematical logician) the project could be a place where we discuss how to get these things right. For example we could make a list of common traps for mathematicians in philosophy, and for philosophers in mathematics. I see mathematical errors in philosophical treatments of elementary logic, and at the same time I am sure I can't avoid making philosophical errors when I write mathematically about the same topics. So we need cooperation, but it will always be a bit brittle, because when people talk past each other they naturally fall for the easiest explanation: that the opposite side lacks qualifications and goodwill.

I have used up a lot of my "assume good faith/high qualifications etc." energy on Gregbard, thinking that he represents the philosophical side of logic. Perhaps that wasn't so wise. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure who set up WikiLogic either, but I think it does not matter. If believe that there are core logical concepts that are of common interest to Philosophy and Mathematical Logic, upon which it would be helpful and interesting to collaborate. I think there are areas of philosophy and areas of mathematics that although related to the core get too technical (or too boring!) to the other side. But interests can grow... I have just recently populated philosophy of logic (which was moribund) with some titles for contents (drawn from the literature) so there would be no need to have excess philosophical content in a core Logic articles. (and similarly perhaps not too much higher maths??). Links could be given to the related specialist articles. Take e.g. our little article on interpretation (logic). We could provide links to structure and signature or "proof theories using empty domains" for those who want to follow it. Similarly there could be links to philosophy of logic articles that might appertain. I'll keep my powder dry for now, but I may put in a link or two in our interpretation article. A really interesting development would be roping in some linguist types. (LTF Gamut, referred to above, is actually the merged identity of two logicians, two philosophers and a linguist, and they appear to have got on just dandy)

I suggest you do not come to any conclusions about the aims, methods and interests of analytical philosophy based on exchanges with one editor on Wikipedia. If you have not studied much philosophy I would be pleased to point you in likely directions, depending on your interests. With regard to the relationship between philosophy and mathematics I would suggest reading Plato’s Symposium, or Meno or wonder at the words reputed to have been written over the doorway into the Academy. Enjoy. --Philogo 23:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's not as if I had never read the Symposion. (I can even prove it with a culinary advent season game I invented years ago. The description is in German, but I am sure you can identify the fake platonic dialogue. ) But while I am very interested in what are probably the traces of the historical Socrates in Plato's texts (or in Xenophon and Aristophanes), I find everything genuinely Platonic completely unconvincing, and almost as bad as Aristotle. When philosophy gets too close to religion I am just not interested, unless it's sufficiently picturesque, like the Pythagoreans. I am not a sense-seeker. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

screw the religion. I meant his idea that love of mathematics was the penultimate highest form of love, pipped only of course by live of wisdom itself. I take it you are not a realist and do not think that numbers have a real existence? I was under the imression that "mathspeople" were platonic realists at heart (but I don't get out much)--Philogo 23:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Many mathematicians identify themselves as "platonists", and I assume that's the same as "platonic realists". I am not one. I am perfectly happy with being an animal that lives in a strange world that it will never fully understand, having incomplete and inconsistent beliefs about that world, and (unlike most animals) knowing it. And this animal doesn't agree with Socrates Plato in this dialogue. Love for mathematics or wisdom is a perverted (or rather zweckentfremdet – I don't know a good English word for this) form of the proper thing. It has an important function as a motivation for cultural achievements that would otherwise be impossible, but it's not "the highest form of love". Most philosophical texts make me angry because I have the impression that they just say stupid things in a complicated way. Plato at least put these stupid things into simple words. It's some time since I last read his texts, but I think I generally loved the early dialogues, while I found that the later ones were just fakes. People always agreed, even when Socrates Plato said things that were obviously problematic. But I would have to reread them to see if my mind is reliable in this point, I may just be making things up from my incomplete memory. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

zweckentfremdet. On line dictionaries have the translation "alienated" but this does not seem to fit your context and is not the same as perverted. Does zweckentfremdet perhaps mean corrupted, distorted, twisted, perverse, unnatural? What does it mean literally (how is word bult up)? I will try to find philosophy texts that do not say stupid things in a complicated way. Have you read Russell? I think he writies very clearly, but whether what he says is stupid would be another question. I wonder have you read mainly German or English philosophers?

Literally the word means "alienated from its [intended] purpose", but any negative connotations it may have are counterbalanced by its widespread use in mainly positive or neutral contexts.

Please don't spend much time on recommending books to me that I am unlikely to read. Of course you can recommend books like Sophie's World to me just like I can recommend Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture to you. But I am much more likely to read a technical book about linguism, Louis XIV, asteraceae or the Apothecaries' system of weights (actually I should probably write one on the latter topic, after all the energy I put into this article), or learn classical Provençalic, than to read a technical book on philosophy. The world is full of interesting things. But I just can't get excited about sports, philosophy, and some other things. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Believe me, I cannot imagine ever recommending or myself reading Sophie's World. I had been meaning to ask: Am I right to say that Goldbach's conjecture remains just that, and we do not know whether the set of even numbers is the empty set. PS Gregbard says I have unfairly characterised him on my discussion page.--Philogo 19:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mean to mention Sophie's World as something negative. I haven't read it, but I have read two other books by Jostein Gaarder, and found them entertaining. I don't know what you mean by your question. As far as I know Goldbach's conjecture is open. Did you really mean to say what you said about the set of even numbers (i.e. {..., -2, 0, 2, ...}) being empty? Then I am afraid you are playing around with language in a direction that I am not willing to pursue. It's absurd like reasoning about "being", just because the word can formed. I like this kind of absurdity in games such as Nomic, but not when it's taken seriously.

If you meant the set of even numbers >2 that are not a sum of two primes, then my position is that I just don't know whether it follows from the current standard axioms that mathematicians use, whether the opposite follows, or whether it's independent. The natural numbers are a good model for certain aspects of the real world, but I am not a platonist, who thinks that they are an exact model of something. They can't be, since they are infinite and the real world is probably not. When you make velocities too big you get counter-intuitive relativistic effects. When you make distances too small you get counter-intuitive quantum effects. I don't know what counter-intuitive effects (if any) we get when we make integers in the real world too big (whatever that means). Is the number of water molecules in the earth's oceans prime? The best we can do is give a probability. Perhaps that's an example of a fundamental restriction of the world rather than us.

Of course in practice I just assume that the correspondence is exact, so that I can transfer my intuitions from the real world to mathematical situations. Just like many physicists can assume that classical mechanics gives an exact description of the world. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Gregbard: I would say that "and led to the decline of WikiLogic" may well have been unfair. I have a feeling that one reason for the inactivity of WikiProject Logic is that mathematical logic is in the process of cutting its ties to philosophy. Mathematical logic used to be considered inferior to proper, established fields of mathematics. This is changing because we are getting more and more similar to our colleagues, now only divided from them by our obstinate use of the symbol ω for the natural numbers, where they use N. There was one instance where a conjecture in algebraic geometry was first proved using "logical" methods, and people working in algebraic geometry are now very much aware of their colleagues in model theory. Nowadays the boundaries between mathematical logic and the rest of mathematics are hardly recognisable, and as you have seen many of us are much more comfortable communicating with other mathematicians than with logicians who are not mathematicians. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops: I meant to say the set of even numbers that are not the sum of two primes--Philogo 21:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Philosophy and Logic I believe you are a little puzzled/sceptical about the extent philosophers are trained in and/or are interested in Logic, and whether it is some form of Logic distinct from mathematical logic. The offerings of your own University of Leeds to undergraduate philosophy students in courses Phil1008 Introduction and Phil2122 Formal are probably typical enough of the sort of Logic that is studied by undergrads in England and USA.--Philogo 12:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

See also in analytical philosophy : ...the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions.[9] The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system) to display its similarity with all other propositions of the same type. However, analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language.[10] --Philogo 12:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

As I don't understand your point, I will just answer with some random points that may or may not be related to it. From what I can see , everything that an experienced mathematician would consider necessary in these courses fits into a handful of pages. Which is exactly how most books on model theory treat it. It's what I would call "elementary logic". [This] is approximately what mathematicians call "mathematical logic", and most of it is of no interest whatsoever to philosophers who are not also active researchers in mathematics. (I am working mainly in 03C45 and 03C64.)

It's the same distinction as between the kind of elementary algebra that you can learn in schools and the large and mature field that mathematicians call algebra. It makes no sense to say that most elementary school teachers would be interested in modern developments in the mathematical field of algebra. I think you earlier made a statement about philosophers and mathematical logic that would be similarly incorrect.

Your quotation from analytical philosophy seems to have no connection to mathematics. What does it demonstrate? --Hans Adler (talk) 12:46, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

the quotation illustrated the importance philosophers credit to logic. I am not clear what it means to say Logic is or is not a "branch of" Maths, and so I have not become interested in the question. What if it wern't? How would the issue be decided? Of what theoretical importance is it?--Philogo 22:16, 14 May 2008 (UTC)--Philogo 22:16, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on what you mean by logic. Your quotation clearly doesn't say anything about mathematical logic. Perhaps about elementary logic, but only about those aspects of it which mathematicians abstract away before dealing with it. A professional gambler in a conversation with a designer of playing cards would probably feel a bit like me. I would say it makes sense to call either of them individually a "card lover", but it would be incongruous to say they are "both card lovers". The word "logician" may have similar problems. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:07, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

"I am not clear what it means to say Logic is or is not a "branch of" Maths" " --- Philogo, it has already been mentioned many times that Mathematical Logic is a branch of mathematics, and that mathematicians lay no claims to the rest of logic. They do however sometimes abbreviate Math. Logic to just Logic, when they talk among themselves. Do you agree, Hans? --Cokaban (talk) 21:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I hope it's OK for me to toss in my opinion here. As a mathematical logician, my sense is that I would not use "logic" as a synonym for "mathematical logic" in a formal context. There's an odd tradition in the naming of the field of mathematical logic, which has some parts that are purely technical mathematics and other parts that are almost entirely philosophy. So although I would call the study of large cardinals a part of mathematical logic, I would not call it part of the field of "logic" when the latter is defined as the study of correct inference. This is partly because I don't consider the field of pure mathematics to be a part of the field of logic, which is meant to be mostly subject-independent. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I seem to agree with Carl, though i did not quite understand: "which has some parts that are purely technical mathematics and other parts that are almost entirely philosophy" --- this refers to naming, or to mathematical logic? Logic and Mathematical Logic are not synonyms, and i can even suspect that their "intersection" is empty. This maybe a good point to ask Philogo whether he is sure he knows what we are talking about when we say "Mathematical Logic". I can imagine that a person who calls himself a logician may be not aware of existence of Mathematical Logic. I mean no disrespect by this, and i apologize in advance to Philogo if he does know what we are talking about, or if he takes my comment as a rude insinuation. I REALLY mean no disrespect by this guess. About 90% of mathematicians (whose research is not related in any way to math logic) do not know what math logic is, and believe it to be on the border with philosophy, if not something completely insane. Just think of it from their point of view: people claim to prove something about proofs, or theorems, or even truth-values themselves! Of course this confusion is due mostly to abuse of language and to conspiracy of silence among math logicians. Math logicians never claim to prove anything about actual theorems. What they call theorems are simply certain finite tuples of object, of natural numbers for example. I apologize again just in case, i am simply trying to clarify the difference between branches of mathematics like math logic and everything else. --Cokaban (talk) 07:17, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Logic articles edited by Gregbard

I have reached a point where I need to ask for outside help with the articles Gregbard is editing (check Talk:Formal language for the latest issue, and Logical consequence for a previous one this week, in addition to the continuing logical interpretation mess). Are you more active than I am in dispute resolution? Do you have any ideas regarding these articles and comments like this? I am going to be traveling this weekend, so I won't be able to participate much until next week at the soonest. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:24, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, I have been travelling. Now I am quite busy in the real world, and it's likely that I won't be of much use over the next couple of weeks. But I will try to understand what I missed over the last week and see if there is anything I can do. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Non-logical symbol

Dear Hans Adler,

Thank You very much for Your work with article initiated by me as Non-logical symbol. Thank You especially also for Your humane tone. Unfortunately I lack the necessary overview in the "architecture" of the building of mathematical logic (that's why I have stopped to create new articles in a unguarded manner since a year), thus I cannot be of much help in deciding what the right future of this article should be. All I could do was to explain the origin of this article on the talk page. Please do as You find it appropriate, sorry if the article made troubles or time consuming.

