User:Maunus/Talk:Archivepage7

TechnoFaye

Hi Maunus, there is currently a discussion at ANI about TechnoFaye (talk · contribs). It started off as a discussion of images on her user page, and turned into a discussion whether the account should be indef banned. I haven't looked into the contributions history to any great extent, but I know you have interacted with the account in the R&I topic area; what would be your view of the value of the account's project contribution, and the merits or otherwise of an indef ban? --JN466 17:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I am fairly convinced that she is unable to contribute positively within the framework of wikipedia. I am not going to participate in the discussion, as I believe the best approach is to ignore her untill she goes away, or breaks a rule which cannot be fixed.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. --JN466 17:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Aorist (linguistics)

You are using admin powers in a dispute in which you are involved; please don't do it again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

He is using admin powers in a dispute where there is only one opposing disputant who is edit warring and obstructing progress. --Taivo (talk) 23:41, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't consider myself involved in this dispute, no. If you believe I am I will be happy to unprotect. ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe the article should be protected and moved; the claim that "my edits are progress" should be followed by immediate protection in all cases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:51, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Possible evasion of ban by User:NYScholar

I have started a thread at Possible evasion of ban by User:NYScholar, which you may be interested in. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev

You blocked an IP? Why bother? If I need to I can clean up your crap. Your admin "powers" are impotent. 86.180.42.134 (talk) 16:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I know, thats why I didn't do it untill I was forced to by someone suggesting that Mike's/your other IP was going to contribute to writing the article. As I had admitted I knew it was blockevasion I couldn't really just sit on my hands and let him/you work on the article. I think you should just leave the issue and find something else to do.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Human

Hello, Maunus. You have new messages at Talk:Human#ANI thread.
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Is this something more akin to what you were looking for? There's a whole story to why that article stub is there, but I'm working on it. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 17:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Not really, my version would start with "We humans ..."·Maunus·ƛ· 17:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Ha. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 17:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Request

• As you are an editor who had participated here, could you please state/explain your level of "involvement" (if any)? I'd appreciate it if you could provide a response (or a copy of it) here. Thank you, Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

GA

Nono. I understand. I don't want to seem as if I'm moaning about your review to Thelma. It was just ironic what you said about a fluent english speaker needing to copyedit given that the chief article writer Thelmadatter is actually a fluent English, highly capable editor who is teaching Spanish!! Your comments about it needing more book sources and polishing is a valid one. Its just frustrating at times though how some of my GA noms like Chamba, Himachal Pradesh and Sisimiut which I've significantly contributed to pass GA without a single issue and then others not only fail but fail spectacularly to the point they have to be delisted, (Thikse) was another. One moment an editor tells me I'm a great writer and one of our very best and then people like JMabel says things like "Please study plain English" (see the review) which seems a little patronising!! I have a good success rate but occasionally when there are a lot of issues I think its not worth it. I also think the Oaxaca article is the best article online about Oaxaca which is why it is even more frustrating that its still not good enough. Yes, Enciclopedia of Mexico is used in just about every Mexican municipality/goeogrpahy related article given that it is the most comprehensice source on the web on Mexico. As for reliability I was under the impression it met requirements...♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You mention a list being in the Oaxaca article. WHat list? If you are referring to the region/district table this is very important. A good resource would mention to main districts and towns. See any of the featured articles on countries/states we have. It isn't any old bullet pointed list which I'd have to agree with you I mostly remove from articles. As for galleries the fauna gallery could have been removed and any other photos which made it too crowded. It could do with a fresh copyedit to ensure it is fully sorted but I'm not sure I want to spend the time addressing it when you'll pick up on the history source issues anyway...♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:44, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the MOS issues are easily fixable, thats also why I didn't quick fail it but wanted to wait to see if you were willing/able to adress the more important issues. I did mean the regions and communities list - I disagree that is important enough to allow it to disrupt the reading flow as mich as it does. I'd give a prose summary of it and then make a "main" link to List of Regions, Districts and Municipalities of Oaxaca. That would make for much better lay out. I think that when you decide on which articles to try to get to GA you should go for topic about which you either already have or is willing to acquire a good acquaintance with the most important sources. A topic like Oaxaca has many many sources, and it is impoirtant to be able to pick out the right ones. The article on Sisimiut doesn't have many sources and so making oneself acquainted with them require much less effort. "Small topics" like Sisimiut are also easier to give broad coverage - while a huge one like Oaxaca requires more knowledge about many more topics. When I get some spare time (that happens once in a blue moon) i'll adress the history issues in the article myself. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The thing is we didn't list all of the 500 odd municipalities in the article for the reason of the list as it would look far too bloated. The idea is that the muncipalities are all then accessed by either the list or by district. I disagree, I think first level divisions at the very least are accepted in the mother article. I think it is perfectly appropriate to have the regions and districts mentioned in the article itself. It would be like an article on Cameroon not listing its main regions in the article or an article on Ardabil Province not listing its counties etc...Its done much better in a table format or prose I think than loose lists.. But I agree with you that wider area topics are more difficult to extract and to make as comprehensive as possible.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the divisions need to be given in a list format - they can easily be converted into flowing prose. And if they can't they can certainly be presented in a tale format that doesn't take up a full screen. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

In prose would certainly be better than nothing at all... If you ever feel like working on it sometime I'll join you as I thnk the basic content is there it just needing to be fully copyedited and a few more book sources found. If you have access to any books on Oaxaca this would be good.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Mexican people

Yep, you're right. The article on Mexican people is not very good. I'll work on it in conjunction with the other articles I'm currently working on, but I can't concentrate on it too much until I finish that ridiculous Mestizo article and it's main article, Casta. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Chicaneo (talk) 13:15, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, its a lot better now than it was yesterday around this time - I removed a lot of racialist garbage and wrote up an analysis of ethnic and race relations in Mexico based on the few sources that exist on that topic.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:18, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Race in biomedicine draft

It's now been over three days since anyone commented on my biomedicine draft for the Race (classification of humans) article. I doubt anyone else is going to comment at this point. I can't tell whether or not Muntuwandi is satisfied with it now, but everyone else who's given their opinion (you, aprock, and Terra Novus) seem to think it's an improvement over the current section in the article.

What should we do at this stage? If my draft is better than what's currently there, I don't think it should be kept out of the article just because the discussion died out before reaching a conclusion. Do you think it's okay to add it to the article now, or is there something else that needs to be done first? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:57, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

While I'm here, there's something else I was wondering, if you don't mind. I'm curious about how you think I've been doing on these articles in general lately? When you commented in my arb amendment thread you stated concern about whether I'd be able to avoid making the same mistakes that Occam made. I don't think I have been causing any problems like that, but Muntuwandi, Weiji and Mathsci all seem to think I've been just as disruptive as Occam was.

For example, in Mathsci’s last comment there [1] he linked to 2 of my recent comments on Richard Lynn as examples of me displaying a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality. I don't see how that's the case, since both of those comments were pointing out content issues that others agreed needed to be fixed, and ended up fixing them based on my comments. I figured that meant my concerns were constructive.

The three editors dominating the amendment discussion apparently strongly disagree with me about content, based on how they react to my edits. Because of this I'm wondering if what looks like disruption to them wouldn't seem that way to someone less opinionated. My question is: do you think I'm being disruptive? I think I trust you to provide an unbiased opinion, and if I am doing anything that's a problem I'd like to know what so I can fix it. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you are being disruptive no. But that doesn't mean much since I also didn't have a problem with working with Occam and David Kane and they are both topicbanned. I've made an update to my statement at the arbcom amendment page. I hav gotten really fed up with the topic myself and I don't think I will be paying much attention to it in the proximate future - luckily I have many other areas that I enjoy editing - I like writing content, not endless squabble without progress. For the sake of your own sanity I hope that you don't forget completely about the dinosaurs.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:49, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten about the dinosaurs - they just require an awful lot less discussion and debate. For what it's worth, though, I appreciate your reasonableness and devotion to neutrality on these articles a huge amount. For the articles' sake I hope you don't leave, especially if I get topic-banned, since the article will need more people like you who are able to keep the balance and see from both perspectives. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to reply to Muntuwandi’s response to you in the amendment thread? If you aren’t, I probably should, but my statement is already long enough that I’d rather not make it even longer by duplicating something you were going to say there. During the arbitration case, some of the arbitrators complained that what I posted there was so long that they had trouble reading it all, and I’d like to avoid that problem here if I can.

Some of what he’s claiming about me there is false, and I think he knows it’s false. For example, I never evaded my ban on the race article. Since you were involved in the discussion about this, you might remember what actually happened—before my topic ban was implemented, I stated there that I intended to voluntarily disengage from the article, but WeijiBaikeBianji and a few others considered the “voluntarily” aspect of this unacceptable, and started a clarification request in order to prove that I had no choice in the matter. I haven’t edited that article since I was topic banned, and I also didn’t express any intention to remain involved in it after it became clear during the arbitration case that a topic ban for me was the likely outcome. I’ve pointed this out several times, but it hasn’t stopped him from continuing to claim that I evaded my ban there.

