User:Brews ohare/Final notes

Final notes

Being unaware of how these proceedings work, this has been a learning process for me. Until recently, my thought was that this type of hearing was intended to establish what some of the systemic problems were that led to the troubles at Talk: Speed of light and endeavor to fix them. However, I have come to discover that is not the objective at all: the objective is to attach crimes to individual editors and apply bans and blocks that will "teach them" to "behave better". My view is that is not going to solve anything, because the problems are systemic, which is to say, the circumstances will repeat and no matter who is involved in these situations, bad things will happen. So my evidence and recommendations are largely misdirected because it was my intention to establish what was happening, using individual events as examples, and not with the intention of banning or blocking individuals.

The systemic issues have to do with violations of behavioral guidelines, WP:Civil, WP:NPA, WP:Talk and the like, and the uneven and partial enforcement of these guidelines. When a Talk page discussion is governed by personalities, the participants become heated. The notion of brainstorming, or trying to figure things out, or to address sources is replaced by a version of the Jerry Springer Show or The McLaughlin Group: any reply to a comment is automatically taken as contentious and the format is verbal rough-housing, not discussion. The ability of editors to misread simple English is amazing, really startling, and they wander into uncivil accusations based on misconception instead of addressing content. If the discussion lasts long enough, it attracts hornets, editors that are there for the brawl, not for the article. That means enforcement of behavioral guidelines is very important. Presently this enforcement does not happen. Maybe Admins are too busy, or too partial, or the guidelines are not enforceable, or are too weak. Bad tempers, exacerbated by hornets, upset the atmosphere and soon no constructive activity can take place.

Another possible outcome for WP besides the Jerry Springer Show analogy is partitioning of WP into a set of fiefdoms controlled by fanatics and their sycophants, who will not allow departure from their views to be expressed. One might expect such things in the realms of religion and politics, but they occur in technical subjects like this one as well. Fiefdoms are facilitated by Admin inability to defend normal, sourced discussion in the face of opposition by a vocal and rigid control group claiming orthodoxy and violations of WP:DIS, WP:Fringe, WP:POV etc.. Such claims must be held to account by actual confrontation with text and sources. Vigorous enforcement of WP:Talk and (possibly) new guidelines must force criticisms based upon WP:Fringe, WP:POV, WP:NOR, WP:Soap (and so forth) to be be supported by actual WP:Diff's and verbatim quotes of so-called offending material. Otherwise, misattribution of false positions and imaginary tendentious summary generalizations will be used to crucify "revisionists". This kind of activity is very evident in this Case/Speed of light, and IMO is the origin of much of the rough-housing.

The experience on Talk: Speed of light has been awful. This review has been worse, attracting unfounded accusations, invective, lies, hypocrisy, and distortion. There is absolutely no concept of trying to fix things. It is all about scoring and vendetta. If Arbitrators can see through all this noise, they are saints. When I began editing in 2007 WP was interesting and I thought useful. However, in the course of this review I have discovered something else about WP much less interesting and, in fact, dispiriting, disappointing, and worse. Brews ohare (talk) 07:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Brews_ohare

Vassyana: I agree with Dicklyon that the content issue is secondary. However, regarding your questions about the technical issues: Yes, you have a correct understanding of the center of the dispute, the main disagreement, all of which pivots about the SI Units. The secondary points are worth considering, but haven't got much attention. Your understanding of the topic: Point 1 is not correct: Yes, the speed went from measured to defined. The defined value does not connect measured values of time to measured values of space: what it does is institute time-of-transit measurements as a replacement for length measurements. Point 2 is correct, but I do not think it is an issue, despite strange claims by some that I disagree with this point. (I am not in the "far fringe", and I don't know anyone who is.) Point 3 is not correct: the space-time aspects, although they are of interest in themselves, are divorced from the SI Units discussion.

Behavior problems

The problem is behavior. That problem is not restricted to Speed of light. It is due to escalating polarization due to a variety of bad behavior that is easily identified, independent of technical content. That problem, although revealed though the actions of individuals, is fundamentally a problem of keeping the lid on this behavior before it gets out of hand, maybe controllable by administrative action exerted across the board on all participants.

I think the behavior problem is widespread: many editors do not observe four rules: (i) be civil and avoid put-downs, cracks, and derisive asides (ii) be specific, to the point, and helpful in criticism of text, not smart-ass, (iii) don't lecture like an omniscient show-off, and (iv) don't express your personal uncertainties about the text as if they were WP requirements, or vice versa. As to this last, confusion and heat results when a Talk page discussion is called WP:OR or WP:POV, when what is meant is "I don't agree with your explanation." or "I don't think your view agrees with my own." Waving guidelines about is a cowardly method to seemingly invoke higher authority to support your opinion, where instead dialog should be invited.