Best wishes and sincere thanks,

Physis (talk) 12:45, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank You very much from the relieving and quick reply. I have even dreamt last night about this debate. Ein Stein fell mir jetzt vom Herzen (I do not know the English equivalent). I wish much pleasure and luck to You. Physis (talk) 15:05, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

First-order logic & definability

Your recent edit is not entirely satisfactory, as you've replaced my wording involving "normal models" with "first-order logic with identity" which is usually taken to mean the syntactic component--i.e. some first-order deductive system system (say an axiom one) with identity axioms (i.e. the indiscernibility of identicals and reflexivity of identity). But even these sytems have non-normal models, where the identity symbol is interpreted as a non-identity equivalence relation. That is, the identity axioms by themselves cannot ensure that they're interpreted as genuine identity; i.e. identity is not first-order definable. I would suggest you make the appropriate changes (or at least make explicit that when you say "first-order logic with identity" you mean it to include the semantic component which gives a fixed interpretation to the identity predicate (i.e. the class of models is restricted to normal ones). But even this is somewhat unsatisfactory because definability has nothing to do with logics, but rather everything to do with languages and their semantics. Nortexoid (talk) 15:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with your assessment of what are the normal conventions. Could this be another example of the gap between mathematical and philosophical logic? I think mathematics uses logic with identity almost exclusively, and in my experience the definition of a model in logic with identity always includes standard semantics for equality. If you want to have non-standard semantics you can always use logic without identity, put = in the signature, and for each signature add axioms saying that = is a congruence relation (i.e. = is an equivalence relation and if a formula holds for a tuple, and you replace every element of the tuple by an =-equivalent one, the resulting formula is still true). Do you have any concrete example of someone doing it differently in the literature? --Hans Adler (talk) 15:42, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with philosophical logic. For a popular example where normal and non-normal models are distinguished (and rightfully so), look at Mendelson's "Mathematical Logic" (any edition probably--but specifically I have the third). The undefinability of identity in first-order languages is what makes significant the fact that identity is second-order definable. It's one of those mildly interesting results about the weakness of first-order axiom schemata vs. their second-order (object language) counterparts. (Compare also the first-order induction schema of PA with its second-order counterpart in second-order PA.) See also p. 163 (top half) of Kleene's "Mathematical Logic" for some discussion concerning this.

Besides this point, your current revision of the article still talks about logics defining properties. It's not clear what's meant by this. Can you spell out in detail what is meant by a logic defining a property? Nortexoid (talk) 20:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

That's what I meant. I have had this kind of discussion before. There seems to be a big difference between what philosophers call "mathematical logic" and what mathematicians call "mathematical logic", or just "logic".

Did you understand my explanation of the way in which the terminology has changed since Mendelson? The terminology and notations in his book have not been updated since a very long time ago (IIRC, there were some slight changes between the first and second edition, but the latter was ages ago). I suspect that this is because he is read mainly by philosophers, and they tend to be very conservative about terminology.

I am not sure that I understand what you are referring to with your last paragraph. Are you referring to the sentence: "A second-order logic is needed for that."? It didn't occur to me that someone could have a problem with that. Could you explain what the problem is? When doing this, please keep in mind that I am probably not familiar with some very elementary parts of what seems standard terminology to you.

I notice that you changed "in first-order logic" to "in a first-order language". If we interpret the words as modern terminology as it is used by mathematicians (those who call themselves "mathematical logicians" – I try to be precise because of the two senses of "mathematical logic"), then you replaced a correct statement by a slightly problematic one. That's because for a mathematician a "language" or "first-order language" can be either a signature (logic), i.e. a collection of non-logical symbols together with information about their arities, or the set of all formulas over such a given signature. The first sense clearly makes no sense here, and the second sense arguably does not come with any semantics, at least not as a mathematical object per se. From the mathematical point of view "in first-order logic" is more exact because "logics" (a term which does not have a generally accepted precise definition in mathematics) consist of the syntactical side (possibly over a fixed signature, possibly as a rule that maps signatures to sets of formulas over them – this depends on the definition) together with various other aspects (again depending on the specific definition), which normally include semantics in the form a model relation.

Am I right if I guess that the terminology you had in mind when you made this change was completely different to what I just described? --Hans Adler (talk) 21:42, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

In mathematics it's very unusual to work with first-order logic without identity. At least in the part of mathematical logic that I am familiar with, "first-order logic" always refers to first-order logic with identity (and what you call "normal" is always part of the definition of a model in "first-order logic"), and if, very occasionally, someone works without identity, then they say very clearly that they work with "first-order logic without identity". This "normal model" business strikes me as the kind of thing that you would say if you try to explain the tiny and very trivial part of logic that Mendelson's book mostly consists of (from a mathematical POV: blown out of all proportion) to philosophy students. It's not the kind of notion that would be useful to someone doing actual mathematical work; most of us simply can't remember such definitions. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

The terminology hasn't changed since Mendelson--definability w.r.t. a language has always meant and continues to mean (check the literature!) definability w.r.t. a language given some semantic interpretation of the language. If definability w.r.t. a logic means something different then I would like to know what it means. And if you have any sources to the contrary, I would like to see them. Unless we are working in the area of model-theoretic logics, I have never seen a logic to be defined to include some semantic component. Logics are almost always specified purely syntactically, e.g. as a class of formulas closed under certain rules. (Query: How can a semantic property be said to be definable by a language if the semantics for the language is not already given?)

Downplaying the significance of the subject matter of a widely sourced text doesn't do much in the way of vindicating vague and obscure terminological preference. If one wishes to use non-standard terminology, as you appear to do, then an explicit definition of property definability is needed. That's fine. But I think it's better to just stick with what's standard. A quick glance as some popular texts (e.g. Hodges's "Model Theory") should convince you that what I'm endorsing is in fact standard. Nortexoid (talk) 23:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems that I confused you by making too many points in the same message, so I will slow down now. Unfortunately you ignored my direct question completely, so I don't know how much mathematical cultural background I can assume when talking to you. And apparently you also ignored my disclaimer that I don't understand what exactly is your point, and my subsequent explanation of what I guessed was your point. If I guessed wrong, it would have been enough to say so. Your response shows that you also guessed what I meant, and that you also guessed wrong. We obviously have severe communication problems, presumably due to radically different background. My first degree is in mathematics. Is yours by any chance in philosophy? There seems to be a trend among philosophers to think of themselves as mathematicians because they specialise in a branch of philosophy called "mathematical logic". (There are also mathematicians working in the branch of mathematics of the same name, who started as philosophers. That's very different, but easy to confuse.) – Please answer my direct question:

Did you (or do you now) understand my explanation of the way in which the terminology has changed since Mendelson?

To clarify: This referred to the distinction "with identity"/"without identity" and "normal models": I think mathematics uses logic with identity almost exclusively, and in my experience the definition of a model in logic with identity always includes standard semantics for equality. If you want to have non-standard semantics you can always use logic without identity, put = in the signature, and for each signature add axioms saying that = is a congruence relation (i.e. = is an equivalence relation and if a formula holds for a tuple, and you replace every element of the tuple by an =-equivalent one, the resulting formula is still true).

Since you quoted Hodges: I don't think you will find first-order logic without identity anywhere in his book. He works exclusively in logics with identity, and he only defines the standard semantics, which say that x=y means that the interpretations of x and y are equal (see formula (3.10) in section 1.3). --Hans Adler (talk) 12:38, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

non-standard analysis

Hi,

I notice you were interested in the topic in the past. Please see my comments at the article talk page and at transfer principle. Katzmik (talk) 14:48, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I am afraid I can't contribute much to the subject. Its terminology and conventions have diverged too much from standard model theory, and I am not familiar with them at all. But I couldn't help noticing that there was a certain degree of neglect in the area (including suspect references that stayed there for a long time), so I am glad to see things are moving and there is now a constructive dialogue going on. (At least that's what it looks like to me on first sight, without understanding any of the details.) --Hans Adler (talk) 11:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Gandalf's antics

Hi, Gandalf is continuing his attack, this time at uniform continuity, where he reverted my edit (twice) based on a mathematical error. Please comment. Katzmik (talk) 10:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Multipundit The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Wikipedia standards

Hello Hans, you are right I haven't been around here for long, actually almost all my life. So, I'm grateful for any reasonable advice, especially, for writing short comments. Besides, I will move Peter's comments back.

With respect, Multipundit (talk) 21:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Goals of discussions

Hello Hans, It's good that you try to figure out what is the goal of the discussion related to super-recursive algorithms. I don't think that we can prove or disprove the CTT. This has to be done by computer scientists and mathematicians. But what we really can do is to analyze those arguments that proponents and opponents of this controversial refutation suggest. To achieve this goal, we have to use logic (please don’t confuse logic with sophistry.) and knowledge that has been accumulated in mathematics and computer science. In my long contribution, I tried to analyze your arguments. In my short contributions, I tried to analyze arguments of Pratt, who was invited by Pete St.John as an expert. We must analyze assertions of all peole who express their opinions related to our topic independently of their titles, money or position. Only in this case, we’ll be able to find the truth. In any case, thank you for your advice. I would also appreciate if you write exactly what words were misspelled. With respect, Multipundit (talk) 22:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

super-recursive algorithm

On my talk page, you wrote:

I don't agree with Colonel Warden about whether the article should be deleted, but he is right about your last changes to the article. Perhaps you could check that you are not getting too emotionally involved in getting rid of this crap.

First, I want to check something: did you actually follow the link I gave to document this biographical fact that Colonel Warden finds so annoyingly? Did you see where Burgin ranks his committee position with American Biographical Institute FIRST among his other sources of pride, in the section "peer honors" of his resume?

It's a personal attack for me to mention it? But also, somehow, laudatory where Burgin advertises himself?

Scholars in the theory of computation will very likely arrive at the article already knowing (or about to learn soon enough) that Burgin has some affiliation with UCLA. Upon discovering that it's only "visiting scholar" at UCLA (no on-campus address or phone number, thus probably no stipend from the university) and that he sits on a few editorial boards of a few journals they've never heard of, these readers might be excused for wondering, "OK, but ... how does he make a living?"

I see exactly one organization on Burgin's CV that might produce the kind of revenue stream that would make Los Angeles affordable for Burgin, and, let's face it: Burgin himself is far from shy about mentioning it. In fact, if order in the list matters, it would seem American Biographical Institute is quite a bit more significant to him than his position with that internationally famous journal, "Science and Science of Science" Yakushima (talk) 10:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Random mini-conversations The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Hey

Re: - 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. Scarian^{Call 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)

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)

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)

Email

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)

DNFTT

You're right, of course. But sometimes it is so hard to resist! thanks for the reminder. Dlabtot (talk) 19:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi, Hans. Thanks for your message. I guess the Internet is truly a small world. There are many familiar "faces" at Wikipedia. [smile] --Orlady (talk) 23:56, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

April Fools' Day

Do you think it is right to make joke with a vital administrative process. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 11:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Life is too important to be taken seriously, and the same holds for "vital administrative process", even though it's several orders of magnitude less important. Kmweber is obviously just poking fun at himself. There are even real judges in real courts who engage in this kind of fun. At the moment I can imagine only one way in which this can become disruptive: If someone tries to make a fool of themselves and turn this into a drama. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

So ...

If you're not going to invest much time in it (not even enough to read the issues, as you said), why make a one-sided contribution? Not happy. Tony (talk) 03:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Rollback

I've noticed you use undo a lot, and I was wondering if you'd like to upgrade to rollback. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 01:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. I am not using it that much, really, and I think I would prefer not to have it. I tried Twinkle a couple of weeks ago, but I uninstalled it because I rarely used it, and when I did, often something unexpected happened. Now I understand where all those careless warning templates come from. Rollback doesn't seem to be as bad, but if I understand this correctly one click can do several undo operations and I wouldn't get a chance to cancel? I don't like the idea because my computer often creates spurious clicks when I am only moving the mouse. (I used to think it's a problem with my touchpad, but this week I discovered it also happens with a PS/2 mouse attached, which turns the touchpad off.) Cheers --Hans Adler (talk) 11:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources in other languages

Regarding- Wikipedia:ANI#Deletion_of_Kurt_Krenn sources in other languages are fine. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I was aware that they can be used with some restrictions, but you made me re-read WP:RSUE and refresh my mind with the details. --Hans Adler (talk) 01:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

An FLC

Hi I noticed that you opposed the FLC for List of Los Angeles Police Department officers killed in the line of duty. There is a similar FLC right now and I wanted to see if you had any objections to it. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 15:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but I had already seen it. Along with a lot of other cruft that I couldn't believe is actually being featured rather than deleted. I decided not to get involved further with that nonsense. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Zero risk

Exactly. Thanks for explaining that better that I did. --barneca (talk) 13:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

How are you Hans?

What's your astrological configuration?Hotridge (talk) 12:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Even if I knew it, I would not tell you. I am sorry that I previously didn't make it clear enough: I am not interested in further communication with you. Thank you for respecting this. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

King Arthur peer review

I have addressed most of your comments. I am not the main editor, who is rather busy, but I have a few books on the subject and have been responding to the peer review because the article is on the FA team's task list. Cheers. qp10qp (talk) 23:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

knot theory

Hi Hans. You expressed some interest in helping out with the knot theory article and getting it to FA. I hope we can count on you. :-) I understand you have quite a few things on your plate (like the formal language thing). Please understand that I'm not here to tell you how to edit, and your efforts are greatly appreciated. But I hope you don't get too stressed out with these other matters and lose energy. As for me, I'll lend a bit more help on formal language but my wiki time is limited and I'd rather spend it doing something fun and fruitful. --C S (talk) 07:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten about the knot theory article, but yesterday I remembered and "watched" it, so there is probably nothing to worry even though theoretically I have no time for WP at all. Yes, I agree, we really have to make sure that we do enough rewarding things here to counterbalance things like the formal language conflict. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:54, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical economics and logical tautology

Sorry for the delay in responding to you on the article talk page. I've responded in bulk there but I just wanted to apologize in case my understanding of the subject at hand has clouded my explanation of my position to you. Protonk (talk) 17:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC) also, I've got that page watched so you can respond there or on my talk page. If you respond here, it will probably be a little while before I catch it. Protonk (talk) 17:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Category:Theories

Just wanted to let you know that you still didn't get that CFD notice right (that template needs to be "substituted"). But not to worry -- I've already taken care of it. Cgingold (talk) 02:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I knew that there was still a problem, but I didn't know if it could be solved simply by substituting again (on the wrong day), and whether substituting the template on the talk page had caused any damage. I asked for help at WT:Categories for discussion but got no response there.