I’m sorry to bother you about this. I don’t know if I’ve made this clear, but I find this situation extremely frustrating also, and not just because I can observe in person how Ferahgo is affected by it. I share your concern that with so few editors left who edit from the hereditarian perspective, there’s a danger that the neutrality of the articles might suffer as a result, and Ferahgo is pretty much the only one of these left who hasn’t either been topic banned or quit out of frustration. Muntuwandi’s recent behavior on these articles does not give me a lot of confidence that he and WeijiBaikeBianji will be able to keep them neutral if given free reign over them. I’m very worried about what will happen to the articles if these editors manage to get rid of the only remaining editor who disagrees with them. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not going to reply to Muntuwandi there. I think arbcom members will be capable of seeing of forming their own decisions based on evidence not just accusations. The best we can all do is to work hard on assuming good faith from everyone involved - including the assumption that we all work towards making the article better and more balanced - the only thing we disagree on is the exact point of equilibrium - even if it isn't found in the near future I think the articles will overall become better for the process. I think it is positive that muntuwandi is now writing a draft and I am looking forward to synthezie it with Ferahgo's proposal and achieving an even better one through that process. What frustrated me in Muntuwandis behaviour was what I perceived as simple rejection without proposals for improvement. As long as we are writing new drafts we are progressing. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:07, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

He now doesn't seem willing to discuss content with me anymore, rather than constantly harping on how he thinks I'm a sock and shouldn't participate here - he also said he thinks it's acceptable to use the article's talk page for this. [2] What bothers me is that even though I disagree with his removal of my section, it means there's no way for me to resolve this with him, regardless of which version is actually better for the article. If he removes my version but is only willing to discuss personal accusations with me on the talk page, does that mean his version will stay in the article by default? Or is there some other way situations like this ought to be handled? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 07:58, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It does seem that his version is closer to a consensus though - WeikeBianji and Slr back it. I don't think its bad - just very short, but I am not willing to remove it either. I understand its frustrating that he won't engage constructively with you, but theres not really anything I can do about that. You could take it to ANI and see what happens, though its a bit of a gamble. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not just the section itself I'm concerned about, it's also the principle of the matter and how this may continue to affect me going forward. I doubt this will be the last time Muntuwandi reacts like this when I try to discuss content with him, and I don't like the idea of him being able to keep my edits out of any article by just keeping reverting me, then refusing to discuss anything on the talk page other than personal accusations.

Thanks for the suggestion about AN/I. But from watching (and sometimes participating in) several AN/I threads related to these articles before arbitration - and seeing them devolve into mudslinging matches - I think AN/I is likely to be unhelpful. I am wondering, though, whether at this point it would be appropriate to file an RFC/U about Muntuwandi. The requirement for filing one is that at least two users have tried and failed to resolve the issue on the user's talk page, which you and Vecrumba have both tried to do. Do you think that filing an RFC/U makes sense at this point? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 17:38, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I think the way the arbcom amendment case looks that and RFCU or ANI intervention is unlikely to change much for you i the long run as I think you will likely have to return to the dinosaurs soon whether you want to or not. I do think Muntuwandi is being unreasonable towards you, but I don't think the effort would be worth it. Sometimes we just have to abide. I have unwatched the race articles now and I think I'll come back to them and take a look in six months or so - I do believe they will be better then than they are now, also without my involvement. Letting go is also an important skill to master.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh jeez... if you're leaving and I'm forced to leave, I really do not believe the articles will be in a better state six months from now. In the amendment thread you mentioned the issue of viewpoints on these articles shifting toward the opposite (environmental) extreme, and how few editors there are who care enough to try and prevent this. Other than you and me, the only recently involved editors who seemed to care enough to try and prevent this have been Victor Chmara and Vecrumba, but they both seem to not be very active anymore. I'm very concerned about what will happen to the neutrality of these articles if you and I stop participating in them too.

Letting go of this issue isn't something I can do as easily as most people probably could. I saw what these articles were like a year ago (especially Race and intelligence) when they devoted a huge amount of space to describing the debate itself and almost none to the data being debated. I saw firsthand the amount of effort Occam spent researching with the intent of improving the articles, and then slowly working towards a consensus to improve them during mediation. I don't deny that he engaged in some unconstructive behavior (edit warring etc), but I still think the improvements he and others contributed were valuable overall. I find it really depressing to think that in a fairly short amount of time, every one of the past year's worth of improvements could be undone. But this seems like a likely outcome if Muntuwandi and Weiji are given free reign over them - they've already made one recent attempt to revert the Race and genetics article back a year, before Occam, David Kane or Varoon Arya had gotten involved. [3] [4]

I know other people aren't likely to have a personal reason for caring about these articles' neutrality, but I know their neutrality matters to you for its own sake too. Are you not worried what will happen to them once the editors who care most about neutrality are all gone? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:15, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in. I agree with Maunus about letting go. I must say that I am somewhat disappointed with our representatives on Arbcom for taking a long time to address this matter, its now close to one month. I don't believe that matter is really that complicated as it doesn't require doing any content research. Basically this issue doesn't require a lot of effort to form an opinion. The longer it takes, the more needless "mudslinging". The Amendment page is already becoming bloated. As Stifle said, some declaratory relief would be helpful. Without a ruling on this, I will continue to assume that Occam is evading a topic restriction. OTOH, without a ruling, FTA will continue to assume that my concerns about sanction evasion are unfounded. This purgatory is not helping anyone. So, strangely, I do support Maunus and FTA on their suggestion to take this to ANI. Maybe a preliminary decision can be reached while waiting for Arbcom. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:10, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, I agree with you that it is very short. I hope though that at the talk page you nd I but more importantly Muntuwandi and WeijiBaikeBianji can have a reasonable discussion of what they currently leave out that you would have in. I bet that after discussion at least some of what they removed might be put back, although in some cases in a rewritten version. I hope we can get away from polling differences of opinion to discussing reasons and exploring alternatives and compromises. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:29, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I've realized it doesn't really matter whether its long or short. I've gotten into a position know where the drawbacks of editing the article outweighs the benefits - I am happy with the fact that I have had to read extensively about a topic and that I know know much more about it than I did before - but I don't feel a need to keep editing about it right now. I don't think that the the arbcom case has resulted in a significantly improved editing environment on the pages, too much battleground mentality still going round. In spite of that I think the articles are going to improve - with or without my participation. I think I can spend my energy better elsewhere.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Maunus. You have new messages at Stevertigo's talk page.
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I must say this is unfair

I am not Supriya. Just because two users have similar editing patterns, how can you conclude they are the same people? Jesus. I checked the articles that I edited besides linguistics. There is no user called Supriya who has edited those. How can you make such an allegation? Ridiculous. I continually go to India to teach as a visiting faculty at three of the universities in Delhi. India is a huge center for linguistics right now, and every other person goes there! Fellowscientist (talk) 13:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

It is unfair if you're not Supriya. But then if you're not the investigation is likely to clear you and you'll have no further problems.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a fair deal. Let me know the investigation results. Fellowscientist (talk) 13:17, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI: New York Times article of August 26, 2010 by Guy Deutscher

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=1 Hpvpp (talk) 00:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

I responded on my talk page, but I suppose it can't hurt to say it again: Thank you for the compliment. =) I hope that my future edits continue to improve the article. Cosmic Latte (talk) 19:11, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Linguistics and anthropology

Hey Maunus, I started a discussion about the recent edits at Talk:Linguistics#Subfield of anthropology?. Thanks, rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Huei tlamahuiçoltica

Is this on your watch list? I hadn't noticed it before. Dougweller (talk) 07:28, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it is. It is just as weird as the other Guadalupan articles.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist now. Dougweller (talk) 15:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

LA

You are of course right. Articles should draw heavily on Judith Friedlander, Marisol de la Cadena, Charles Hale, Jan Hoffman French, Deborah Pool, mary Weismantel, andof course Peter Wade's important book. Alas, my friend, I will have NO time at all until December. Sorry. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I know what that is like. But, maybe if you have them on your watchlist as well we can keep them from degeneratin into statements about the number of mestizos and white people in each country based on the CIA world fact book.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement

Hello, an arbitration enforcement request about an issue you've been involved in has recently been posted here: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#WeijiBaikeBianji

I know your suggestion was that Muntuwandi was the person whose behavior needed attention from admins, and I do agree with you that a lot of his recent behavior hasn’t been appropriate. But the fact is, Muntuwandi has been barely involved in these articles for the past two weeks, and as long as he’s this inactive I don’t think it really makes a difference whether he gets warned or sanctioned. The behavior from WeijiBaikeBianji that seems like POV-pushing and article ownership to me has been ongoing, though, and I think that a formal warning to WBB would benefit the editing environment on these articles. If you decide to comment in that thread, I hope you’ll take a look at the diffs I provided, and offer a neutral perspective about whether you think this behavior is problematic. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 22:40, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that was a helpful move on your part. I am sure the people who might be directly affected by any misconduct by WeijiBaikeBianji are capable of taking steps to remedy it themselves.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I do respect your opinion, but as I said in our discussion about this here earlier this month, I'm concerned about what will happen to the neutrality of these articles with so few editors willing to edit from a hereditarian perspective. I know you agree this is a reasonable worry in principle, since you raised a similar concern in Muntuwandi's amendment thread about me. [5] My reason for caring about this isn't to protect the interests of newer editors who've recently gotten involved here, it's because I've seen the amount of time and effort that's gone into improving these articles to the state they are today. I'm very concerned about the possibility of that progress being undone, possibly even in a single one-year revert like Muntuwandi and WBB tried to do on the race and genetics article last month.

When I raised this concern with admins in the discussion about my topic ban, I was told that if there were editors involved in the articles whose behavior I thought was in danger of skewing the articles' neutrality, I should post an AE thread about this. I waited two weeks to do it because I wanted to see whether the behavior from WBB that I consider problematic would improve after the amendment thread, but I don't think it did. I apologize if you don't think this was the best way to address my concern, but I'm not sure what would have been better - I was basically just following the advice I was given by admins. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 16:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not very worried about that anymore - new editors have appeared on the scene such as miradre and Tijfo (and victorchmara is active again) who seem very capable of working against any environmentalist bias that might eventually develop. I also think that it is good to remember that there's a difference between admins saying that you are allowed to post an AE petition and the conclusion that it is a good idea to do so.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Is this Wikihounding?

Maunus, I feel like I really need some outside perspective from another user about this, and I think you’re better able to provide that than anyone else. I hope you don’t mind me asking me about it.

During the time since my topic ban, one of the main things I’ve been working on at Wikipedia has been the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case article. (Just to make sure this article wasn’t covered by my topic ban, I clarified this with ArbCom first.) Muntuwandi has just followed me to this article, accusing me of a lot of the same things there that he accused me of when I was participating in race and intelligence articles. As far as I know, this is the first time he’s ever been involved in articles about politics or about the New Black Panther Party. This is the second time in the past month that he’s appeared to follow me or Ferahgo to an article that he hadn’t previously been editing, the first time being when he followed Ferahgo to the Race (classification of humans) article when she proposed her biomedicine draft there.