And then, there are editors that are never wrong, but hold rigid positions or even doctrines. That impedes resolution of problems, because these editors are unmoved by argument or sources, and will resist until death any modification. Any correct description must be sufficiently convoluted to avoid clear distinction from their rigid views. I hope that strict confinement of comments from such editors to specific statements about specific text and a requirement to deal directly with sources might force these editors to retreat sufficiently to allow some sense to prevail. They must be prevented from launching into distortions, vague generalizations and incivilities.

Technical issue

The technical issue debated on the Talk page is a distinction between two things: the logical status of the number 299 792 458 m/s in the pre- and in the post-1983 definitions of the metre. I am focusing on this number, not the term "speed of light", which is too full of connotations.

The pre-1983 role of this number is the usual everyday idea that it is the approximate value of the speed of light as measured in everybody's notion of that term, just as when you refer to the speed of a car. The pre-1983 metre is a specific length, and light travels at a measured 299 792 458±1.2 m/s (well documented: Resolution 1 of CGPM; Resolution 2 of the CGPM).

The post-1983 meaning of 299 792 458 m/s is different. Post-1983 all distances are defined in terms of times-of-transit (well documented: Resolution 1 of CGPM; Resolution 2 of the CGPM). As an example of a time-of-transit length, if you say your office is ten minutes away, you mean it takes you 10 minutes to walk there. If you say the Sun is 8.3 minutes away, you mean it takes 8.3 minutes for light from the Sun to reach Earth. If you say a metre is exactly 1/500 000 000 s long, you mean it takes light 1/500 000 000 s to travel a metre. If we say a metre is exactly 1/300 000 000 s long, then it takes light 1/300 000 000 s. What we did say is a metre is exactly 1/299 792 458 s. In fact, we can make a metre any number of seconds we like (well documented) - it's only a unit, it isn't nature. But continuity suggests the time-of-transit metre should be close to the original one (well documented: Last sentence in NIST timeline).

Of course, if a metre is the distance traveled by light in exactly 1/299 792 458 s, the "speed of light" is exactly 299 792 458 m/s. An exact value is made possible by the change to time-of-transit lengths, but the "exact value" cannot be interpreted as a measurement: it's an arbitrary number set by the BIPM & NIST. Calling this use of 299 792 458 m/s the "speed of light" is tantamount to an additional technical meaning to what is meant by the "speed of light": this new meaning does not refer to the "speed of light" as previously used, as in special relativity say, which is a property of the universe, not a purview of committee.

So, putting the two parts together, here is the difference between the pre- and post-1983 uses of the number 299 792 458: In one, it's an approximate measurement; in the other, it's a committee decision. If Speed of light were calm, there would be no difficulty dealing with this simple well-documented difference. However, at the moment any mention of the topic causes a Pavlovian response. Brews ohare (talk) 21:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Brews, your "Putting the two parts together" is often inappropriate per WP:SYNTH. I don't think anyone has trouble understanding that in 1983 the speed of light expressed in metres per second went from an approximate measurement to a defined value. The claim of this being tantamount to an additional technical meaning to what is meant by the "speed of light" is what would need a WP:RS to be allowed in the article. The lead already says "In 1983, the metre was redefined in the International System of Units (SI) as the distance travelled by light in vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. As a result, c is fixed at exactly 299,792,458 metres per second" (maybe this is more detail than we need in the the lead, but it's in there for now at least). And there's a history subsection speed of light#Meter defined in terms of the speed of light. How are these not enough? If there's support in sources for something not said already, let's point it out and put it in; but stop with the idiosyncratic POV of there being two speeds of light. Dicklyon (talk) 17:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Response to Dicklyon: There are two issues here: what you think, and what you think should go into the article. It is difficult for me to understand how you could disagree with the obvious remarks that 299,792,458±1.2 m/s is a measured value, using the pre-1983 units and that 299,792,458 m/s in the post 1983 units is a defined value that could be any arbitrary number, were it not for a consistency requirement (a practical, not a logical matter). I count two (2) meanings. I see no need for additional sources to support that there are these two meanings. I don't see any way that this can be construed as my "idiosyncratic" POV or as WP:SYNTH (two is two). I find my explanation above of what I mean to be crystal clear and understandable by anybody that actually reads it.

I have not requested at any time that this information go into the lead. I have requested that the lead avoid the appearance of the wording: 299,792,458 m/s exactly, in a way that might be misinterpreted. I want to enforce WP:Astonish. If "exactly" is omitted, the issue can be delayed to the later section where detail can be provided. I have no objection to the present version of the lead. I do object to the sub-header Meter defined in terms of the speed of light, which I find puts the cart before the horse. Brews ohare (talk) 19:58, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Please note: my objection is to the header of the sub-subsection Meter defined in terms of the speed of light, not to the sub-section itself, which I wrote myself. Brews ohare (talk) 01:00, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

This subsection title has now been changed and is now acceptable to me. Brews ohare (talk) 14:42, 4 October 2009 (UTC)