Thanks for taking care of it! --Hans Adler (talk) 09:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Wedge or circ symbol for meet?

Hi Hans. I'm typing this from the BLAST (Boolean algebras, lattices, ...) conference in Denver this week. I just noticed that you "wikified" the symbol for the meet operation from wedge to circ, in various places, e.g. in the lattice theory article on May 3. Who decided this change was needed? Circ is definitely not standard for meet in lattice theory today. What's behind this? --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 23:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment at Talk:Chiropractic

Thanks for the input, I've added a summary of the warnings recently given to this editor, could you comment on the talkpage on if you think these were unclear or not strongly-worded enough? Tim Vickers (talk) 18:07, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I am writing an email. If my 3-year-old daughter wasn't currently trying to beat me up I would have sent it already. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:23, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I have a kitten that helps me type, see this edit summary for example! Tim Vickers (talk) 18:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Must have been a really interesting article for her! --Hans Adler (talk) 18:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

It must be hard for cats to maintain NPOV when discussing their house monkeys. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Sylvia Brown

Hi Hans, Thanks for your comments on the BLP notice board. I was unaware of that discussion, and as you comment I didn't revert QaBob's edits. I think linking to the transcript is fine, so long as it isn't the reference, and if this discussion was noted on the talk page I'd have commented there first (if it is I missed it and I'm a bit busy right now). Thanks Verbal chat 14:19, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for forgetting to tell you. You are right, QaBobAllah's talk page comment came rather late and didn't include the obvious link. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems he was a sock puppet and has been banned. Thanks again for your words. Verbal chat 21:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow, interesting case. Thanks for letting me know. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Email

Just letting you know, I sent you an email. Best wishes, -- how do you turn this on 15:16, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

notification, not solicitation

Re : Please note that it was not my intention to spread the discussion to your talk page. I merely notified you since you hadn't replied over the weekend. If you prefer not to participate in the RfC discussion "on these two disgusting topics" any more, that's perfectly fine; but based on your most recent comments, there was no way of telling and I would have liked to learn whether my response was satisfying your request for a proper argumentation or not. Seems like it did. Everyme 18:02, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It did; however, you had talked as if you had a strong argument for inclusion; turns out that was not the case. The reason I removed your message was that I just don't want visitors to my page to get the impression that I am interested in guns or terror organisations. I am a pacifist, and I am editing under my real name. Putting both things into the header, and using a template, was a bit unfortunate, but you couldn't know this and I am not blaming you for that. Perhaps I will continue on the page., but I have no time for edit conflicts now. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Prilep-Bitola dialect

Thank you very much for your involvement. Unfortunately, the stubborn reverting continues . Any further help very much appreciated. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

It was a pleasure. Giving free lectures to uninterested nationalists must be very painful for an expert. (Similar situations with logic articles are bad enough, although they are much rarer.) It's much more fun to teach a subject if you only have some solid half-knowledge and Wikipedia at your disposal.

I will keep this article on my watchlist. Feel free to contact me if you get into any other situations that might interest a daily Language Log reader.

By the way, my first Wikipedia conflict was language related. My attempt to remove the section dependent clause#Fragments (or replace it by something that makes sense) was a complete failure. Probably because of my WP inexperience and because I couldn't interest an expert in the matter. Or perhaps I was wrong? --Hans Adler (talk) 23:10, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

mathsci

sorry if I missed something. Believe me, I would be very glad too if this is now all behind us. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:50, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aramean-Syriac people I am trying Afd now. --dab (𒁳) 12:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I replied to your email

Also, I just wanted to note (more importantly) that:

a) I don't wish to change my account (because it would be really difficult after this long/reasons given in the email)

b) I really appreciate your comments (don't take it the wrong way) but I would rather continue as I have done so far (I don't think there is any need to publicise what I wrote about my age and nor should it mean that I have to remove my expert mathematician tag). Perhaps after sometime (when I feel it is absolutely necessary), I can reveal who I am and maybe that will explain all the comments in the email.

Anyway, thanks for the email.

Topology Expert (talk) 03:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

In lieu of a barnstar

(I am not a big fan of them) let me say this sincerely: I wish you would run for ArbCom. We need people with integrity there! Slrubenstein | Talk 14:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! (I am not a fan of them, either.) I agree that we need people with integrity in Arbcom. Currently I am not sure that I can support more than one or two candidates; I haven't made my homework yet. It's a pity that Bishzilla isn't running any more.

So far as I am concerned, I am not on a power trip, and I like to be careful when taking important decisions that take others. That's inconsistent with running for ArbCom while being a single father of a four-year-old and on a temporary research position. Sorry. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:30, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Alas, you have too many good reasons not to run .... I hope if your circumstances ever improve to the point where you can, you will let me know. Good luck, Slrubenstein | Talk 20:15, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I will let you know once I become power hungry or begin to feel that getting last instance rulings right may not be so important, after all. ;-) --Hans Adler (talk) 22:17, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

...for stepping in to help with the Christian Coalition article; it definitely needs improvement, and a revert war isn't the way to achieve it. Looking forward to working with you on it. --BRPierce (talk) 13:36, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid I can't help much with that. I am not interested in that kind of organisation, and even less so when they are on another continent. So I don't have much motivation to do any research. But I will keep watching the article for a while; perhaps I can contribute to a constructive atmosphere. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

July 29 in rail transport

I just want to let you know that the July 29 in rail transport ended in a no consensus. I am currently disputing that decision atWikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 December 3. If you wish to speak your opinion of the result of the AfD, please do so at the Deletion Review. Thanks for your opinion in the discussion. Tavix (talk) 00:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello

Just checking that nothing fatal happened in the night :) Best regards, Mathsci (talk) 09:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

No, I am still alive and unsacked, if you are referring to the "threats". Personally I think that a longish block is in order in such cases to strongly discourage this kind of behaviour, but actually calling the police was an absurd overreaction. I wonder who did it. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Leodis links

Hallo, I see you've removed a lot of links to the Leodis database (not added by me). It's a non-commercial collection of annotated historic images, maintained by the local library service, and I suggest that if links from Bramhope etc are focussed to the specific place (using drop-down menu on search page), these are useful additions rather than spam. What do you think? I've put a revised link on that Bramhope page. PamD (talk) 12:56, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I have no big problem with these links. I recognise that such a website is extremely valuable, which is why I did not remove the link from Leeds. The message that I left on the IP's talk page may not have been tactful enough – this was mainly because the English way of expressing such things doesn't come naturally to me (especially after an orgy of stupid clicking) and I felt that the anonymous user was unlikely to read the message anyway (changing IP addresses). What is not OK is spamming links to the site's main page to every area of Leeds starting with A or B, as the IP has done.

Your solution works for me, but you should be aware of #9 under WP:LINKSTOAVOID, which makes it a bit fragile. I think one of the problems with linking to a search result is that it might strain the Leodis server. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom

Thanks for your kindly oppose :) Three things are relevant. First, I've had a cold/flu for a week now with a temperature running around 38/38.5: this is seriously hampering my ability/stamina to reply incisively to 250+ largely hypothetical questions. Second, I have been sharpening up responses to questions specifically identified as problematic. If you could crystallise your unease into something i could reply to that would be very helpful. Third, Durova's characterisation of me is way, way off the mark, which is not surprising since she hardly knows me. I'll be responding to this last one here either later this afternoon or tomorrow morning. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 13:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Yes, I am aware that it must be a lot of work to answer all those questions, and since I am currently not very fit either, I can feel with you. As you have probably experienced yourself, most of us don't have the time to research all the candidates down into the last details. Therefore (almost) every single vote is unfair, and only the global outcome is probably (more or less) fair. In your case, after reading you statement I felt slightly uneasy, and your answers didn't improve the feeling. I am very unhappy with the current ArbCom, and while I have never participated in an ArbCom election before, I guess that a lot of voters were surprised by the bad judgement of some of those they had supported. That's why predictability is important for me, and I have no idea what you will be like as an arbitrator. I felt that I should give some kind of explanation, and Durova's explanation came closest to what I had in mind.

In a sense your response here confirms that my vote was correct. You currently rank third, and yet you seem to be still trying to optimise. That's an indication that you are very conscious about either your performance in the elections, or generally about what people think about you, or in the best case about optimising your own personality (something that only few people are really prepared to do, and very commendable). In any case it's something I didn't expect, and it confirms that for me you are unpredictable. Sorry I couldn't frame it as more constructive criticism – the problem is that it's not so much criticism as a lack of either trust or mistrust. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:00, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that :) I don't know how clearly it comes across in my statement but my primary motive in standing is reform. A reform agenda is easiest pushed hard on ArbCom with a strong personal mandate: maybe I'm being naive but that's how I see it. And, yes, I am probably unpredictable in the sense that I'm my own man. I like to decide things on an issue by issue basis. Anyhow, thank you very much for this exchange: I do appreciate your take on things :) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

2A article

I commend you for your recent edits, and appreciate the neutral attitude you bring to the article. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:19, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

North Sea talk page

Thank you for your comments on the North Sea talk page. I have fixed the conversion template which was employed to a different one. I will fix also the coordinates, now that the geogroups template is functioning. The coordinates are no longer needed in the North Sea article. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 00:10, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant, I had no idea the templates are so flexible. — Did you ever look at the North Sea related articles in other relevant languages? The German, Danish and Dutch versions of Wadden Sea are very well developed, for instance. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:23, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Line article

Hi Hans. Can I prevail on you to take a position on the question I raised just now concerning the second sentence of the article on lines at the bottom of that article's talk page? If you agree with Tango I won't argue the point further. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 06:46, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

IWF

Hi Hans, sorry I misread your comment. I agree, although I think that this is unlikely to happen, even if it was adopted by all media and organisations in the UK. Other terms are too prominent, and the words used aren't going to effect people so disturbed. Could be an interesting debate. Yours, Verbal chat 14:37, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I shall remove my comment too. Thanks. Theresa Knott | token threats 21:26, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Bishop–Keisler controversy

An article that you have been involved in editing, Bishop–Keisler controversy, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bishop–Keisler controversy. Thank you. Mathsci (talk) 05:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

The boy Jones

Did Jones enter the palace or palace grounds three times, or is there some uncertainty with regards to that? I think the DYK hook would be more interesting if it said "he managed to enter the palace unarmed on three separate occasions despite increased security." - Mgm|^(talk) 09:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems he entered at least four times (1838, two consecutive days in 1840, then 1841), but there is a lot of uncertainty. The problem with the entries when he wasn't caught (quite possibly more than four) is that one has to decide which of his stories is plausible. Something like "was caught in the palace three times" would work, but I left it out for length concerns. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I proposed an alternative hook that also has a link to Buckingham Palace. I think the funny word "thrice" fits nicely in this context. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:13, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Leeds

From your comments on the talk page, you appear to have come around to my way of thinking..? Chrisieboy (talk) 11:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK for The boy Jones

On 25 December, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article The boy Jones, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

BorgQueen (talk) 13:56, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Fringe science ArbCom

Hi Hans. A belated Merry Christmas from California. Had you noticed this ArbCom going on? I only ask because I know that you have been a little involved with this area and might have things you want to add. Best regards, Mathsci (talk) 06:28, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom request for clarification: WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE

A request has been made for clarification of the ArbCom case WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE as it relates to List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts. I'm leaving this notification with all editors who have recently edited the article or participated in discussion. For now, the pending request, where you are free to comment, may be found here. regards, Backin72 (n.b.) 13:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Please stay civil and assume good faith

Hi Hans,

I have group (mathematics) on my watchlist and noticed your most recent revert of this edit (please have one more look). Although, I am inclined to agree that your revert was appropriate, I would like to request you to be a little more nicer in your edit summaries. An edit summary like: 'Reverting introduction of grotesque spelling error and of irritating redundancy (note the language "combines any two"' is somewhat unpleasent and certainly unnecessary. If you wrote that, thinking that User:Loadmaster (the person who added those errors) is a vandal (I must admit that I would have done the same if I thought so but I would have confirmed this by checking his user page) that is somewhat OK but I encourage you to see this. In future, please at least try to check the person's user page if you believe he is a vandal but even in that case, it is much better to be as nice as possible. In particular, I am sure that User:Loadmaster had good intentions with his edit (I guess I also get annoyed with people who don't actually bother to read the whole paragraph when they edit a tiny bit of it, but these sorts of things happen in WP). You may feel differently about your edit summary but I feel that you could have phrased it in a more polite manner. --PST 16:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi PST, actually when I reverted I was agnostic about whether Loadmaster is a vandal (the strange change "possible -> pcsible" being hard to explain otherwise). This is something I checked afterwards, and I decided not to pursue this line of thought. I think the main problem was that I was influenced by my irritation that closure is even included as one of the official axioms. You can see that when I wrote my edit comment I even misremembered which of the properties that go without saying it is about (I should have quoted "form a third element", not "combines any two"). It's annoying to me because it's inconsistent with our other articles (we don't write: "A topological space is a set equipped with a set of open subsets satisfying: ... Subset axiom: Every open set is a subset of the space ...") and it would be better to say it's something that some people call an axiom, although it follows from the general framework that is set up before the axioms are formulated.