If you look at Muntuwandi’s contributions, you’ll see that more than half of his participation in Wikipedia since the end of the arbitration has been focused on opposing me and/or Ferahgo in some way. I had been hoping that after leaving the race and intelligence topic area I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore, and I’m pretty disappointed to have been wrong about that.

Do you think this can be considered Wikihounding? It seems that way to me, but my tiredness of dealing with some of the R&I regulars might be making me oversensitive about this, which is why I think I need another perspective about it. If you agree that it is, I would also appreciate some advice about how I should deal with it. It doesn’t seem like something that should be dealt with at arbitration enforcement, because it’s happening outside of the topic area covered by the arbitration case, but I’d also really rather not start an AN/I thread because of how those have typically gone in the past. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of Nagualism (Carlos Castaneda) for deletion

A discussion has begun about whether the article Nagualism (Carlos Castaneda), which you created or to which you contributed, should be deleted. While contributions are welcome, an article may be deleted if it is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines for inclusion, explained in the deletion policy.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nagualism (Carlos Castaneda) until a consensus is reached, and you are welcome to contribute to the discussion.

You may edit the article during the discussion, including to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

ethnicity

Your comment on this edit - the most recent of a little revert war - might be very constructive. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

hey man

who is the god of wikipedia? why you delete the map all the time for no reason? you are hiding knowledge from the public for your own personal agenda?

THE MAP IS WORK OF SCIENTIST DO YOU UNDERSTAND?Retroqqq (talk) 12:46, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

But not scientists working on the topic of the article where you are trying to insert it.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:48, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

ok sorry you are right about that. how am i going to transfer it to Genetic history of Europe? could you help so this war wont happen again?Retroqqq (talk) 12:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that you should start by going to the talk page at Talk: Genetic history of Europe and suggest including it. Then the editors there will be able to discuss with you whether it can be included as you wrote it or whether the material is already covered in the article or if it should be tweaked.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:DYK

The link referenced in the edit summary here is broken. Can I see the link to the community discussion? Shubinator (talk) 15:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been following that discussion. The added rule is a bit premature though, and isn't as uncontroversial as you might think. For example, the first part on multiple sources is actually in the DYK rules already, and took an uphill battle to get in: Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_49#Rule_against_single_sourcing. The second part is just common sense. Anyways, would you mind if I removed the first bit since it's already a rule? (I'll leave the second part since it's become a flash point.) Shubinator (talk) 15:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, just saw your most recent edits. I'm fine with that. Shubinator (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It's raining thanks spam!

• Please pardon the intrusion. This tin of thanks spam is offered to everyone who commented or !voted (Support, Oppose or Neutral) on my recent RfA. I appreciate the fact that you care enough about the encyclopedia and its community to participate in this forum.
• There are a host of processes that further need community support, including content review (WP:GAN, WP:PR, WP:FAC, and WP:FAR). You can also consider becoming a Wikipedia Ambassador. If you have the requisite experience and knowledge, consider running for admin yourself!
• If you have any further comments, input or questions, please do feel free to drop a line to me on my talk page. I am open to all discussion. Thanks • Ling.Nut (talk) 02:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

User should be blocked

Hello, can you block Flaviobm?

here is his vandalistic edit of your last Undo... Thanks, warshy^talk 18:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Notwithstanding your warning at 'his' talk page, he just did it again. Are you an Admin? (I thought you were.) As an Admin you would have the tools to block him off, wouldn't you? Just trying to understand how exactly it works, and why sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't... Thanks, warshy^talk 21:05, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I am an admin and I can block him - but I don't block without warning. ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks a lot for the explanation. I counted and in the last 3 days he has reverted that edit just like that, without even a note of explanation for it, 7 times! Also, technically, I don't think he has even been really warned by an Admin about true consequences (such as being blocked) if he keeps doing it. Sorry to bother about a little trifle like this, but it can sometimes be annoying... Thanks for listening at least. warshy^talk 23:52, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I owe you an apology. You did explicitly warn him about being blocked in his talk page. Also, thanks for acting on it! I for one certainly believe you did the right thing. I wouldn't be surprised if he still comes back and does it again... Thanks a lot for listening again. warshy^talk 01:05, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

If he does the block will be longer next time. :) ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

Hi Maunus - I have a quick question. The image in Scyld appears to be from this website, which for some reason I seem to be able to read, somewhat. I'm curious what language it is that I'm reading? Btw - hope all is well, we haven't touched bases in a while. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Truthkeeper - I am glad to know that you are still out there. Abiding. And making the wikipedia a better place for it. The language is norwegian (.no is norway). The image is by the famous Norwegian Illustrator da:Louis Moe. I should probably give him an article in the english wikipedia. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much Maunus! The illustrations are wonderful. According to the article you linked he died in 1919, so the file for the image is wrong (has a death date of 1945). I suppose I'll have to learn about Norwegian copyright laws, but am hoping more of those illustrations can be uploaded. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

No he died in 1945, in 1919 he became a Danish citizen (possibly some Norwegians would consider that having died).·Maunus·ƛ· 00:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah - I skipped a line! Too bad. Thanks for the information anyway. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:31, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

"alleged", "accused", etc.

Note that WP:W2W specifies that "Alleged and accused are appropriate when wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined". In this case, no arrests were ever made, and after a bit of searching, I cannot find confirmation that any suspects were even considered. There's no shortage of people claiming the whole thing was a hoax. The bottom line is that no reliable sources I can find seem to indicate that a crime definitely occurred- everything is just based off of the Dodsons' own report. If that's not "alleged", I don't know what is. —Bill Price (nyb) 17:24, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Please don't put words in my mouth.

[6]

I’m pretty sure I never said that I thought the R&I history article was more neutral than the main Race and intelligence article, and I don’t think David.Kane has said this either. The way I feel about the history article is that it was definitely a POV fork when Mathsci first created it, but that David.Kane, DistributiveJustice and I eventually managed to fix its most severe POV issues. At this point I think it’s probably no longer an actual POV fork, but it still has some POV issues that I’m hoping will get fixed eventually. (I can tell you what some of them are if you want, but I suspect it’s best for me to not be bringing up specific content issues here.)

What you’re saying about my opinion is something that I don’t believe—I don’t think the history article is actually in better condition than the main article. And I definitely don’t agree with the idea that it’s in so much better condition that all of the links to race and intelligence ought to be replaced with links to the history article, which seems to be what you’re implying about how I feel. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:22, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'm sorry for misrepresenting you. I actually thought you had said something to that effect.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:21, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for striking out that part of your comment. I’d figured this was just an honest mistake, but it still bothers me if my opinion is misstated in a discussion where I’m not allowed to participate in order to correct it. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Correct Translation

I like your Aby Warburg translation (Hebrew for Jew) fine, but every translation I could find right now, either in German or English has Jew or Jude. And I agree that this Boas thing starts to get on everybody's nerves.--Radh (talk) 15:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't see that the translation was from the original source, since the source given was in italian. I surmised that the translationwas made by a wikipedian - so I decided to correct it since Italian does distinguish Jew from Hebreo and ebreo means Hebrew. If however there is a published English translation of the passage I think that should be used instead and sourced with a reference. Could you please supply it and replace my translation?·Maunus·ƛ· 15:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

About the identity of Jews in Germany, the view that German identity was fully attainable for Jews goes back at least to the Jewish reform movement of the early 19th century where reformed Jews declared Germany to be the new Zion. This assimilationist policy is obviously the background for Boas viewpoints and his parents clearly were not what one would call orthodox or even practicing Jews. Jews had formal legal equality as German citizens from 1848 to The Nurenberg laws - even if this equality was in practice reserved for Jews that had converted to christianity. 12,000 Jews died in the trenches of WWI to fight for their German fatherland . I think it is fair to assume that they like Boas thought of themselves as Germans.(Just like Durkheim's student Robert Hertz fought for France in spite of his Jewish ancestry and the shadow of the Dreyfus affair (Durkheim himself was also a French patriot and of Jewish ancestry at the same time))·Maunus·ƛ· 15:24, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I must have written complete nonsense. This was not what I tried to argue against (I hope). I just consider ethnic and gender- and religious- and class-differences inside a nation to be important, regardless of what the Progressives and liberals think.

And German citizenship for many Germans was even before 1933 connected to the concept of something like a German race. To give, say, Turkish people living in Germany "our" citizenship, is in fact still regarded as very strange by some Germans, not only by Nazis. It is also regarded strange by many Turks, who also tend to think of themselves as a kind of different race.