In any case you are right that I wasn't very nice. Thanks for reminding me to be more constructive. I believe in it in general, but sometimes it's hard to actually follow one's beliefs. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Apothecaries weights map

Greetings! The information from the image File:Apothecaries_weights_1800.png which you appear to have created is quite interesting and undeniably adds to the Apothecaries' system article. However, neither the file's page on commons, nor the image caption in the article provide detail as to the origin of this data. Where did it come from? Thanks! -Verdatum (talk) 16:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi! It's completely based on the information I researched for the article. Like the rest of the article, I am afraid it's technically "original research" or "synthesis" in the sense that I have researched many bits of information, often from (easily accessible) 19th century books, and put them together in a novel, though (I believe) very cautious and conservative, way. I created the current version of the article after Filll asked me a technical question about apothecaries' weight; I was surprised how easy it was to research most of this topic using just the web (mostly Google Books), and got carried away. I am not awar of earlier publications on the subject. If there are none I should probably try to get this article through some kind of peer review and have it formally published. It would be amusing to mention this as one of my publications in job applications.

If you are just worried about licensing issues – there are none. If you are worried about which numbers appear in the map, and where exactly, and the lines – everything is there only to give a rough idea. If you are going to use the image or part of the article elsewhere, I would of course be delighted to learn about this. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:38, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:RFAR

I have asked for the Elonka matter to be handled as a full case, and copied over all comments. Please strike any comments no longer relevant. Thank you, Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:40, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

This was a strange move that confused me quite a bit until I realised that Vassyana has already removed my comment and I can stop thinking about what to do with it. Anyway, thanks for notifying me.--Hans Adler (talk) 21:26, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Mannheim reference in the Lorsch Codex

My apologies for my incorrect edit on this page - I was the one who was confused! I got confused with the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Aureus_of_Lorsch, which seemed to better fit the dates for the legal transactions. Perhaps it would be worth making this clear on the page, by inserting "the 12th Century" before "Codex Laureshamensis"?

Thanks, Cantrix (talk) 04:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

No need at all for apologising. The text you changed ("mentioned in a document from 766, the Codex Laureshamensis") was wrong. Now it's correct. I think what you propose is a bit destracting and off-topic, but I wouldn't oppose it. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Zenwhat and BQZip01 The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

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.

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. 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)

Clarified. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:50, 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)

Patience

Hi, user:Hans Adler! You are correct, I find it most difficult to discern much meaning in the posts of User:Zenwhat, particularly now that the argument for some reason has diverted to vegetarianism, or something. I am trying to WP:AGF towards that user, since I just about do understand that the USER sincerely thinks they are trying to help WIKIPEDIA.

Unfortunately, User:Zenwhat also sincerely believes (!) that User:Zenwhat is, the one and the only TRUTH!!!

That is, is it not, incompatible with any worthwhile or meaningful participation, at this time, in articles, or talkspaces, especially combined with such an abrasive manner.

I expect the AN/I threads you and I contributed to will be archived soon, and no remedies will be obtained against User:Zenwhat. I have not asked for ZW to be blocked. I asked only for User:Zenwhat to agree to abide by Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, I think. As to AGF, my desire is for something (?) to happen which brings ZW to a better space, and become, at some time, a useful contributor to Wikipedia. Cheers, Newbyguesses - Talk 15:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

We probably agree on most points in this matter. I would guess that in the MBTI classification he is an exceptionally strong ENTJ type, which is quite rare. But I also think I am observing psychological projection in almost everything he says (and that I am allowed to say so because he routinely accuses others of cognitive biases). The chaos he has been bringing into Wikipedia may actually have its purpose, but if he were to continue like last week for months, then we would have a serious problem. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I knew there was a word on the tip of my tongue, just couldn't recall! Yes, I am sorry to say that such rampant psychological projection cannot remain unremarked, (accusing others of faults, and accusing oneself pathologically of faults, it all comes out). I don't recall much offhand about the MBTI stuff, I would have to go to the library, but thanks for reminding me of a word I had been searching for.

Some activity, quite likely positive has been stirred up on some pages by ZW, but months of this would be excrutiating for all concerned. That is, it is not necessarily a question of "content", but of the civility of the user, who has never acknowledged, nor apologised, for the gross insults and slanders dished out regularly by the user. If it were a "workplace", it might well be considered an OH&S problem, though I will not press that metaphor. Newbyguesses - Talk 07:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Making a fool of myself — English geography The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Leeds and City of Leeds

I assure you I wasn't "defending against imaginary or unintended attacks," just my position. However, I do resent the inference in your latest post that I am being in any way unreasonable or contributing to an unconstructive atmosphere by doing so. Please stick to the issues in hand rather than personalising the discussion and remember to assume good faith. Chrisieboy (talk) 20:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Oops. After a careful re-reading of your comment I agree that my last sentence wasn't warranted at all. Sorry for that. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate that. Chrisieboy (talk) 00:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Leeds, Kent versus Leeds, Yorkshire

I've booked you in to an English Geography 101 refresher course...  ;) --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Aaaargh. I should have had breakfast first. Thanks a lot. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Richmond Hill, Leeds

The dab on this should be West Yorkshire, as it was, this is as per the normal naming convention for UK places. Locations should normally use the County for dab and only go to a district or other local name when there is more than a one of the same name in a County. We should not be lining up with others which may be wrong but rather renaming the others in line with the normal convention. Keith D (talk) 13:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the mistake. I have done the same with Wortley, Leeds. I have also just moved Old Farnley to Farnley, Leeds to discuss it in one article together with nearby New Farnley. I am just about to complete the merge. I will go ahead with this, as I can easily undo it if you tell me that this also breaks a convention. Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I begin exploring the dangerous parts of Wikipedia The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Syriac hubbub

I have replied on my talkpage. You want to read Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Syriac) and Names of Syriac Christians first. Be also aware of Wikipedia:Assyrian-Syriac wikipedia cooperation board. regards, dab (𒁳) 13:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

Dear Prof. Hans Adler, Thanks for your kind msg. Yes I use a telephone line for internet access. Here one question. I see you are mathematician. In this context and in this difficult situation with my article Myrzakulov equations I would like ask your advice in order to keep it. Ngn 92.46.69.162 (talk) 06:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Ngn, sorry, but in this situation I cannot help you. Personally I think that the article is of a very poor quality and should not exist in this form. Essentially it is just a list of equations that are named after a little known person. It does not give me even the vaguest idea of why they are interesting and why anybody would want to know solutions to these equations. Reading this article, I do not get the impression that it was written to explain an interesting piece of science to interested readers. My personal opinion is that it is usually best to delete such articles and wait until someone else write a new, better version. I believe this is a standard practice on the German language Wikipedia, for example, but you are lucky: The English language Wikipedia generally does not like to delete any articles that have a chance of being improved. Unfortunately this means in practice that by writing a bad article quickly you can make somebody who is not interested in it, but who feels responsible, spend a lot of free work on it.

I understand that for language reasons it would have been much easier for you to contribute an article about this topic to the Russian language Wikipedia, and that you faced strong opposition there; possibly stronger than the poor quality of the article warrants. Therefore I am not blaming you for this situation.

Your claim that some users of the Russian language Wikipedia have followed you here in order to have the article deleted is unfortunately very credible. Some appalling behaviour is exhibited in the deletion discussion. Therefore I feel that both sides are wrong in this conflict, and I hope that both sides will stop pursuing this further.

(I have removed the square brackets from your signature "Ngn", because there is of course no article discussing that abbreviation.) --Hans Adler (talk) 08:37, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

In reply to your posting on the Admin Bulletin Board

I am not going to continue arguing these issues on the Admin BB, but since we had some private exchanges, I will comment on your last posting here, point by point.

You wrote:

In an online community it is much more important than in real life to take cognitive biases into account, because some of the correctives that we have in real life are missing. If we don't do this, and don't follow some of the other correctives that have been established here instead, then we cause a lot of unnecessary drama: Two people who can't stop "defending" themselves against each other.

The main defects in this online community are:

1) Anonymity - which seems to license abusive conduct, language, etc., just like "road-rage"

2) Arbitrary re-definition of language, which make people think that they may use with impunity such abusive and insulting terms as "bad faith" and "rant" because they think they will be interpreted within the Wikipedia "newspeak" rather than in the way that ordinary people in real life use them

3) The "culture" of mutual, formulaic threats and denuciations, all officially sanctioned by the arbitrary, and offensive "rule book"

4) The sanctimonious (read: hypocritical) ways in which people bred in this "virtual" culture learn to express themselves

5) The totally arbitrary powers attributed to individuals without any pertinent qualifications for wielding them (e.g., maturity, fair-mindedness, knowledgability), only their "Wikipedia" record of edits, and an avowed adherence to the cult's ideology. This, in real life, would be the formula for: oppression of freedom of expression, censorship, character assassination, banishment, and worse, and so it is, though only "virtually" within this "online community".

Who needs an "online community" in which these are the accepted practices?

Do you think that when Cheeser1 goes to bed he thinks: "Today was a successful day. I have defended a worthless article against a distinguished physicist, and I have shown him his place."?

This person, whom I have a better idea about, now that I have checked his past history of edits, is clearly a troubled, maladjusted individual (as indeed he himself has announced on his own user page) apparently harboring resentments and hostilities about which I am not inclined to speculate. He clearly had no interest in the actual content of the debate, since he never addressed the substantive issues that lay behind the nomination for deletion of the article. (Which was perhaps best, since he undoubtedly lacks the competence to do so.) As proof, note that, contrary to what he claims in his self-justificatory outbursts (here I am using the word advisedly - exactly as defined in any dictionary of the English language), he changed his vote after having succeeded in provoking what he was really looking for, which was a battle. I do, indeed, think that he thinks of little else than how to score further points against his identified "enemy", and is acting out hostilities that have little to do with the issues at stake.

Nobody thinks of themselves in such terms, but everybody is ready to act as if others did. This is called actor-observer bias, and it's a universal fact about human nature.

These are generalities, which certainly have basis in fact and human behaviour. But this does not mean that all such conflicts are of a symmetrical nature. There are genuine "bullies" in the world, whether online, or in real life, and there are times when it is necessary to mount an adequate defense against them. The aggression and incivility in the AfD debate was certainly not initiated by me. The insults that were launched, first by user:Jerry, with his totally baseless accusations of "bad faith", and then by the incredible arrogance of the aggressive interventions and commands addressed by user:Cheeser1 to "Proscience", ordering him to desist in his discussion with the author of the article, enhanced by the immediate snarling suggestions of imminent "denunciation" provided by an administrator user:Scarian were what raised me to such ire.

Please note that I am not inclined towards aggressive confrontations, or interested in battling for its own sake. But in this instance, the aggression of user:Cheeser1 against "Proscience" and the preceding absurd attack of user: Jerry against me were more than what could be endured without a strong, though principled reply.

I did use strong (though civilized) terms to characerize the conduct I was witnessing, as well as the apparent contempt for "expertise", which had been detailed in a very long preceding outpouring by user:Jerry (which nobody seems to refer to). My "essay" (which undoubtedly was provocative, perhaps more than anything by its original title, which I subsequently deleted, although it was posed as a question), was not aimed at a single individual, but rather the attitudes that seemed to prevail leading to such conduct and language. It ended not with a condemnation, but a question: "Are there enough of those who do have an adequate respect for knowledge, qualifications, real-word competence and, simply, the truth, who have a say in how Wikipedia is run and decisions are made to tilt the balance? " My answer was provided by the subsequent sequence of events, which could hardly be called a debate, in view of the machinations orchestrated by user:Cheeser1, while sanctimoniously blaming the disruption upon me, the subsequent distortion of objectivity in the closing of the debate, which allowed user:Cheeser1 and another highly tendentious participant in the "debate" to influence the outcome to the exclusion of those parties with the greatest knowledge about the facts, and the aftermath.

As far as I can tell Cheeser1 saw that you were messing up an AfD, against your own interest, and he tried to help.

I am sorry, but I disagree. He began by deleting my (one, and only) "essay", without my permission, or rather transferring it, without my permission, to the talk page, which when I tried to restore it, he repeated, and again manipulated, in various ways, to try to hide or get rid of it. It was clearly not because he "tried to help", but because he felt himself to be one of those targeted in it, even though no specific individual was mentioned. He simply clearly recognized his own actions in my descriptions of the abuses. He continued by doing the same to perfectly valid postings by "Proscience", who mistakenly thought these were the doings of an authorized administrator. In fact, such unauthorized deletions and tamperings with the postings of others were clearly in violation of WP rules. Moreoever, "Cheeser1" did this only with respect to postings by those he was hostile to; he did nothing of a similar nature with respect to the much longer, preceding tirade by "Jerry" against expert input. These unauthorized manipulations continued, and were accompanied by a campaign on his part to denounce me for the various odious-sounding offenses like "sockpuppetry" and "meat-puppetry", "crimes" that he invented, without any basis in fact, and engendered simply by hostilty. I, on the other hand, went only so far as to place (after he had already placed ominous warnings at my user site) a warning to stop vandalising my contributions. He did not, and continued to do so at least five times, in various ways, that I have listed at the ABB site. Meanwhile, I tried appealing for help to two senior "administrators" whom I knew (one of them an "arbitrator"), who responded, in a sequence of exchanges, as though they were not hearing anything that I was telling them, and did nothing but spout generalities and platitudes, while taking no corrective action whatsoever. Thus, when user:Cheeser1 continued his attacks, both verbally, and through these various manipulations and denunciations, extending them not only to my input (which had ceased, by then, since I was too preoccupied defending myself against them to add anything substantial to the debate), but also that of "Proscience", I was left only to my own persistence to undo the damage and defend myself.

When he saw your reaction he attributed it to your character more than to the specific circumstances under which you acted. That made him behave as he did. It became a problem when it was clear the strategy wasn't going to work and he continued anyway. He did not continue because he liked doing it, but because he felt that someone had to do it.

Your equal-handedness, though perhaps well-meant, is simply ill-considered. You have decided upon a benign interpretation of the actions of user:Cheeser1 which does not coincide with the reality. You were perhaps unaware of the multiple manipulations, false denunciations and threats that he was making, but if so, now that I have told you about them, you should seriously reconsider your estimation of the situation.

It was the symmetrical situation for you. You saw Cheeser1's actions, and you attributed them to his character rather than to the fact that he found himself in a very unusual situation.

I gather from his past history of conflicts that it was not, in fact so unusual a situation for him.

I guess that normally your word carries a lot of authority in interactions not only with other scientists, but also with ordinary people. At least that's how you come across here.

I am, in general, regarded with respect, and treated with civility in my relations with others - just as I accord the respect and civility to others that I expect for myself. I am known, usually, as a courteous and considerate person, who does not abuse others. I also make sure when dealing with people who are in any sense in a weak or vulnerable position, to accord special attention to treating them with courtesy, civility and respect. The fact that I have, in a long career, earned another sort of recognition, within my field is certainly not grounds for expecting special treatment or for making others feel in any way inferior. If I speak with authority about my field, it is because I have earned the right to do so, as has any scientist who has made significant enough contributions to have proven his competence.

The problem with this kind of authority is that it does not carry over to Wikipedia because once it is filtered through the wiki it is not sufficiently distinguishable from the behaviour of those half-educated bullies who we don't want to give control of the wiki. So you get the treatment that is intended for them.

You are right; in an anonymous setting anyone can "play-act" and claim an authority that they are not entitled to. This is one of the principle defects of Wikipedia, but it is also in line with the misguided "philiosophy" of contempt for "expertise", as expressed by user:Jerry. Aside from the other insidious consequences of such anonymity, this is one of the principle defects of Wikiepdia, which stems directly from its origins, and its founder. It is one (amongst many) reasons why, in time, it will just further degenerate into something that has little or no resemblance to an encyclopeadia.

You are writing long rants about how Wikipedia has to change in order to solve the bully problem.

I would like to caution you against such ill-advised use of Wikipedia "newspeak". The word "rant" in the English language has a very specific, and extremely pejorative meaning. If you are not sure about this (I gather that English is not your first language, so perhaps that might be a reason for it), please consult a good dictionary to verify this. My single "essay" in the AfD (there were not many of them, just one (please check if you are unsure), which occupied somewhat less space than the extended diatribe of user:Jerry against "expertise", which preceded it, or his attack against me for "Bad faith" was not, in any sense, a "rant". It was a carefully thought out, tightly worded critique, based upon facts, ending in a challenge. Calling it a "rant" cannot be interpreted in any other way than yet again hurling an insult, regardless of the primitive abuses of the English language that seem rife in Wikipedia "newspeak". (And even there, it is, I gather, only used in a formulaic, derogatory manner, just as is the expression "Bad Faith".)

What you don't understand is that Wikipedia already has rather good strategies to deal with the problem and that that is exactly what you have tripped over.

It is not that I "don't understand" - it is that I see the strategies, I see their outcome, and I conclude that they are extremely bad. They do not have the effect of weeding out abuses, discourteous behaviour, manipulations and other forms of nefarious conduct. Instead, they provide a formulaic, but ineffective way of dealing with such things, leading to much sanctimonious, self-justificatory language, accompanied by multiple abuses - perpetrated as much by those having "adminstrators" powers as by others. The mechanism for self-regulation is a great failure.

The sooner that "Wikipedians" recognize that, and try perhaps to do something about, the sooner some improvement in the environment that reigns might begin. But while insisting on the sanctity of rules, structures, conventions and assigned powers that manifestly fail to accomplish what is intended, Wikipedia is guaranteeing its own degradation, and the contempt with which it is increasingly seen in the "real world".

If better judgement means not seeing both sides of the coin, then I don't want it. Of course I could have shown better judgement by being quiet altogether. All I seem to have achieved is that both you and Cheeser1 are angry at me. But I am used to this kind of situation. In my experience here, when one side of a conflict thinks I am right it's a good indication that I am wrong. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)"

I don't know how to achieve "better judgment"; maybe it comes from experience - or maybe from looking more carefully, and analytically, at the facts, and not jumping to conclusions on the basis of partial information. 24.202.238.172 (talk) 15:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC) (alias "R Physicist")

P.S. Perhaps you are not aware of it, but it seems that a renewed "AfD" is in process about the same article that I had nominated for deletion: Myrzakulov equations. I am not taking part in that debate, since I have decided to pretty well stay away from Wikipedia for the foreseeable future.

If you care to look at the current AfD debate, you will find (on the "talk" page, not on the main discussion page), a copy of a letter that I sent, on March 25th, to Wikipedia "adjudicator/administrator" Charles Matthews containing my third and final plea to intervene, and stop the deletions, transpositions, removals, collapses and other manipulations to which user:Cheeser1 was subjecting my remarks, and that of other expert contributors, as well as his increasingly aggressive insults, obscenities and false "denunciations". Nothing was done in response to these pleas for assistance. 132.205.67.123 (talk) 00:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC) (alias: "R Physicist") 132.205.67.123 (talk) 00:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC) (alias: "R Physicist")

Thanks for reminding me of the AfD. I will probably !vote tomorrow (the "!" is used as a reminder that it isn't actually a vote, but an opinion; in the end an experienced editor, usually an admin, discards all opinions that came with an obviously faulty justification, such as "keep because Myrzakulov got a Nobel price for the formulas", and decides whether most of the remaining opinions agree), but it shouldn't matter: I am quite sure the article will be deleted.

I will reply. I think it's better to do it by email, although I can't spend as much time on it now as I would like to. It's long past midnight for me, and I have some work to do tomorrow, so I will probably write over the weekend. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

• To user Hans Adler, I respect personally you and your opinion but why such cheap polemics as "... keep because Myrzakulov got a Nobel price for the formulas..." that not adorn you. It very like with the other polemics (of our common "friend" R-Physicist) "... is set side by side with Nobel Prize winner Lev Landau, and incorporated on an equal footing in a Wikipedia article about the Landau-Lifschitz equations". As you know that I not want any polemics like that and not want continue any discussion in this direction. But I would like remind one more that after the last AfD here were created additionally 3 article on spin systems

Landau-Lifshitz equation (LLE) (creater R.e.b.)

Ishimori equation (IE) (creater Barstaw that is I (alias "Ngn"))

Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert equation (LLGE) (creater R.e.b.).

Also I created the article Dispersionless equation. So what I want tell you that creating these 2 articles on Ishimori and Myrzakulov equations I not going to set Ishimori and Myrzakulov "side by side with Nobel Prize winner Lev Landau". There are exist around 200 Nobel Prize winners but also there are exist 1000 named equations. What about remaining 800=1000-200 scientists which obtained some equations notable, not so notable or not notable? I think most of them including Ishimori and Myrzakulov are not candidates to "Nobel Prize". But we can create an articles about these equations. Not more! Barstaw (talk) 20:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry that I offended you by what I wrote. I assure you that I meant it as an example of faulty logic, nothing else. Myrzakulov did not get a Nobel price for the formulas, and therefore a !vote based on the (mis)understanding that he did should not (and normally would not) be counted. That's a good example for the difference between voting and voting. If I had known that you read this I would have been more careful not to hurt your feelings; I would have chosen a different example. E.g. I could have written: "Keep because everything is notable". That's another example of faulty logic because again the assumption is false. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:36, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Deletion debate

Hi, I am replying in this form to your invitation from the talk page on the deletion debate in order not to disturb unnecessarily that page again. I appreciate your taking the time to analyze the situation carefully, and to reach that conclusion. Might I add that no one was trying to threaten anybody else's career: exposing the self-promotion for this topic does not prejudice against the author's future work - at least, not as far as I am concerned. The discussion evolved into direct threats and unacceptable language unilateraly, from the author. That amounts to self-inflicted damage for that person's good name, with no help from the outside. I find this quite disturbing. (Proscience).

Thanks. Once more, I am sorry for my mistake. On Wikipedia everything tends to be done in a hurry, which means that lots of mistakes happen and are corrected later. That's why Wikipedia is so effective in general. Saying something negative about other people is a kind of mistake that I usually try to avoid even here, but I suppose it's the general spirit of the place; or just my fault. Yes, I am absolutely sure that you had no bad intentions, and even if it may sound like a silly non-sincere apology I really didn't want to accuse you of that. I am sure that the person in question originally had no bad intentions either. The problem is that online communication is like playing Chinese whispers, so that firmness can easily be taken for an attack. (You can't prevent this completely, but there are some techniques that I have found to be quite effective.) This person clearly felt under an extreme attack and made a pathetic attempt to fight back. I think it's best to keep an open mind about real-life performance of all people involved, as far as possible. We are in a parallel world here, and often there is a significant difference between people's real and cyberspace selves.

We should probably have an emergency service with skilled people who can prevent such escalations. I am proud of my conflict resolution skill in simpler situations, but this was just too complicated. This kind of drama occasionally produces obsessed enemies of Wikipedia, and we could really do without websites that publish personal addresses and other private details of as many editors as possible.

I tried to analyse the entire drama further in an email to your colleague; so if you are interested in further details you could ask him for a copy of the relevant passage. I hope we haven't driven you away completely. At least you had a complete adventure here, including an appearance of our benign ruler. I had never seen him in action before. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Preventing Line Break by Removing Spaces before Footnotes

In your edit summary dated 24 March 2008, for the Hydrino theory article, you mentioned removing spaces before footnotes to prevent line break. That sounds like a good idea, but not being familiar with how that works in the Wikipedia, I was wondering which footnote or footnotes you had in mind. I seem to have missed that in comparing versions of the article. TStolper1W (talk) 01:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If only spaces have been changed, it's hard to see in the diffs. What I did was replace something like ". <ref>" with something like ".<ref>", in two instances. By the way, in case you are not aware of that, it's probably not a good idea to revert to essentially the same version of the page so often, when there is so much opposition. --Hans Adler (talk) 01:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I see the two places now, thanks. Re editing: I guess it isn’t necessary to post a better-documented and less biased version of the Hydrino theory article every day, but look at what Mills’ opponents (and mine) had been doing (see the article's Revision history). They hit the Undo button within hours and sometimes even less time than that. TStolper1W (talk) 16:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I find it hard to agree with you there. There are certainly cases where the scientific establishment treats unconventional ideas and their inventors unfairly. But this does not look like such a case at all. Much of what you are reinserting looks like a fringe point of view to me. I am not reverting your latest changes, but that's only because I don't want to spend the time necessary for actually reading them right now. If the article really says unfair things about its subject, then you need to find a way of making it fair. Representing everything in the context of this fringe theory, and using its non-standard terminology, is unlikely to stick. It's not sufficiently notable for that. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Please put this on the Talk:Homeopathy Page and mention it is posted by me

Dear Hans,
Please put this on the Talk:Homeopathy Page and mention it is posted by me (or else the others may think I've bribed you); I'm not yet able to post there directly myself because the Page is semi-writeprotected.

[Long table removed; it can be found here.]