May assimilation have been a part of the problem in Germany? The strong anti-French resistance movement of 1812 turned viciously antisemitic very fast - with the threat of assimilation - and the Nazis may have only been the end-product of all this. /PS: The best thing I can find on Google right now on Warburg and antisemitism is a book by Mark A. Russell: Between Tradition and Modernity. Also: Charlotte Schoell-Glass: Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism. --Radh (talk) 16:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that progressives or liberals think that internal differentiation within nation states is not important. But just as we don't describe Karl Marx in the lead as an "Upperclass, male, atheist German Jew" we don't need to define people into all possibly relevant categories in the lead (and picking out just one would be arbitrary). We only need to define them in relation to what they are notable for - and for some (arbitrary) reason also according to nationality (this is the practice - I don't think I agree that defining people by nationality is always necessary in the lead of biography articles but it is standard practice). In this case it is quite clear that there is no reason to define Boas as a Jew - he is famous for his influence in anthropology not for his descent, and he was a national of America and Germany. Adding to this his own views about Jewishness describing him as a Jew becomes highly questionable since he quite clearly did not identify with that category or even think of it as meaningful in the sense of "ancestry", or "race". For Boas Jewishness was a set of cultural practices that he didn't take part in, and in so far as it had once been a biological race (which Boas thought did exist in the sense of phenotypes) it wasn't any more, as centuries of assimilation to Europeans had removed all possibilities of distinguishing a "Jewish phenotype". The fact that heritage-Germans and German Turks still see themselves as ethnically different is really beside the point, Boas would probably not have argued against that as long as it is possible to distinguish ethnic Turks from ethnic Germans based on cultural practices or phenotype (and self identification). ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

This work uses a translation closer to mine: [7]·Maunus·ƛ· 16:50, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't need Boas' Jewishness or non-Jewishness mentioned in the lead. We should also close down the debate for now. I still find it just a bit strange for a salvage anthropologist like Boas to be so utterly assimilationist when it comes to his own people. But all this is neither here nor there. And I must thank you for your Geduld. --Radh (talk) 08:48, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I know you aren't arguing in favor of mentioning, it at this point I was just arguing with you because its an interesting debate. :) And his view of Jewishness is very odd considered his other stances. There's a very good book out that contains an essay about the Boasians and their concept of race and culture, its Kamala Visweswaran's "Un/common cultures" - I highly reccommend it. I wasn't lying when I told OO-Yun that I had never read anyone spending time on analysing Boas' heritage in relation to his anthropology - but then I was asigned this book. She does, and she does it very well. The other essays are also critiques of how great anthropologists form Levi-Strauss, Du Bois and Geertz have handled the relation between race and culture - something they have done with varying success. There is also a really interesting essay on the first female anthropologists working on the western frontier. I highly reccomend it.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:21, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, this Un/common cultures book sounds good. I don't know of any useful work on Boas' "roots" and his anthropological ideas right now. --Radh (talk) 14:33, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Oo Yun

FYI: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mikemikev. Mathsci (talk) 15:22, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think its Mike this time - Mike has more of a sense of humour than Oo Yun.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Well blimie, I guess I was wrong!·Maunus·ƛ· 15:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Gooseberry

You were justified in removing "gooseberry" as an example in Cranberry morpheme because it is a confusing example, but the story of the word's etymology is more complicated than it may seem at first glance :) see Gooseberry#Etymology. —Bill Price (nyb) 04:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I read that. It says the Oxford dictionary says it is just plain "goose". The example is not just confusing it is bad - especially in the wording given where the reader would be let to believe that the word "goose" does not appear by itself in the English language - as no information about its etymology was provided.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Our Lady of Guadalupe

The section on scientific analysis seems to need work. Minor point, the ref at 25 is just a website on infrared photography and we don't need it anyway as there's a link to our article on infrared photography. Ref 26 is to 'Folklore Forum' which doesn't seem to be peer reviewed. " The journal encourages the free-flowing exchange of research and ideas on all aspects of folklore and folklife. An interdisciplinary publication, Folklore Forum seeks to continually question existing assumptions and bring new ideas to the fore of humanities and social sciences." [8]. The statement using reference 27 should probably be worded more tentatively. Ref 16 is a copy of an article in a magazine about an unpublished study, and because copies can be altered we don't normally link to them. But see [9] Painting a new world: Mexican art and life, 1521-1821 By Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, Clara Bargellini, Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art Footnote 33, p280 "Recent technical studies claim the presence of the signature of this painter ("M.A." for Marcos Aquino) and the date 1556 on a first painting, under the prsent one: Rodrigo Vera "La Guadalupana: Tres imagenes en una", Proceso, issue 1334 (26 May 2002) 52-53. If this is so, the complicity of painters in creating and maintaining the miraculous image would be further confirmed." The book looks like a great source if you search the Google copy with "miraculous Guadalupe" and "miraculous Guadalupe Diego". This book looks invaluable: [10] Dougweller (talk) 07:35, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Question about using sources to edit an encyclopedia

Hi, Maunus, I see that while I was away from my office with my family today that there was a new enforcement action to follow up the Race and intelligence case. I recall from a comment that you made on some talk page that you have access to a very large academic library system. I too have access to a great collection of academic libraries (at a state flagship research university and also at a consortium of private colleges and universities). It happens that the public libraries in my town have a fairly strong academic orientation too, especially for humanities subjects such as history. So to me it's a routine part of every day—after work and family responsiblities are taken care of first—to read serious academic books with lots of footnotes to previous sources and with meticulous tables of contents and indexes pointing readers to all the main subtopics of each book. The Wikimedia Foundation has a goal of improving Wikipedia content quality, and surely one element of achieving that goal will be to add more and more reliable sources to as many of the 6,881,575 articles on Wikipedia as possible. That's the kind of goal, described especially in the book How Wikipedia Works by librarian Phoebe Ayers, that drew me into editing Wikipedia after years of reading the work of other wikipedians who built up this free encyclopedia that anyone can edit in the early years. I have sources that I read for fun anyway, and I thought I might as well use those to help make incremental improvements to Wikipedia. But I'm puzzled by my experience here in the last half year. It hasn't been my experience elsewhere in editorial offices that adding reliable sources found in academic libraries to publication content is considered "a bad idea." Where it's just part of a day's work to build an encyclopedia or edit an academic journal, it's generally a good idea to find a recently published source that meticulously cites earlier literature and is fairly widely available in libraries. But even after I read an informative book by a careful historian, and check his book for what topics it mentions that are little sourced at present on Wikipedia, I find that citing the book in a Further reading section is construed in bad faith and even reverted. I don't know what kind of encyclopedias you read in your youth, or what kind you read today, but pretty nearly all the print encyclopedias I find in academic libraries have articles that end with brief bibliographies of book-length works that cover some aspect of the article topic in more detail. I have also thought, inasmuch as the Manual of style specifies characteristics of books to include in Further reading sections, that first mentioning a new source in that kind of an addition to an article allows other editors to find the source in their own most convenient library system (and these days Google Books or Amazon allow lots of searching into books online), so that editors can verify sources. I've seen some very blatant examples of article text that cites sources that do not, in fact, verify the article text, so I figure one good confidence-building measure to pursue on controversial articles is to share sources first, and to edit article text later. I began my Wikipedia involvement largely by sharing source lists, and I expect to be maintaining those for a long time. (Librarians like Phoebe Ayers know of a genre of scholarly literature called "pathfinders," guides to the professional literature in a particular subject, and that is the model I have in mind as I incrementally build the source lists.) It's hard to help when every effort to help is construed invidiously. Perhaps this kind of unwelcoming atmosphere is what frustrates the Wikimedia Foundation's goal of increasing participation, as there are certainly scholarly communities where sources are welcomed and discussed rather than reverted on sight. On my part, I will continue to attempt to help and to build the encyclopedia according to the model of the best available print encyclopedias. It would be great if persons like you who have the project mop in your hand would use the mop to clean up messes and not to push away new scholarly sources. It would good just in general, as I learned from Phoebe Ayers and her co-authors, to encourage the Wikipedia culture to move in the direction of cherishing scholarship and being curious about what reliable sources say and whether or not article text is based on reliable sources. Checking sources together can build an atmosphere of lifelong learning and mutual collaboration. I'm sure I have a good bit of anthropology and not a little linguistics to learn from you, and I hope I can offer some learning opportunities to you as well. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It is never a bad idea to add sources. But further reading sections are not for sources, they are for readings related to the topic - further reading sections are for including important literature related to the topic that has not been used as a source for the article. Sources are included in bibliography or references sections or in footnotes. Further reading sections is like an external link section where the material linked just happen to be a book. Dumping the same book in ten different further reading sections looks a lot like link spamming - especially when several of the articles where it is dumped are only very marginally related to the topic of the book. Some of the persons in whose articles you added the book were only mentioned a few times in the book. Furthermore the book is a well researched piece of scholarship, but it is also clearly in favour oif a particular viewpoint. This makes including it in marginally related articles a bad idea. In this case it ended up getting Ferahgo blocked because she took the liberty of removing a tangentially related book from an article about a specialist in dinosaurs who happens to have also had a hobby as an eugenicist advocate. I am pretty sure you knew it was going to be controversial in some of those articles yet you decided to be bold - I believe that in some cases boldness is not preferable - sometimes deliberation and prior discussion is best. I had hoped you had learned that fromn your experience with boldy renaming controversial articles. I am sure we can collaborate very well in the future as we have in the past, and I know I can learn a lot from you about intelligence related topics. But I do encourage you to consider the overall effects that repeating possibly controversial actions over several articles may have. Often it will do more harm, by making the environment more tense, than good. By the way you will have noticed that I did notm remove the book from most of those articles - I incorporated it into the text where it makes much more sense. Only when I could not find any information in the book that was relevant for the article did I remove it completely. ·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Maunas. What do you think of these "Further reading" additions to the Linda Gottfredson, Richard Lynn and Glayde Whitney articles? The subjects themselves are barely mentioned (maybe three or four times each). The title of the book added to the further reading section, The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (google books link here), would give a specific impression to the reader about the subject's views. These are all BLP articles. I am troubled by the use of Further Reading like this. I don't want to revert because I'm keen not to get involved in warring in this rather testy area, so I came here to ask you for advice.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 23:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't worry about BLP - Tucker's book is a reliable source and Wikipedia does not run any risks by referring to it, but I think that any information it has that relates to the topic of the article should be integrated into the article body and not in a further reading section. I feel loathe at reverting now as well - why don't we copy our commentaries to the article's respective talk pages.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Fine - if you want to move them. I'm surprised that you don't find any BLP issues. It's not that Tucker's book is not RS, it's that by including the title it implies the article subjects are a chief topic of a book called "scientific racists".VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 00:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

The three persons do figure in the book so if they have any issues with Tucker's statements they would have to take it out with his publisher not with wikipedia. It is also not the first time they have been mentioned in the same breath as scientific racism - that is part of the package when you accept money from the Pioneer fund - the Pioneer's own website makes a point out of defending themselves against accusations of that type. I guess it could be seen as biased to not include a book with a more apologetic title - but that could be solved by integrating the books claims into the article instead and add their own rebuttals. Whitney is dead by the way so no BLP - and was quite openly held holocaust deniying, anti-semitic views and promoted of demonstratedly false theories about racial segregation and the division of mankind into several species - can't be much more of a scientific racist than that. Lynn and Gotfredson both routinely have to defend themselves againt such claims. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:20, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