Ramaanand (talk) 02:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)Dr.Jhingadé

Dear Rama Anand, I will answer you on your talk page. Since such long tables can make a page slow to load, I have "deleted" it and replaced it by a link to the version of the page where it is not deleted. I hope you don't mind. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I've dealt with this. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

link to the homeopathy news on germany

can you provide me a source for a german newspaper that comments on the homeopathic changes on Germany? Even if it's on german, I can translate it with google translator and make some sense of it for the homeopathy article --Enric Naval (talk) 14:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It turns out that I was wrong in this respect. From 2004 (virtually) all medicine that can be sold without a prescription was no longer covered, and of course this includes (virtually?) all homeopathic remedies. Apparently the alternative medicine plans were introduced only in April 2007. I couldn't find any sources for this that are easy to evaluate. The most reliable source is probably the following from the ministry of health: .

The relevant part is in the example in which the word "Homöopathie" occurs and the three items above. The item in bold says translated something like the following: "Plans which include assumption [? - meaning the insurer pays for it] of the costs for drugs of the special therapy forms which [i.e. the drugs] are excluded from regular care." There are other sources which list the public insurers that actually offer the plans, the biggest one being Techniker Krankenkasse. The health insurers are allowed to charge a bit more for these plans than for the standard plans, but it seems that many pay for homeopathic remedies even without such a plan.

Based on this, I don't think Germany is a sufficiently clear example to be mentioned for this aspect of the article.

PS: Now I did find some journalistic sources: . --Hans Adler (talk) 15:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I made a somewhat amateurish translation of the German wikipedia article on homeopathy (well the LEAD anyway) which you can see here, with some other information you might find of interest. If you can improve my translation of the German LEAD, please do so.--Filll (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I will have a look. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:19, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. I left no sentence unchanged; I believe it's now much closer to the original version. There are some explanations in the edit comments. Now I will look at the French and Dutch versions as well, but for obvious reasons I will show more restraint there. Thanks for this initiative. I was going to propose some ideas from the German lede anyway. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

A little more German translation for homeopathy

I am working on trying to understand some of the more obscure homeopathic scales and procedures, and it would be useful to have this page translated into English. I also wonder if you have any ideas on good sources for what might have been the value of the mass unit, the grain in Germany during Hahnemann's lifetime? Thanks.--Filll (talk) 17:57, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

de:Alte_Maße_und_Gewichte#Gewichtsmaße gives the definitions of the grain as follows: 812 mg in case of gold and silver, 50 mg in case of jewels and perls, and the apothecary's grain is given as 63 mg. But these are fairly recent. I would guess that Hahnemann used the apothecary's grain.

According to de:Apothekergewicht, the apothecary's grain was almost standardised all over Europe since the middle of the 13th century. That's very astonishing, considering that very long (18th century?) many German states had their own versions of the basic units such as inches and feet. Perhaps it was because medicine and alchemy were always international.

The next astonishing thing here is that I am learning new mathematics in connection with this: The concept of smooth numbers. Unfortunately the article on apothecary's weights is a bit unclear in some respects. Apparently the continental apothecary's grain before 1811 (when it was reformed, though only in the German-speaking countries) was 62.1250 mg or 62.2080 mg. The article calls the first value "historical" and the second "7-smooth", so I guess the difference has to do with simplified calculations. The British system was exactly parallel, except it was based on the Troy pound instead of the original Charlemagne pound, and the ratio between the two was exactly 24:25. The British apothecary's grain was 64.799 mg or 64.800 mg ("historical" / "7-smooth").

Thanks for this interesting question! It seems that Wikipedia needs a lot of translation in both directions in this area, and also some more, interesting research. But the page you pointed to is a bit special and not very good, so it's perhaps not the best thing to translate. Are you happy with this, or do you need more / more reliable / more exact information? Where did the question come up? --Hans Adler (talk) 18:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I have been very slowly working on a draft here and there are several descriptions of the LM/Q scale which involve grains (presumably because Hahnemann originally used grains in his description? I have not verified this, but I suspect this is why). Unfortunately, all the descriptions are inconsistent and confusing. But I am trying to use a couple of them to produce entries for the table comparing these scale values to conventional chemistry values. As you can see, I am working on the LM values.--Filll (talk) 20:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

That draft goes into extreme detail! Are you planning to bring this to FA quality??? — Why do you need to know how much a grain is? Is it for the case when a solid is diluted in a liquid that's not measured by its weight? --Hans Adler (talk) 20:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

For some reason I hadn't read your third fourth sentence, which answers my question. The best is probably to extend the article Apothecaries' system. Currently it covers only the British system. If we update it to cover the continental system as well, we are likely to get input from experts. And the kind of table that you have in mind is probably interesting for many topics in the history of science. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Doing some searches, I see there are many different definitions of a grain. But I suspect about 62 mg might be about right. I am planning to possibly present a range of values, depending on some variables, since this is a very big mess I think.--Filll (talk) 20:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems it is more complicated, after all. The German wikipedia articles seem to have serious issues with original research, and with ownership by someone who idealises the pre-metric systems. The following sources are all in German, I put them here mainly in case I need them again. In principle, the apothecaries' system was more or less standardised in 1555 (the Nurembourg system). But, presumably because this standard wasn't very exact, at the time when the metric system was introduced the local systems had diverged significantly. In a book from 1840 I found a table with columns for country or city / apothecaries' pound in g / civil pound in g / proportion between the two / nonstandard subdivisions. There is also an apothecaries' handbook from 1835 that goes into incredible detail. And I found a detailed proposal from 1847 for a common German system. The system which Hahnemann used was probably that from the Electorate of Saxony / Kingdom of Saxony, where he lived. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

probation

Thanks for formally warning me. Yeah, I was aware of probation, and I am a party on the arbitration request about Dana.

About being responsible, I hope I didn't accidentally attack the persona of other editor instead of just evaluating their comments while I was writing that laundry list. I tried to be as neutral as posible, but Peter will probably take offence at me saying to ignore his request not to use his source :) --Enric Naval (talk) 22:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I took offence as well. OffTheFence is quite good at POV pushing on his own, and he doesn't need your support. Which is how I see your "laundry list", because it again puts a lot of stuff on the table and demands that people object to ludicrous proposals. Please don't do this. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Hum..... which of the points are ludicrous proposals and which one is the frivolous point?. It would be good if you could explain it to me like "point x because saying xxxxx is ludicruos because of xxxx". (notice I reworded the Peter Morrell point before seeing your comment above, so you should look at that point again before answering)(notice I might take a pair of days to answer, since today I need to finish something else on other article and tomorrow I'll be busy on RL).

I don't consider the paragraph about magical thinking to be POV pushing, but I do consider that it needs a lot of tweaks to get it rid of unvoluntary POV bias before it's acceptable from inclusion on the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Dana Ullman

Just to let you know, I wasn't accusing Dana of canvassing when he contacted you. It was because he actively went after a pro-homeopathic editor in order to comment about something on the page. Just so you know. Baegis (talk) 18:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It was clear from your comment that it had nothing to do with me. I was merely concerned that I could have caused an impression of impropriety on Dana's side where there was none. He did not contact me; I contacted him. I felt that this canvasing thing was likely to be blown out of proportion, and I didn't want my email to him to become another factor in that. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

no problem

I think that I maybe jumped the gun this time. Homeopathy is under probation, so I'll try to be more careful and be less harsh with perceived trolling --Enric Naval (talk) 23:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Allopathy disambiguation page

I encourage you to make that allopathy disambiguation page. There seems to be a consensus for it. Just a short disambig page, not another article or a replacement for any article, just a replacement for the current redirect. -- Fyslee / talk 05:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I have done it; let's see what happens. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

sock

(I see that you removed the message, but I post the message anyways so you can read the explanation) If he is the sock of a user that was already blocked after going throught WP:SSP, then you only need to show that they are the same person, and that he is engaging on the same behaviour that got him banned on the first place. Otherwise we would have to open a separate case for every sock of the same sockmaster. I think that Fyslee has asked for a checkuser on this account to check if it's the same person. He is already reproducing the POV-pushing and disrespect of policies that got him on the first place, so he might get inmediately blocked if checkuser is successful. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Page in your userspace

Selection (talk · contribs) has been blocked as a sock of Dr. Jinghaadey. He created a page in your userspace: User talk:Hans Adler/Selection of Studies. Would you like me to delete it, or would you rather hang onto it for future reference? Up to you. MastCell ^Talk 16:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather it was deleted. Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Happy editing. MastCell ^Talk 18:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

A revert

Apologies for the direct revert, but I do hope that my explanation on the talk page gets my message across in a way that you'll find noncombative and, if I'm lucky, perhaps even illuminating. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks, Antelan^talk 00:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I don't easily take anything on that article personally. I would be happy with your version, and I would be happy with Bryan's. I am just trying to resolve the problem. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:42, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

HPUS.org

Hi Hans, I've changed the link from hpus.org to hpus.com, as I think that is what was intended. I only get a directory listing at hpus.org, hence my edit summary. It seems a bit odd though... they're called both HPUS and HPCUS, and switch between the two, and there are many mistakes on the rather bare and uninformative site. It also solicits for rather large fees to access the informaton - which I think all puts it as a bad EL. Maybe hpus.org is better when it works? Thanks, Verbal chat 06:31, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Aaargh. That's what I tried to do. When I saw your revert, I remembered reading about the HPUS in a US law. (The legal homeopathic remedies are exactly those which are in the HPUS. So they could make Digitalis D1 legal, in theory. Very weird.) I also remember reading a letter in which the HPCUS notifies the FDA of a company's attempt to lobby them to put some non-homeopathic (and not sufficiently diluted to be safe) into the HPUS. So I was sure they have a website, searched for it, found hpus.com, and tried to insert that. But for technical reasons I did this by copy and paste rather than reverting you, and I forgot the main point. I am not surprised that you have to pay a lot to use the pharmacopoeia online (if that's what you mean). I guess that the HPCUS functions similarly to standardisation bodies like ANSI or DIN. There seems to be some interesting background information about the HP(C)US on the website. I have no opinion whether this is enough to warrant the link. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:28, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I just wasn't sure if this is the real hp(c)us or an interloper. They could do with a facelift :) Verbal chat 07:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

history section on Homeopathy

Actually, I intended to expand it with Dr. Quin, with Hering and Kent's classical homeopathy, with mention of Kent's repertory (upon which all modern practice of homeopathy is founded, I think, how can this not be on the article?), with mention of Kent's invention of homeopathy types, with how the decline was caused by a cisma between Kent's followers and Richard Hughes's at a delicate time, with Hughe's doctrine which predicated the use of low potencies, and with how the revival was done only of Kent's doctrine.

If the section became too long I would just propose to move it out of the article, so we can finally shorten the main article (I actually intend to do that, lol). There is a lot of stuff lacking on the history section that is important to show how homeopathy evolved, from what it evolved and towards what, why and when.

There were some fears that this sort of thing would cause POVFORKs, but we have already one fork in Regulation and prevalence of homeopathy and the world has not ended (yet). --Enric Naval (talk) 01:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

P.D.: and thanks for the sources, I'll use those. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:36, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, man :) Anyone can make a revert, only to realize later that there was a better course of action, but that it's too late to correct it. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:52, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Undone2121

Spartaz has blocked already.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This saves me some work. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

IIYes. I saw he was active and thought a alk page post was the quietest way to block.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Watch the Greek here - I have no idea wy it was changed, but ὅμοιος, hómoios is a much more standard way of presenting it than ὅμοιον, hómoion - particularly as he used a v instead of the greek nu (ν). While ὅμοιον is sort-of correct, if it wasn't for him using a v - it's the neuter form of the word, instead of the masculine - πάθος (páthos) would also have to be changed to the neuter πάθον (páthon) for consistency - and pathos, having entered the English language, is much more familiar than the neuter form.

Anyway, this is long and technical, and it's mainly just something to be careful about, and I'm only mentioning it because you did a partial revert that failed to catch this change. =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I was aware of potential problems but felt there was no hurry as it would come up sooner or later and not lead to any disputes along the usual lines. Although I am sort of a hobby linguist, I think that the etymology is not the most important part of the article, and maybe shouldn't be in the lede anyway. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:41, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's one of those things that gets put into the lead because if you don't put it there, then it's too trivial to put anywhere else =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 03:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

We could put it into the history section. But then people would keep re-adding it to the lede. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:23, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Ornaments The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Awarding Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		Aprils fools day was a blast. Loads of users lightened up to have good old fashion fun. I want to thank you for taking part in editing this page in particular and even though I may not know you, embrace the same talk pages, or even edit with you in the near future, I'd like to award you this Barnstar for making Wikipedia a fun environment in which to contribute. Until next year. :) SynergeticMaggot (talk) 13:13, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Ronz The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

"profess to be defending science?" & "militancy?"