We should separate two points here. One is that the book shouldn't be in Further Reading - which I think we both agree on. The other is that the additions are troubling in terms of POV and may be an abuse of the Further Reading sections rather than simply a misuse. I would have no problems with any of the articles using the book as a source. However, further reading is, one would presume, "here's what to read to know more about the subject", and a handful of mentions in a book is not only not justified, it also presents the book topic as the proper sphere the article topic's work should be considered part of. This you agree is a troubling POV view of two of the article subjects. It's not the title that's the issue, it's the overall focus of the book, which the title reveals. Fair enough on Whitney, btw, in terms of BLP (both dead and clearly racist). But it's still not a good further reading addition for the article, as the book barely mentions him. I don't know if WBB is adding this material deliberately, but it's an indication of the danger of his approach.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 00:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we're in agreement - I think the problem is that the further reading section should be for books that are for books that treat the topic of the article - not just mentions it - and that can be uncontroversially agreed on as reccomended reading by the editors involved with the article. The same guidelines as used for external links - there must be wide agreement that external links are directly relevant for them to be included - the same should go for further reading. It should be the kind of book that is logically the next place to read more after reading the wikipedia article.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreement is always nice :-) You might be interested in adding to the discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Manual_of_Style_(layout)#Further_reading. Clearly the guidelines are not enough at the moment.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:08, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, you wrote, "further reading section should be for books that are for books that treat the topic of the article - not just mentions it - and that can be uncontroversially agreed on," but where would editors look in currently published Wikipedia policies or guidelines to find either idea? The idea of "treat the topic of the article - not just mentions it" is of course something that is best ascertained by actually looking at the source. You can be assured that I always look at sources and make sure that they treat the topic of the article before adding those sources in any manner to articles, but I've had quite a few highly pertinent reliable sources deleted from article text for no reason that was apparent in edit summaries other than that some other editor didn't like the point of view of the reliable source author. And that leads to the second point; how can any source "be uncontroversially agreed on" while active edit-warring is going on in articles, even after an Arbitration Committee case with active sanctions? Both ideas seem to involve a tension with core Wikipedia principles, which generally strongly favor reliable sources, and the second idea, if applied prospectively, would completely gut bold editing, which several dozen of the articles in discussion badly need. Perhaps I should ask for some additional refinement of these two ideas, which I am sure you offer as a guide to constructive editing, and appreciate hearing from you. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the guideline about Further reading does not unequivocally support my view as it is - but I feel it is a quite commonsensical view nonetheless and I am willing to argue in favour of it (I already am). I realize of course that you have looked at the sources - and I acknoledge that they contain good informationthat should be incorporated into the articles. But my view of what a further reading section obviously differs from yours, and that is the cause of our disagreement it seems to me. You are quite right that it is difficult that a piece of further reading could ever be universally agreed upon in a controversial article where editwarring is going on. This is however not an argument against requiring consensus for inclusion in further reading sections - it is rather an argument for not including further reading sections in controversial articles - as that would only stimulate the editwar. Bold editing is fine when things can be easily fixed and everyone is happy afterwards - when that is not the case BOLD has to be exchanged for BRD - with a lot of stress on the D. In controversial situations lots of stress and frustration can be avoided by going directly to D andf leaving out the BR bit altogether. In my view the only justification for undertaking the BR part for that cycle is that the BOLD part didn't know that what it was doing would not be immediately accepted by other editors. That is my basic problem with your BOLD approach - it aggravates conflicts instead of promoting collaboration and consensus building. I think we should all focus much more on being forthcoming to other viewpoints and working towards compromise than on "improving" controversial articles - because when articles are controversial one mans improvement nvariably looks like something else when seen from different angles - whereas neutrality never coincides with anyone's particular vantage point and looks equally undesirable to all. ·Maunus·ƛ· 04:16, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I’ve been trying to come up with a list of all the articles that currently have books like these in a “further section” because of WeijiBaikeBianji's adding them. The two main books he’s done this with are Defending the Master Race and The Funding of Scientific Racism, although he’s also added The Cattell Controversy to a few of them- which is also pretty opinionated, and by the same author as The Funding of Scientific Racism. Here's the articles I found where he’s done this and where it hasn’t been removed yet:

• Linda Gottfredson (BLP article)
• Richard Lynn (BLP article)
• Roger Pearson (BLP article)
• Glayde Whitney
• Charles Davenport
• Hans F. K. Günther
• Wickliffe Draper
• Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
• Paul Popenoe
• The Kallikak Family
• Immigration Restriction League (Whats with the little check mark that he added next to The Funding off Scientific Racism in this article? Does that mean he thinks the book is especially important as further reading in this article?)
• Robert Lowie
• Aryan race
• Nordic race
• Eugenics
• Anti-miscegenation laws
• Mediterranean race
• Alpine race
• Scientific racism
• Cephalic index]
• Immigration Act of 1924
• Compulsory sterilization
• Institute for the Study of Academic Racism
• William McDougall (psychologist)
• Harry Hamilton Laughlin
• Robert Yerkes
• Henry Fairfield Osborn
• Margaret Sanger
• Ernst Haeckel
• Carleton S. Coon
• The Passing of the Great Race
• Mankind Quarterly
• The Bell Curve
• Cattell Culture Fair III
• Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory (On this article and the next two, he said in his edit summary for adding this source that he was going to incorporate it into the article text, but that was three weeks ago and he still hasn’t)
• 16PF Questionnaire
• 16 Personality Factors

That’s 37 articles he added this to, not including however many he previously added it to and then had someone else later remove it. The books might be relevant to some of these articles, but I don’t feel they're relevant to all of them. WP:BOLD only goes so far, and it seems like more than just boldness to make a change thats likely to be controversial on at least 40 articles without any discussion. However, I’m also not about to go make 37 reverts. Is anyone willing to go through these articles, and figure out how many of them there are where the books that WeijiBaikeBianji added to the “further reading” section actually belong there?-SightWatcher (talk) 04:54, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

hello

hi wikipedia ship, please do not change the correct articule because the unformation from this is totally correct, did for DANE, and Wikipedia is a neutral page, this page is not neutral, please make up neutral thanks visocap group —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.159.130.143 (talk) 19:59, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Hola, lo que pasa es que los cambios que usted parece querer hacer al artículo no estan apoyados por fuentes. Está incluyendo algunos fuentes pero los fuentes no dicen realmente lo que usted dice que dicen. Debería leer los reglas de wikipedia sobre estudios originales y sintesis - claramente no permiten el tipo de cambios que usted está proponiendo al artículo White Latin American.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:36, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Lorynote

Numerous problems with this editor, ranging from her poor English to poor citations to pov editing, use of sources that don't back her claims, use of clearly non-reliable sources, etc. Loves to add 'see also's to articles. Matriarchal religion was a mess before she came, and I doubt she'll like my edits there. I think she's a duck. Dougweller (talk) 17:15, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

AfDs

Hi. As you just participated in discussions on a closely related topic (also a current AfD re a Jewish list), which may raise some of the same issues, I'm simply mentioning that the following are currently ongoing: AfDs re lists of Jewish Nobel laureates, entertainers, inventors, actors, cartoonists, and heavy metal musicians. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:32, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Ethnic groups section

Hey I don't want to start an edit war over that section, from previous experiences I know it's not productive at all, so instead of discussing over the edit summaries I rather do it here.

That table worked fine for some time, I stopped visiting the Mexico article and now I find that it the table was removed, it you think that some facts shown there are inaccurate then change them directly from the template (I see you already started a discussion there). My point is, that I don't see any reason to remove a good (graphically pleasing) table, that has the potential for showing some good information just because someone thinks it isn't 100% accurate, if you feel that way, again, discuss it its talkpage and change it directly from the template in order to make it more "accurate". Supaman89 (talk) 02:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

It is not that it isn't 100% accurate it is that it is not even wrong. The table simply doesnt understand what ethnicity is. Ethnicity is not race. The distinction between amerindian, European and Mestizo is racial not ethnic. Middle eastern is a geographic group neither a racial or an ethnic group. Membership of the mestizo or amerindian racial categories is not based on "looks" (i.e. racial phenotype) but on cultural affiliation and socioeconomic status. In short the table is a completely misconstrual of racial and ethnic relations in Mexico and in general. There is no way it can be included in the article in its current form - no matter how aesthetically pleasing you find it. I am also quite sure that the template format goes against WP:MOS and I don't find it aesthetically pleasing at all but rather find that it breaks up the reading flow. I have reverted - please participate in the already long debate on the talkpage about race and ethnicity - using arguments and reliable sources - before reverting again.·Maunus·ƛ· 03:07, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

On the polysynthesis of Otomi

Hi Maunus, This is a question about your today’s post. Hope you would like to answer it. To reduce complications, I wanted to put a few questions in a list form, but I am not sure now. So here we go--how did you reach the conclusion that Otomi to be being a polysynthetic language? Is there a particular linguistic-typology chart available now to classify languages? If there isn’t any, what are those features that you claim for Otomi as being neither of the agglutinative nor of the analytical one (among other things, a particular emphases on function words and the nature of fusion on verb phrases)? And it seems to me that mophologically complex forms deriving from analytic nature (in English and other Germanic and Romance languages) are still simply of a mild fusion, rather than to term as fusional ones, while the highest degree of isolations are only in those languages to term something as analytic languages. Correct? Mr.Bitpart (talk) 03:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Linguists actually don't really use the isolating/fusional/polysynthetic/agglutinating division any more because it was never well defined and doesn't really tell us alot about a language's general properties. So there is no list of definitions for each of those - they ar more like prototypical categories. Usually the prototype of Polysynthetic languages are languages that can incorporate different kinds of noun phrases, and adverbial-type semantic content into the verb and that can have words (in the sense of single stress units with not freedom to move morphemes around) that contain all of the verbs core arguments (object/subject) and some of the non-core arguments as well (indirect/second object/adverbial phrases/locatives etc.). Regarding Otomí the question is whether the morphemes that agree with the object and subject are considered to be bound or free morphemes. Palancar consider them to be clitics- i.e. semifree and that would mean that the language could be said to be synthetic and agglutinating but not really polysynthetic - his argument is that the morphemes are sometimes form a stress unit with other words that are not the verb. I consider however that they are probably bound because they always occur in the same position relative to the verb and to me the stress shift is not that convincing. Rather I think Otomi has another character that is characteristic of many polysynthetic languages - namely that the relative order of the free nominal consituents is very free - i.e. the object can come both before or after the verb depending mostly on its pragmatic status as either new or old information. Regarding English I think it is still definitely fusional (as are all indo-european languages to varying degree) more than analytic - there are many frequently used verb and noun endings (that fuse phonetically with the root) and many verbs and nouns that form inflect by ablaut - very fusional traits. It is no where near as isolating/analytic as e.g. mandarin or thai.·Maunus·ƛ· 03:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks.