I don't think you could back either of those phrases that you've applied to me , 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)

"I assumed good faith. Please take the time to consider if you're doing the same." --Ronz (talk) 18:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Iterations ad nauseam

I created a WQA regarding Ronz here. Ironically, it reflects Ronz's complaint against me; I moved it there from my Talk where Ronz is not welcome to post (but of course I have to answer good questions, even from bad people).Pete St.John (talk) 16:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

• Now promoted to this AN/I Pete St.John (talk) 19:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Sea Shepherd The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

1986_Hvalur_sinkings

Greetings: I've started a talk page for this issue, and would welcome your comments here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:1986_Hvalur_sinkings MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Sea Shephard

Whatever mate, it's your opinion really; English isn't even your first language, but it is mine and I've written an article from scratch that's made it to FA grade (which according to WP:FA? "its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard"). You're lucky I don't care enough to pursue this although I should, I particulary liked your contradiction of "Rather than edit war I will just revert your mistake". Consider the matter dropped, you are of course welcome to reply on my talk page but I probably wont reply as I don't want this to grow into some childish flame war. Ryan4314 (talk) 11:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I wrote: "You have replaced a correct sentence in good English by an ungrammatical and therefore ambiguous one. Rather than edit war I will just correct your mistake, but it's no improvement over the original." So I wasn't contradicting myself, although this can of course easily happen in an edit summary, and I am sure I have done it occasionally. Just not in this instance. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm quite confident that none is the intended word there, at least in the English I learned growing up. "Any of the crew could have been harmed" would mean there was a chance of injury, which is the opposite of the intended meaning. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:27, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Carl. Actually I think we can sort this out among us UK dwellers. ;-) (BTW, I hope your family emergency is nothing too serious.) --Hans Adler (talk) 12:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

To Ryan4314, in case you are reading this: No need to invoke policy, I am certainly not going to edit war on your talk page. We all make mistakes, and sometimes when under stress we do silly things. I hope you can understand that the temptation to ridicule you in this particular situation was too hard to resist for a mere mortal. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Marginal Utility, Riesling, feature creep, Political violence in Spain, class warfare in mathematics The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

ordinal

Regarding "ordinal" in Marginal Utility article. You're right, now what? I hate reading math semi-prose. Ugh. The concept of ordinal (in the way that can be understood as needed for the article by a non-mathematician) is so easy, but it's not clear there's a de-technifying link for it. Total order the best bet?Cretog8 (talk) 19:49, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand you. Or, for that matter, the intended meaning of the word "ordinal" in the article – I only came to marginal utility by following "what links here", while cleaning up some of the numerous incorrect links. But I had a vague feeling that total order could be the right target and nearly linked to that. In any case it's certainly better than ordinal number. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:55, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Ordinal vs. cardinal is a standard conflict in economics, when dealing with almost anything. Cardinal is nice since you can do so much with it, but ordinal is good because it makes so few assumptions, (i.e. I like chocolate better than peaches, but I don't have to say I like chocolate 500 better than peaches). It looks like it's trying to make the same point in the marginal utility article, although it also looks unnecessary to me. So, I'm going to leave it unlinked until I'm inspired; that's better than the original link. Thanks for noticing it. Cretog8 (talk) 20:04, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you would like to have a look at Talk:Ordinal number (linguistics) and comment there? It sounds as if you could contribute a completely new point of view there. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

seczreben Rießlingen in die wingarten

Hello Hans, you made an interesting correction of the quote and translation of the 1435 mention of Riesling. I just wanted to check if you looked up the original document displayed here and were able to read it? The previous version - both the quotation and the translation - was taken directly from Freddy Price's book by me, but I have no problems in believing that a English-speaking author may have mistranslated 15th century German. Actually, it hadn't struck me before that six vines is a completely ridiculous amount to purchase, and that "seczreben" as Satzreben makes a lot more sense. A couple of hundred cuttings would seem like the minimum reasonable amount to actually purchase if you plan to plant or partially replant a small vineyard.
However, Satzreben does not translate into English as seedling, which is a plant grown from a seed rather than a plant propagated by cuttings. The translation of seedling back into German is Sämling, and is used to create new varieties rather than propagate existing ones. Therefore, I plan to correct this, but I wanted to check with you if you did this translation yourself or had any source for it. Cuttings (while the only English term in use that I'm aware of) is not a literal translation of Satzreben, so I'll have to check around if a better term exist. "Planting vines" doesn't sound right. Tomas e (talk) 08:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello Tomas, it's good to see that someone really cares for the article on my favorite wine. No, I can't read the original document. The translation was obviously wrong though. AFAIK the word solidus had fallen out of general use several centuries before the document, and the web sources on old coins say that ß=ss was short for Schillinge=shillings (which was more or less the same thing, though). In spite of the irregularities of medieval spelling, it would have been very unusual to spell something like "six vines" in one word. Also I know from reading old literature that "umb" means "for [an amount of money]" ("um" is still used in this sense in some German dialects). For these reasons I felt I couldn't make much worse when I try to correct things.

One of the few things I can make out in the original document is that it spells "rießlingen", not "riesslingen" (ß is a ligature for ss). Then I found the complete quotation by googling for "seczreben rießlingen", which gets more hits than "seczreben riesslingen". The word "Setzrebe" has few Google hits, but they suggest the word is still in use for what you can buy for planting in your vineyard. Not too surprising for a word that literally means "plant(ing) vine". My (Oxford-Duden) dictionary translates Setzling, the more usual synonym, as seedling. But you are right, this seems to be one of the cases where the translation doesn't fit, Setzling being literally "plantling". I am not sure if it's the correct word, but it might be better than "steckling" (with roots) or "cutting" (without). I don't know what I am talking about, I have just learned about these words by Googling.

Now I found that a scholar cited on the Katzenelnbogen site agrees with my translation: "Klaus Kleinfisch, der Keller oder Verwalter, legte 1435 im Süden der Burg Rüsselsheim wie von seinem Herrn Graf Johann IV von Katzenelnbogen befohlen einen neuen Weinberg an. Für 22 Schillinge hatte er Setzreben einer neuen weißen Rebsorte gekauft." ("For 22 shillings he had bought Setzreben of a new white grape variety.") --Hans Adler (talk) 09:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, interesting to hear the background, and always fun when Wikipedia can beat written sources on accuracy. :-) I hadn't checked out the document before, but just as you say, seczreben as one word and the ß are at least visible. I added a link to a transcription in the website of Weinfreunde Rüsselsheim, where they just like you use Satzreben and Schilling. I'll check up on seedling and other terms in viticultural sources (I don't trust general dictionaries for such things). And you're not alone in being a fan of Riesling; there is a reason why it's one of very few grape variety articles of GA status. Tomas e (talk) 13:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

From WT:MoS

"one of the strengths of Wikipedia is that it's relatively immune to feature creep"

You just asploded my brain. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:24, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that. I am not sure what that means for its state before the sad event, though. Consent? Dissent? I am not 100% sure I agree with myself here. There is a reason I put the word "relatively" in. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:35, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by immunity to feature creep; can you give an example? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:37, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Some examples: There is no forum software; we are using wiki pages instead. Edit comments cannot be removed or edited except by someone with direct access to the database. The same for block log entries. A lot of behaviour that could be prevented with technical means is instead just outlawed.

Whenever possible we use workarounds, i.e. human solutions, instead of technical solutions. Wikipedia has a steep learning curve, but it's not like buying a new computer with a strange operating system, it's more like moving to an exotic country with a strange culture. I think that's the essence of the "wiki way"; the reason why Wikipedia is successful and its predecessors were not. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Now I get it. This is not the same thing as WP:CREEP, which does tend to be a problem. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Of course we have rule creep (with many inconsistencies between rules), and I should have made it clearer that I was making this distinction. The good thing is that usually it's enough to understand the basic philosophy and look up the specific rules only in conflicts. I think this makes WP a much more inviting environment. It would be even better if we had some kind of spring cleaning for policies and guidelines as well. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:39, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Anything you see in the 21 pages in CAT:GEN is totally fair game for summer cleaning; the pages are largely stable and people are largely happy on the talk pages, but there are some minor inconsistencies. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

No, thanks. Did I say that I want to get my hands dirty? :-) --Hans Adler (talk) 20:58, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, people would much prefer I do it first. Kind of like the Wild West habit of throwing your hat into a room before you enter to see if someone shoots at it...I'm the hat. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:16, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your advice, Hans. I am indeed a new user, and I was a bit dismayed when it was erased since I put some effort into it. If the admin lets me, I will finish the article on my page and post it when it is up to wikipedia standard. I dont know why sourcing was a problem, 90% of the entries are sourced in www.avt.org and the rest on any major Spanish newspaper on the web! --Damam2008 (talk) 14:17, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

The admin seems to be a law student or something. While many jurists are perfectly capable of behaving in a reasonable way, he seems to be a bit on the grumpy, uncommunicative and legalist side. You made the formal mistake of not indicating the sources in the article. Sandstein behaved like an irritated judge who uses as a formal error as an excuse to close a case.

The other aspect is that instant deletion of new articles has become a general problem. In my opinion it's against the wiki spirit, and a lot of people think it's bad that you have to prepare your articles in user space first, but that's how it is right now, even though some documentation still says otherwise. I think it has to do with the "defending the wiki against vandals and cooks" mindset.

After I left my comment at the deletion discussion I noticed that I had written nothing about the sourcing. I nearly added something to the effect that it shouldn't be a problem, but decided against it because I felt it was off-topic since that was so obviously only a formality. That's why I became rather angry with Sandstein, someone I had never met before. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:29, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Peasant

I must say I like your suggesting the possibility that field theorists be called peasants. Maybe sheaf theorists could be called fascists. We could turn mathematics into all out class warfare.--CSTAR (talk) 17:53, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you are mixing up metaphors here. Class struggle is more of a leftist concept :) Katzmik (talk) 18:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking the peasants (aka field theorists) would be on the side of the workers, against the fascists. Looks like class warfare to me. ;)--CSTAR (talk) 02:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't really fit into the picture, but a friend of mine likes to spin the obvious type of yarn when non-mathematicians ask him what model theory is about. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, class warfare over models...Well there was Helen, but that really wasn't class warfare.--CSTAR (talk) 04:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Orgone

Hans, please don't let the pissiness on this page drive you away. if anything, it really needs someone with a calm, cool attitude to get it settled. I for one would appreciate it if you came back. --Ludwigs2 19:30, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am here to edit maths articles, or to learn about things I am actually interested in (e.g. my rewrite of Apothecaries' system). I am somewhat intrigued by the silliness in orgone, but not enough. I keep getting into contentious articles for the obvious reason (a MUD is more fun than one's regular work), but I have no intention to extend my activity in this area. Another reason is that I know OM quite well from another contentious article. We clearly have very incompatible characters, and I wouldn't do much good. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I hear that. too bad for me.

on another note, if you ever need an extra hand cleaning up Maths articles, I have some limited skills (redid the Cross-multiplication article a while back...). let me know, always happy to help out. --Ludwigs2 20:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Causteau The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Re: I've deleted your latest personal attack from my page. I asked you repeatedly to refrain from casting aspersions with regard to me, assuming bad faith, and just generally being rude but you have persisted (viz. "I don't know where you learned the type of manipulative techniques that you are engaging in, but they are not effective in Wikipedia's collaborative environment. Try something else, please."). Don't ever bother contacting me again in any capacity unless its to discuss matters as two fully mature adults the way Wikipedia actually instructs. Causteau (talk) 13:42, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

For the record: Causteau is referring to this edit, which they removed. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:49, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Also for the record: Causteau archived their talk page immediately afterwards. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:14, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Warning

Please refrain from edit warring. I'm referring to The Jerusalem Post article, but this also applies to other articles as well. Keep in mind that WP:3RR states, "The rule does not entitle editors to revert a page three times each day. Administrators may still block disruptive editors for edit warring who do not violate the rule." Please discuss your edits (i.e. though the dispute resolution process) instead. Thanks. Khoikhoi 23:44, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I can get involved in trying to reach a compromise if you want. My concern is that it is difficult to resolve a dispute when one sides simply dismisses the other side's apparently legitimate concerns as "disruption." Partial reverts still count as reverts (one, two, three). They don't have to be reverts of the same content either. The point is that three reverts are not an entitlement, they are a restriction. And even then people can be blocked for simply making three. My general experience is that when each side reverts only once, there is more room for discussion, and tensions don't seem to rise as much. I'm not sure if your reverts were uncontroversial or controversial, what I know is that you were involved in a dispute with another user, and it was a clear dispute over the content of the article. Such disputes (based to my experience as a Wikipedia editor with 69,796 edits) are generally much more easily resolved in by discussing immediately rather than reverting. Khoikhoi 08:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I am traveling, mostly without internet access for the next 60 hours. This reply may not be as well-researched as I would like it to be. I am very much interested in an admin getting involved, because I am afraid Causteau will not listen to anyone without the power to block them. (See User talk:Elonka, thread "Press TV (2)" - I can't find the hash key on the borroed mac - for my attempts to get Elonka into this, because Causteau seems to read her actions so far as complete justification of his behaviour.) I agree it's a problem if one side simply dismisses the other side's concerns as "disruption". But there is a problem with the fine print - you say "apparently legitimate", and unless you mean "apparent only to Causteau" I think this is an indication that you haven't looked at how the dispute evolved. I think I did not make the accusation of disruptiveness before Causteau completely failed to respond to the argument that a source from 2000 cannot contradict a statement that says something happened in 2004, attacking other points instead. -- Hans Adler via 139.222.200.165 (talk) 12:49, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

When I say "apparently legitimate", I believe that both yours and Causteau's concerns were legitimate. This sounds like a typical content dispute, and I believe that every user editing that page (excluding the sockpuppets) were editing in good faith. You concern about the sources could be brought up at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard or a similar page, but I don't think that anyone should be reporting users they are involved in a content dispute with at WP:AN/I anymore. What specifically do you still dispute in the article? It appears to be currently protected. Khoikhoi 00:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

There was a content dispute at the core. But it was blown out of all proportion by Causteau's confrontative behaviour. If you look at the AN thread, now archived at WP:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive172#Synthesis.2C_editorializing.2C_and_abuse_of_primary_sources, you will see how Causteau set the tone with their original posting. Note that the editor was in a content dispute with new editors (hence SPAs), and instead of working towards a compromise they resorted to wholesale reverting based on claimed policy violations. (Some of which were real, some imaginary.) That's the kind of newbie-biting that can easily give them the impression that, consistent with the press' view of Wikipedia, there are practically no rules here. I addressed the origin of the problem (Causteaeu's failure to edit collaboratively; he even ran to AN with this content dispute) in my response, but they didn't take me seriously; moreover, Elonka's response (which included blocking an Icelandic realname account for "pretty obvious socking to circumvent 3RR" - not sure that was correct) allowed them to dismiss my constructive criticism completely.