I changed a word, which is in bold now.

On “Linguists actually don't really use the isolating/fusional/polysynthetic/agglutinating division any more because it was never well defined and doesn't really tell us alot about a language's general properties”, it doesn’t seem to have problems, other than that we do not have a correct classifying schema.

On “In a polysynthetic language morphemes are relatively more bound and their sequence is governed by morphological rules. In isolating language they are relatively more free and their sequence is governed by syntactic rules”, it seems to me that every language, including polysynthetic languages, is governed by syntactic rules to which the morphological rules are secondary in terms of their synthetic analyses (i.e., morphological inflections can take in isolation, which is not mandatory but the sequential squeezes in syntheses).

On “Regarding English I think it is still definitely fusional”, right (all the language have morphosyntax fusion). But the question is then whether there are any languages whose constituencies are more in isolation than Germanic and Romance languages, to classify as non-synthetic or analytic ones. You may know. Mr.Bitpart (talk) 04:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no correct or incorrect analysis in typology, just ones that are more or less informative. the problem with the agglutinative/synthetic/analytic/fusional scheme is that it is purely descriptive - it doesn't correlate with any other important grammatical features - there for it is only marginally interesting for most linguitsic theoreticians.

As for your second point that depends entirely on which syntactic/grammatical theory you subscribe. I tend to see syntax as something that is separate form morphology - and to see polysynthetic languages as having complex morphological rules and more less complex syntactic rules - whereas more analytic languages are the opposite. Some theories consider morphology and syntax to be one thing as it is simply rules for sequencing bits of meaning.

I gave a couple of common examples of truly isolating languages - Mandarin and Thai - others are Mazatec of Mexico and many others that allow only monosyllabic words.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. Good to know more about these. Mr.Bitpart (talk) 04:51, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Questions

In the recent WP:ANI regarding me, you suggested: "You should have stopped implementing the change wholesale as soon as you found out that a considerable amount of editors disagreed with it." Now two questions are bothering me:

1. How many edits make a "change wholesale"? Checking my contributions log, I've found eight edits like this among my last 500 contributions to Wikipedia. Since that seems to be too much, how much is allowed?
2. That "considerable amount" of editors disagreeing with my changes was (at the time) actually only one editor (User:CBM). And most of the times he reverted my edit, the very next user restored it. So is this more like a veto, so that it takes only one person to disagree in order to stop these kinds of edits, no matter how many are in favor of it, or did I misunderstood something here?

Regards. —bender235 (talk) 00:37, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I think 7 similar edits in one day to articles you have not previously edited does begin to look problematic. How many times do you need to insert the same bad external link into different articles before it goes from being a mistake to being spam? It is obviously a case of judgment. Here you were given a good idea that someone saw the line as being crossed: You had been told by other editors at two previous ANI threads[11][12] that cosmetic style changes should not be implemented without discussion. That is a considerable amount, and a third case does seem to imply a case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, as did your actual behaviour in the the thread. In any case it is clearly not a case of veto by a single editor - even though current policy actually allows veto by the main contributor to the article.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification. Anyway, the difference between adding the same external link to multiple articles, and adding {{Reflist|colwidth=...}} to multiple articles, is that the first one is actually prohibited by Wikipedia rules (WP:SPAM, WP:NOTLINK), while the latter is not only not prohibited, but actually encouraged by WP:USE and others. Using colwidth makes Wikipedia articles much more accessible on smaller devices. —bender235 (talk) 01:29, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Changing optional style issues in articles to which you are not a contributor is not encouraged. I appreciate that these two policies seem to contradict eachother, and that this lead you to believe that your edits were unproblematic. It is probably a good idea to resolve this contradiction.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:56, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You could help solving the contradiction by supporting this proposal. —bender235 (talk) 02:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam appeal at AE

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Arbitration_enforcement_action_appeal_by_Captain_Occam

Captain Occam is appealing the decision made by EdJohnston at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive75#Captain_Occam. This is a courtesy note to make you aware of the request. Vassyana (talk) 04:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Leo Frank

Hi, since you indicated some recent interest on this, I wanted to contact you on continuing discussion. Not sure if you are willing to enter the fray on this article, but I am very disturbed about the reliance on journalistic details, overuse of sensational first-person quotes by Tom Watson especially, and general sensationalizing of the content, with so much detail you can't tell what the issues are. I've suggested deleting 2 of 3 photos of the lynching (enough already! I know what they meant; that doesn't mean we have to show them all). More seriously, I have found at least two copyright violations, including one in the lead, so there are probably more, in editors' attempts to have it be "colorful". It is not up to one or two editors to assume they own the article. It is far from an encyclopedic article in tone.Parkwells (talk) 23:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you but am reluctant to enter "the fray". I will speak up in favor of suggestions for improvement with which I agree.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:41, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Columbus

Thank you for your edits on the Origins of Columbus page. I Guess my problem is that I don't know how to enter the information in a more neutral tone.Colon-el-Nuevo (talk) 18:49, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Sockpuppers of Mikemikev

You do seem to like having conversations with them, as at present. Mathsci (talk) 19:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I answer when people speak to me yes. And if they are saying something reasonable I react. Is that a problem?·Maunus·ƛ· 19:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The username, as with the baby-language of the last sockpuppet Flobbably (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), seems to have been prompted by the recent edits on my talk page concerning Canada: [13][14][15] Since I just requested CU (with success) for 2 other long term editors, quite unrelated, I'm a bit too tired to make any other requests at the moment. Mathsci (talk) 19:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I think I'll just go ahead and block him per WP:Duck.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Fine and sorry if I was a bit snarky. I had read this [16] and should have really included it. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 19:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I suspect In with the old (talk · contribs) and his antisemitic edit [17] are yet another manifestation of Mikemikev. Mathsci (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Lakota orthography

Hi, Maunus. Regarding your edit summary on Lakota language ("I would like to see what the source actually says"), the currently cited source appears to be a mention in the introduction to a work on Dakota history and mythology to the effect that some texts use other-than-standard orthography. See Talk:Lakota language#Orthography and Alphabet. Cheers, Cnilep (talk) 01:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I tried to make it clearer that it is not an official orthography and that tehre are others - without falling in to the product of "euro-american linguistics" and "not represent traditional lakota ways of thinking about language" POV trap. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:02, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I think your solution looks appropriate. Cnilep (talk) 02:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

Would you please consider semi-protecting Economy of Mexico? The same anonymous IP user is vandalizing the page [18]. Thank you. AlexCovarrubias ^{( Talk? )} 19:15, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I am keeping an eye on it, but as long as its only a reversion or two a day I don't think a semi-protection is warranted. If he breaches 3rr I'll just block him.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah you're right, I see your point. I just had to tell you about it. Thanks. AlexCovarrubias ^{( Talk? )} 19:47, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

[19] "Even if misguided or ill-considered, any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia is not vandalism." Opium and Marijuana are crops which are of some importance to the Economy of Mexico. The information I've been citing is straight from the CIA World Factbook (which the Economy of Mexico page already links to) which lists Mexico as a "major drug-producing nation." If drugs are not of sufficient significance to the Economy of Mexico to merit a listing, that's one thing. If you're just trying to ignore the proverbial elephant in the living room, that's another. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.230.8.168 (talk) 06:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

You are quite right- your edits should not be referred to as vandalism. You were, however, Editwarring. I don't have a problem with including material about drugproduction - but it should be correctly sourced to reliable sources. I do not consider CIA-factbook a reliable source myself, but I know that some people do - you would however have to cite it in such a manner that it is possible for a reader to verify the information - e.g. by providing a direct link to the relevant statement, or in the case that you find a paper source (much to be preferred in my opinion) to the pager number and giving the complete details of publication.

Expression (language)

Expression (language) was apparently created out of an attempt to develop a more encompassing category to merge Sentence (linguistics) into (see Talk:Sentence (linguistics)#Move to "expression (language)". The editor who created it apparently did not know that terms such as Utterance already exist. As the page is unsourced and probably unsource-able, the editor may have been attempting original research.

Per your comments at Talk: Expression (language), I wonder if it would be worthwhile to re-create the page with content related to glossematics, or better simply to delete the page? Any thoughts? Perhaps we should discuss them at Talk:Expression (language) so others can chime in? Cnilep (talk) 05:14, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I think redirecting to Utterance would be best. It could be discussed at the article on glossematics when I get a chance to improve that one, but it doesn't require its own article.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:53, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Foucault Relationship With Biopolitics

With regards my section:Foucault Relationship With Biopolitics I felt it was necessary to include this section,because it was the common consensus that Foucault was the inventor of Biopolitics (at least its concept).However,this is not true,I was trying to correct this false consensus.Richardlord50 (talk) 15:40, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I have cleaned up and reinserted the section that had many issues with language, formatting and style. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:40, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for restating section you made my Christmas a happy one.All the best to you for the new year,your gentlemen and a scholar.Richardlord50 (talk) 17:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to help.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:58, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

race

Hi. I think that with the race article, using the summary of views (essentialist, taxanomic, lineage, population) to structure the first half of the article makes a lot of sense - it both helps organize the material and sets limits on what belongs.

I do not remember who added or contributed to the "cladistics" view. I do not care whetehr we keep it or note. What is more important to me is that we have material illustrating the "lineage" view (and I think this is cladistics). And more important is I think we need to get people to distinguish between:

• the view of race = population (Mayr's view, which actually many although not most physical anthropologists do accept, so we need to cover it - and organize it in a way so that the view is adequately covered as well as the criticism) and
• new attempts to salvage "race" using data from the human genome project, and advances in molecular genetics. I do not remember if you were around but an older version of the article did just that, or tried to here - maybe you think there is something in here that can be rescued and put in the article? I think it is worth doing because some people will inevitably always pass by and insist on adding stuff that cites Cavalli Sforza or stuff on genetic distancing - even if they use F-statistics, they are still not doing old-fashioned population genetics, and the difference has to be made clear to readers. I am going to paste the same message at WB's talk page. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I feel that it is awkward to use the first half to establish what race is not. We have an article called Biological views of race that can do that. I think it is much more important to establish what the consensus is, what it actually means to say that "race is a social construct" (which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that biological variation doesn't exist) - and to situate the concept historically. I think those long descriptions are much too heavy and much too detailed. My view of the article is that it should be basically a short mother article with lots of pointers to spinnouts.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I did not express myself well. I mean in part that the article should cover all major viewpoints, including those that are not in the majority. Also, I think a historical approach helps readers understand why scientists favored a certain approach and why they ended up rejecting it. There is after all some progress in science. Finally, the section I provided a link to (on molecular genetcis) may indeed be a view I think is wrong, but it s a view many readers think is right so we need to provide fair coverage. The ultimate rseult is that much of the article will not b about my view of race, but that is not a bad thing. Slrubenstein | Talk

Paolo Padovani

Hi. You've voted keep for an AFD you started. The correct thing to do is to withdraw your AFD.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:10, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that is necessary - others might disagree still. I don't see any harm in having the discussion.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:13, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Black Legend

I have attempted to amend the Powell thesis again, although at this point I think it might be best just to omit all description of his quotation and just segue to the quote directly.

Thank you for your efforts and your encouragement.Pirate Dan (talk) 20:43, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Charles Sanders Peirce

Hi Maunus!

I appreciate the comments that you made. I was away from WP for some weeks, but it seems to me that The Tetrast had been acting on many of your suggestions, prioritizing updating the article to comply with the manual of style (WP:MOS). It seemed that he was collaborating, and so I don't understand your failing the article now (rather than letting the editors improve it and submitting it for your final judgement).

I should state that I am new at the GA process, so perhaps you don't need to give an explanation or it may not be appropriate to discuss further specifics here. I apologize if my comment seems pointed or rude.

Thanks again for your previous comments, which have generally been helpful. I expect that the editors will be busy with the article for some months, addressing your comments.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, the problem was that I had already failed it when tetrast changed his mind and started to cooperate (I may have been to rash in doing that but there really is no point in conducting a review when the main contributor is not interested in complying with the GA criteria) - the only way to un-fail is to renominate it and do the review again. I think that if the article is renominated it will pass without problems, as the Tetrast has now done quite a bit of work to improve the article along the lines suggested by the GA criteria. And perhaps renoming for GA is not even the best idea, maybe going straight for FA would be within reach - although this of course requires even greater will to comply with reviewers comments. Sorry not to have been very helpful. ·Maunus·ƛ· 08:26, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Juan Diego

Would you please look at the recent history which resembles edits made on related articles and maybe put something on the talk page, could be just a link to relevant discussions on other talk pages. I'm busy for a few days and will be travelling plus on a laptop which I hate. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 08:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Done. Have a good trip!·Maunus·ƛ· 09:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Just to my father-in-laws as a family visit and to do some agility with our dogs. And to do foodie shopping as a bonus to make up with hours of dog-sitting while my wife takes her dad to the hospital (which would be fine if one of her dogs didn't howl when she's away). I'm not sure what to do about the recent edits at Juan Diego (and why is it mentioned twice?) Dougweller (talk) 09:54, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I am also unsure - I think currently science is down 0 - 1 to the catholic church in those articles, but pending more scholars taking an interest in rebutting those spurious claims there is little we can do.·Maunus·ƛ· 10:32, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Femto Bot

I unblocked it, because its tasks are fairly innocuous and it seems a bit punitive to prevent it doing them just because Rich is blocked. I won't object if you reblock it, though do remember to disable the autoblock. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Alright, no problems.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Also if you do anything like that again, remember that the 72 hours you put did not match the block of the operator. Further I think you should have emailed me and left a note on my talk page, at least one of the two would have been courteous, to save me wasting resource running the bot. No harm done though. Rich Farmbrough, 02:50, 23rd day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

Sorry for not notifying. In any case I think you should consider drastically reducing your bot activity.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I have! But if you mean I should stop successful and uncontentious tasks, I can see no advantage. But perhaps I'm missing something, or perhaps you are just seeing the headlines at AN/I. Rich Farmbrough, 17:57, 24th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

I only know that I get annoyed several times a day by botched edits by bots - yours and others. A few years ago it was a lot less frequent.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hi, I wonder if you could give your opinion on the name of the Nations and intelligence article here [20].--Victor Chmara (talk) 20:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You might want to watch

Zeit Totzuschlagen (talk · contribs). Dougweller (talk) 14:15, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye out, it does look familiar.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --Dougweller (talk) 17:03, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of IQ testing environmental variances

The article IQ testing environmental variances has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This article is a POV fork that represents the "environmentalist" perspective in the Race and intelligence debate. However, there is no need for an article like this, because both environmentalist and genetic viewpoints can be and are discussed in the main article. In fact, most if not all views expressed in this article can be found in the main article, too.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying - I have removed the prod template and given some reasons in the editsummary.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

IQ testing environmental variances

Everything worthwhile is this article is already included in Race and intelligence. What possible purpose the article could have when it does not contain anything that the main article does not have? What "X and intelligence" articles are similar? Can you tell me what "IQ testing environmental variances" means, and what the article should contain? Do you think there should a separate article containing only hereditarian R&I arguments? How can you have a NPOV if the article deals with only one side of the argument`?

Moreover, it is certainly a POV fork as it is stated on the talk page that it was cut and pasted from the main article.--Victor Chmara (talk) 16:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I Made a short statement at the original site of you and Sightwatcher's discussion. It is not inherently a POV to claim that there are environmental factors that influence intelligence - everyone agrees there is. This article should describe those factors and how they have be discovered, in a neutral way. There is nothing inherently POV about that. As I said we have an article about Heritability of IQ which is also not an inherently pov article because it can simply describes the different research into heritability of IQ. The correct thing to do with a bad article is to improve it - not delete it. Feel free to AfD it or nominate it to a merger if you feel that is best.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Letter to The Economist January 29th–February 4th 2011

The ArbCom case on Race and intelligence is mentioned in a letter to The Economist.[21] -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Blocks for copyviolations

Hi. :) I know you removed your comment here based on a misunderstanding of the particular case, but I just wanted to clarify that we do block for copyright violations routinely. It's listed among the common rationales for blocking in blocking policy (Wikipedia:Block#Protection) and clearly stated in copyright policy, as well as being spelled out in Wikipedia:Copyright violations. It isn't punitive, but an effort to prevent future misuse of the project. Of course, I may in turn be misunderstanding your comment, but in case not I figured I'd better clarify. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

We block for persistent copyright violations, not for a single case without hearing a rationale from the offender. That's what I meant.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, there you go. I did misunderstand you. Happens so easily in text fora. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok

Thanks, Greetings. --Davide41 (talk) 16:03, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

TB

Hello, Maunus. You have new messages at Bulldog123's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

edit warring on norwegians w. pakistani background

please note that alphasinus has made the same controversial additions today without any discussion. he was banned by Danger for edit warring as he made five reverts in less than 24 hours. Before that slrubenstein warned him not to revert. his ban expired today, and without any discussion, let alone consensus, he reverted again. please also note his insulting remarks. -- mustihussain (talk) 16:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I think your concern has already been adressed. If he keeps reverting he will, of course, be blocked again.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