I then reduced the statements that the SPAs had tried to edit-war in to a bare minimum of the kind that could not possibly be a policy violation. Nevertheless Causteau edit-warred against it based on the insane theory that the Jerusalem Post is a questionable source because of its political position. This user did not respond to rational arguments in any meaningful way.

Apart from the absurd framing of all our sources in Press TV according to their political views (which apparently serves to discredit them), and the fact that the evangelical source (which I originally put into a footnote) is getting undue weight for the same reason, I have no problems with the articles themselves. I wasn't particularly interested in them in the first place. But Causteau needs to get good advice about collaborative editing from someone they cannot ignore. That's definitely not what they are currently getting from Elonka (who seems to support them whenever possible, while keeping their head in the sand whenever they do something outrageous) or from your symmetric approach. It's rather telling that I, one of the more self-critical editors of Wikipedia and with quite a bit of experience, am getting lessons from you because I am actually responding to you in a meaningful way, while Causteau merely took your actions as justification of their editing style and thanked you for that, pointing out that Elonka also agreed with them. The problem is currently not in any particular article, it's that an editor is not getting the help they need to learn how to work collaboratively. Such as making the occasional compromise or noticing when an "opponent" is right. Your reaction (justified though it was) has allowed Causteau to sidestep my challenge to admit that their reading of 3RR (edit-warring is perfectly OK so long as it is to get a reliably sourced statement in) was wrong. So for no admin has told them explicitly that that's the case, and I won't be surprised if they make exactly the same argument again in their next edit war.

Personally I will not make the mistake of overestimating admins' good sense again. Next time I will (be even more careful about technical 3RR violations and) simply report Causteau for an educational block. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I am surprised that you count the third edit as a revert, and that this seems to be correct according to WP:3RR. So I did learn something, and I am sorry for my quick reaction. Causteau removed a statement as unsourced, and I put it back with a source. Causteau hasn't touched it since, which seems to indicate that this was not edit-warring but normal collaborative editing. (I must admit, though, that I made a mistake: I didn't notice that there were two sentences, and the second sentence is not covered by the source.) I did this because the edit war was evidently based on Causteau's misconception that the Jerusalem Post couldn't be centrist because it is Zionist. (On Press TV he seemed to imply that Zionism is extremism even in Israel, and automatically makes the Jerusalem Post a questionable source.) If Causteau had actually read the source, they might have acquired a better understanding of the Israeli media landscape that would have stopped this silliness. -- Hans Adler via 139.222.200.165 (talk) 13:00, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

By definition, whenever someone undoes another person's edit, it counts as a revert. Since Causteau removed something, and you restored it, this counts as a revert as well because you are undoing his removal. A better way to go about is adding the source on the talk page, see if there is a consensus that it is reliable, and then add it. I don't know whether the bit about the Jerusalem Post is accurate or not, but please try to avoid taking a "I'm Right You're Wrong" attitude when you're involved in an editing dispute. This approach can make it very difficult to reach a consensus. Khoikhoi 00:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

There is an easy test for the Jerusalem Post question: Whether anyone other than Causteau agrees with them on the talk page of either The Jerusalem Post or Press TV. Have you tried applying it? --Hans Adler (talk) 07:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Yes, I'm well aware of that old thread, and I, for one, have moved on. I suggest you do the same (see Wikistalking). Causteau (talk) 23:02, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Another extremely misleading reply by Causteau. I am only commenting it because I recently learned that people look into the real background of such comments much less than I previously thought.

This was Causteau's response to me notifying them of a WQA thread started by someone else today. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:54, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

JIDF The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

JIDF

Thanks for your comments, Hans. It's good to have a native German speaker confirm my translation.--Peter cohen (talk) 20:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't hard. IMO you have done an excellent job reporting the FAZ criticism accurately and in an NPOV way. Your recent "mirror image" comment is also much clearer than what I would have I written if I had had more time. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah but judging from your user and home pages, you must understand contour integration which is where my university maths took a nosedive. Mind you as someone who had taken to intuitionism at that time, I knew that classical analysis was all wrong.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

*shudder* No, I don't understand contour integration. That's something about real numbers, right? I vaguely remember being exposed to something like that in my third year. – I am not really familiar with intuitionism, but I think it has gone through some radical changes and now has some aspects that are actually useful (especially for getting computer science related funding). --Hans Adler (talk) 21:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Before you automatically revert

Please see talk section on JIDF page and perhaps we can talk this out and you can see how/why my edit was not meant to be controversial.--Saltonsea (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Uncontroversial? You must be joking. More detailed response on the article's talk page. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Peter Damian The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

History of mathematical logic

Hello I did not know of your existence until I read this. Very good indeed. Meanwhile any suggestions for progress on History of logic would be much appreciated. I wrote pretty much all of the article (save the introduction which is in a pretty sad state now). You see it stops at 'modern logic', which is because I know very little about modern logic i.e. mathematical logic. Also that there is a problem that traditional logic was much closer to what we now call 'philosophy of language'. Does one continue the article to date with philosophy of language, and leave mathematical logic history as a separate article? Or, realising that this will grossly offend those who think of mathematical logic as being the only true logic (rather than a branch of mathematics), continue with a history of mathematical logic instead.

Suggestions appreciated. Is there already material existing on the history of mathematical logic? I could attempt one using the Kneales and Grattan-Guinness as a guide, but I would be very much outside my preferred subject area, not that this holds anyone back here in Wikipedia. Best The Land Surveyor (talk) 18:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Welcome, K., so you need an apprentice? Unfortunately I can't offer much useful help; I hadn't even heard of the books you mention. I am clearly and unambiguously a mathematician; the only thing like formal training in philosophy that I ever had was a horrible proseminar on Paedrus that gave me a very bad impression. (Instead of discussing the text, a philosophy student kept arguing for the existence of souls, and wasn't discouraged.) I have no precise ideas what "logic" means in philosophy nowadays. (Or even what it meant in the past - haven't read the article yet.) I do think that there is a terminological problem. There is a large branch of mathematics called mathematical logic, which is a funny mixture of only historically related fields of mathematics: mostly model theory, proof theory, set theory, and some fields close to computer science. I don't know what the term "mathematical logic" really means in philosophy, but it looks as if philosophers hardly ever go beyond the very basics such as the definitions related to first-order logic (in a style that is obsolete from a mathematical POV), compactness and Löwenheim-Skolem, and of course Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Perhaps one can see the intersection of "philosophical" and "mathematical" mathematical logic as the culmination (so far) of the history of logic, and the beginnings of the history of mathematical logic. It's probably not a bad thing if this material is covered from both sides.

I am generally surprised by reactions of philosophers who edit Wikipedia, so I am not tempted to make any recommendations for the treatment of "mathematical logic" in history of logic. If you want to improve our coverage in this area, you are likely to run into Philogo. CBM is a potential source for mathematical advice; I think he knows much more about the philosophical side of logic than I do. Of course I am also available, but there are likely to be more misunderstandings. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Asking for advice is not quite the same as asking for an assistant! Anyway, the books I meant were the The development of logic by William Kneale which is good but rather dated, and ‘’The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940’’ by Ivor Grattan-Guinness. There is also the masterful ‘From Kant to Hilbert’ by William Ewald. And now I see by the red link that Ewald does not even have an article about him, even though the book is a classic. Amazing that Wikipedia has all these articles about porn stars, and nothing about this. Anyway, all the best. Thanks for sticking up for Giano, I really appreciate that. The Land Surveyor (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Giano The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Your Comment

on Resquest for Arbitration was great. Very funny. Tex (talk) 15:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I also liked your campaign poster. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Giano's 72hr Block

Hiya Hans Adler. Giano's got to learn to control his temper. GoodDay (talk) 16:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Giano's temper is one of the problems. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:31, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

It's time GoodDay learned to control his condescension. Bishonen | talk 20:03, 16 December 2008 (UTC).

Martyrdom Hi, Hans. I seem to be losing the plot a bit. What did you mean about the unblocking admin becoming a martyr ? Bishonen | talk 20:03, 16 December 2008 (UTC).

Sorry, I am writing even less clearly than usual. Must be the high temperature I have. What I meant is that any unblocking admin would be de-adminned almost automatically. This clearly takes away one of the checks and balances of the system, and increases the odds of further escalation.

It seems that only FT2 is instinctively doing the right thing (although I could also use a different word). He is already steering back. And no, after all his recent stunts I can no longer assume good faith.

Use your power too much, or in the wrong situation, and you will lose it. Even the powerful have to be opportunistic. For those like FloNight and especially Newyorkbrad, who just want to do the right thing, and are intelligent enough to generally find a good approximation to the right thing, it doesn't really matter. But the others are currently about to destroy ArbCom with their hybris. They seem to think that Arbcom can overrule the community. They have been elected, so a fortiori they know better than the masses. But they are getting dangerously close to the tipping point where a majority of editors just stop listening to them.

In short: If you want to preserve the power of your office, you need to preserve its dignity.

I tried to say the same thing several times in different words. Perhaps after reading all of it it becomes clear what I meant. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Moreschi just became a martyr, in that case. Thank you, sorry about the temperature. Bishonen | talk 21:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC).

Wow. Let's hope I was wrong about the martyr thing.--Hans Adler (talk) 21:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, Moreschi was blocked for 72 hours. At least he wasn't de-admined. FT2 is out of control. Too bad the community can't de-arb him. Tex (talk) 21:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I think de-adminning takes a bit longer because it has to go through stewards. But I still have some hope left that after experiencing what it means to have been caught like the Wizard of Oz they may understand that it's not even in their own interest. (They seem to have lost sight of the encyclopedia we are supposed to be building a long time ago, anyway.) --Hans Adler (talk) 22:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Just a heads-up: I've added the Arnica example. See what you think. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me. I made some changes to the caption, and I think they should make any OR issues moot.

Only very tangentially related: I have closed the AN discussion for now. I really appreciate your efforts, and I would be happy to discuss any issues that might come up here before reopening the AN discussion. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Fyslee

Well, he did cross out the section when I asked. It's probably best to just drop the past, and I'll promise to keep an eye on all further discourse (at least on Talk:Homeopathy), and you can tell me if there's any other problems.

I'd rather do this as mediation, if possible, as I do firmly believe both of you are trying to act in good faith to improve the article, if from very different perspectives. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Striking something out without showing any sign of understanding why it was wrong in the first place, and setting up a straw man ("ambiguous") in a discussion with a mediator, are not what I would call encouraging signs.

Sorry, but "dropping the past" is not an option that I can accept. Formal mediation (if that's what you mean) might be one, but I am not wasting my time on that before anyone has given me any clue as to how I can explain Fyslee's bizarre behaviour and still respect him. Call me intolerant, but I cannot respect adults with a 100 % lack of self-critical insight. (I am assuming he is an adult or close to it because he has been editing for more than 3 years.)

For some reason (which has to do with an earlier mediation attempt I made elsewhere) I was under the impression that Fyslee is an admin. I just realised this is not the case, which makes his unpredictability much less dangerous than I thought. Nevertheless he has brought me to the point where I am making this a test case for deciding whether I want to continue contributing to this part of Wikipedia. See my earlier request to Verbal at User talk:Verbal. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your comment in the talk page of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I could realize global sense about this problem well. I only knew the Japanses's side, I wanted to know other side. (Realizing is not my purpose of this discuss.) Best regards.--9 hits (talk) 02:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)--(and if you (IPUser-san) watch this, thank you, too.)--9 hits (talk) 02:16, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your very constructive attitude. I can imagine that common Western positions to this must be puzzling for you, just like common Japanese positions are puzzling for us. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)