he reverted again.-- mustihussain (talk) 17:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

~~~~?

You seem to have forgotten to sign your (excellent) recent posting in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/White Argentine, and the auto-sign bot seems to have missed this too - perhaps you should rectify this, for clarity. Thanks, AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed now.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Incomplete refs

Hi Manus, I found you through the history of the article Mestizo as the contributor of a few paragraphs with incomplete references. You possibly just forgot to add the cited works for Knight, Bartolomé, Wade (1997) and Wade (1981) or they somehow got removed later. Also, the 1981 Wade reference is missing on Race and Ethnicity in Latin America and Mexican people as well. Just dropped by to make you aware of this. jonkerz♠ 20:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll supply them. ·Maunus·ƛ· 21:00, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Norwegians

If Norwegians are a national group, what are the term for ethnic Norwegians? You're edits regarding this issue are not in accordance with similiar articles like Danes, Austrians, Japanese people, Koreans, Mongols, Vietnamese people, English people, Scottish people, Irish people, Welsh people and etc. What's next? Merging inhabitants of Yakutsk with Yakuts?Alphasinus (talk) 17:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

We do not have distinct article on citizens of denmark and danes. "danish people" redirect to Danes, Austrian people redirect to Austrians, Japanese, Scots, Irish, Welsh and English are disambiguation pages, Korean people redirects to Koreans, Mongolian people redirects to Mongols, Yakut people redirect to Yakuts. There is simply no precedent for having distinct articles for ethnic and national groups. And even if there were - they would have to rely on sources. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:25, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Are Danes Danish citizens or is it the other way around? I dont get where you're going with this...Alphasinus (talk) 21:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

For each of the groups you list is only one page per ethno-national group - not separate pages for ethnic and national groups, as you are trying to defend for Norwegians/Norwegian people. You are simply doing it wrong.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

In almost all European cases: citizenship = = being a whatever. There are a few exceptions in which being a something has a voluntary factor. For example, in the case of Norwegians, Samis have Norwegian citizenship but do not define themselves as Norwegian. If they want to define themselves as Norwegians, there is however nothing (no cultural nor genetic argument) stopping them from being Norwegian. In the case of Danes, there is the Danish minority in Southern Schleswig which has a special status and in which at least some would argue that you can be Danish by choice (notice: by choice, not through genetics. there are Danes South Schleswigans with ancestors from Turkey, China and everywhere else on the planet) and some Danish laws accommodate specifically for these mainly German citizens who have attended the Danish school system in Southern Schleswig. What you are trying is to take the Norwegianess away from Norwegians who happen to have Pakistani or other ancestors. That is simply not covered by any of the references from the corresponding countries. Also, the numbers you refer, for example for Austrians in Austria, which you seem to want to be people who have genetic links going back thousands of years, are simply not that -- they refer to Austrian citizens living in Austria and that includes all Austrians, no matter what their hereditary origin may be. That is tee same in the other cases I have seen so far. --Johanneswilm (talk) 01:28, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Right, the page on Danes and Austrians likely need to be cleaned up as well. Once I find the time, I will start looking through all the references and see to what degree they are credible and/or in accordance with official Danish and Austrian documents. I do not have enough time to check all the other groups, but it seems to me that there has been a general tendency to try to push a political agenda with several articles that describe nations. --Johanneswilm (talk) 17:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Why are you so dedicated with erasing all information about northern european ethnic groups? It's not like your interested in merging citizens of Somalia with Somali people? I have a feeling that you're the one with a tendency to push political agenda on articles that describe nations...Alphasinus (talk) 18:15, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

We also don't have separate article on Somalians and somali people. You really pick bad examples. ·Maunus·ƛ· 20:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah yeah, as I imagined -- a 5 minute research on some of the data given on the Austrians page in concerns of ethnic origin show the same problem -- in some cases numbers are taken for number of Austrian citizens living in some country from [22], in other cases a number is chosen of people who claim to be of Austrian "ethnic origin" (using numbers from US and Canadian census). The number for "ethnic Austrians" in Austria which apparently is taken is taken from the CIA world fact book, originally comes from the Austrian census (which is referenced in the CIA wfb), but in the census this figure describes not "ethno-Austrian" but rather Austrian citizens. In cases where two numbers exist (such as the US) of both Austrian citizens in the US and US Americans who have answered as part of a census that they believe they are of Austrian "ethnicity", it seems that always the highest figure has been chosen. Now the question is -- will you Alphasinus go in and delete all the non-comparable figures and in the end only leave those for Austria or possibly the official Austrian figures of how many of their citizens live abroad, or do I again have to go through the entire article and clean it up one by one? Either way, int he end every single case of this misleading usage of demographics should end. --Johanneswilm (talk) 20:37, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I would like to call your attention to the history of Norwegian Swedes, where Alphasinus recently moved the article and completely changed the topic from being about Swedes of Norwegian origin to be about Swedes residing in Norway. I reverted this. I am not convinced of the value of either version, but it seemed like a strange move, especially as images, categories and templates belonging to the original version still remained. (See also my comment on Alphasinus talk page.) --Hegvald (talk) 21:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Harassment by your part

About my talk page:

I read the messages and then, I delete most of them. I personally hate user talk pages clustered with tons of messages. I also reserve the right to answer. As a free editor, I have the right to answer or not.

Maunus, you're just plainly trying to missrepresent my editorial "behaviour" by labeling it as "standard" (when I've been around this project for almost 6 years), yet another bad attitude from you, an editor holding the privileged position of administrator. With this intromission from your part in a two-sided conversation in which you had not been involved, you've just proved to the Wikipedia community to have taken a personal interest against myself given the past conflicts you've had with me. This is more evident not only by you meddling in this, but by trying to missrepresent me in order to take an somehow official step (request for comment).

I guess then I'll have to take this case to the appropiate administrator forum to explain what I expressed above, because now I feel harassed and falsely attacked by an administrator. AlexCovarrubias ^{( Talk? )} 01:38, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I have answered at your own talkpage.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:39, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Re:AlexCovarrubias

Yes, since Alex appears to have an inclination for disregard of discussion over editorial content, no matter how well-intentioned and pertinent the arguments of his interlocutors, in a fashion counter to policy and guidelines such as WP:EQ and WP:EP. Missionary (talk) 02:21, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I will prepare the draft at User:Maunus/RfCdraft - please provide diffs of your interaction with him.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:22, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

EP

Thanks for your kind note on my talk page. I will endeavor to remain focused on identifying topics to be treated on the page. I can remember when EP made me angry, too, so I'm not that ticked off about your behavior. I'd be much obliged if you could offer your corrections with a little more gentleness that blanking my comments. Please give me a little time, and you might see that I am indeed using the conversation to identify changes to the page (e.g., adding race and inequality). Leadwind (talk) 15:44, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

EP doesn't make me angry. The behavior of some Evolutionary Psychologists like Pinker annoys me because he misrepresents his opponents viewpoint just as much as some EP-critics misrepresent EP, and because he takes on the role of the poor victim of political correctness which is a ridiculous coming from a guy that makes a great living being "politically incorrect" whatever that is. As for EP itself I'm rather indifferent - I don't find universals of human behavior or psychology very interesting because they are, well...universal. I am more interested in differences, how to explain them, how to understand what they mean for the lives of individual human beings and how knowledge about individual differences can be used to improve life for individual human beings. For example I don't see what good comes from knowing that males are naturally prone to agression (its not new or surprising for one) - it just detracts attention from the interesting question - why aren't all males aggressive? Why don't all stepmothers abuse their children? Why don't all socially disadvataged men rape women? Why aren't all men promiscuous? Those are the interesting questions and the answers to those questions can help us iomprove society and life for us humans - and EP can't provide them. I believe very strongly as someone once told Humphrey Bogart that "Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above" - I don't see how EP is going to help us in that task. But by all means let them study "human nature" if they find it fascinating - I also don't believe that anyone needs EP to provide a scientific basis for discrimination and social darwinism, people have been able to discriminate and oppress for millenia without the help of psychologists, I don't think EP is dangerous. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:07, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll say that you're quite the champion of moderation compared to certain other editors. I agree that it's our task to rise above nature. I'd like to think that EP could give us a clearer view of "nature" so that we are better prepared to rise above it. I agree that your proximate questions about individual behaviors are more pressing than EP's ultimate questions about the origins of behavior. If people weren't so opposed to EP (and, frankly, so ignorant about it), it wouldn't be such an interesting topic. Leadwind (talk) 16:57, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Leadwind: I'd like to think that EP could give us a clearer view of "nature" so that we are better prepared to rise above it. An inaccurate understanding of human nature with lead to unsuccessful strategies to change negative behaviors. For example, rape is a real hot button topic. Some folks think that even researching rape from an EP perspective is morally wrong. But, if we have an inaccurate understanding of why some men rape (and virtually no women do), rape prevention efforts are less likely to succeed. "Nature, Mr. Alnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above" is a video clip, and quote, that I use in class to make this point. You are interested in individual differences -- fine. Other folks are interested in human universals, and how they got to be that way. That should be fine, too. Right? Memills (talk) 18:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is fine. And I have no problems with EP as long as it doesn't reject or ignore findings by other disciplines, misrepresent arguments by its critics. But unfortunately some Ep proponents like Pinker tend to do so quite a lot. For example there is a large body of anthropological literature documenting that actual human relationships as they play out in everyday life does not conform to the predictions of "kin selection" but that kinship has to do with forming social bonds in early childhood rather than with genetic relatedness. EP generally ignores this data or rejects it out of hand. This is where I take issue with EP'ers. I don't mind that they set up their little experiments of "altruism" or "cheater detection", but when this is taken to be the only form of valid data and research in other disciplines that contradict it are not even considered it becomes a problem. It also becomes a problem when these findings are argued to "prove" theories about the nature of mind that are not believed by any of the other fields of specialists that have the mind as their domain, and when the possible evolutionary basis for these theories are not even considered. For me the logical leap from providing evidence that humans notice unbalanced reciprocity to positing that 1. humans have a modular mind and 2. there is a cheter detection module, is huge. I don't see Ep'ers willing to engage with other possible explanations or explore how their findings fit into other theoretical frameworks. this moves EP closer to what I'd expect of a religion than from a science.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:15, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

But, how is this different from any other scientific paradigm that is at odds with other ones? Of course they are more interested in their own hypotheses than those of competing disciplines. They are looking at the world via a particular theoretical lens. Don't EPers deserve to make their hypotheses, test them, and see what they come up with? You believe much of what they say is wrong -- but censoring their work on WP, or repeatedly challenging it at each and every turn, isn't the way to go. First let them make their case. The EP page is a theoretical POV page (not a general psychology page) -- it is coming from a particular perspective. Let them present it. I think homeopathy is bunk, but, when I go to that page at WP, I hope to learn about what homeopaths believe and what evidence they can muster, not just learn what critics think about it. Memills (talk) 18:36, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

See, this is where an otherwise pleasant exchange of viewpoints goes wrong. You are attributing me views, motivations and behaviors that I do not hold. I have not proposed and will not propose to "censor" anything. On the contrary I have consistently proposed to include the many critical viewpoints along side the ones from inside EP. I also don't believe EP'ers are wrong. Nor that there is a fundamental difference between this academic dispute and others. Except maybe this is a bit more polarized (which I think is the result of ultimately political discourses that are brought into the scientific domain). You say that "EP is a theoretical POV page" there is no such category of pages in wikipedia if that means that the page is dedicated to present a viewpoint without describing how it relates to other alternative viewpoints. That is simply not how wikipedia works as I have tried to explain to you numerous times now. The EP page is a wikipedia article the purpose of which is to explain to the reader what EP is and how it is viewed and described by its proponents and critics alike. The article cannot be written from any other perspective than the encyclopedic perspective. Readers who want the EP perspective without interference from the viewpoints of other disciplines can read an EP textbook or a blog. ·Maunus·ƛ· 19:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

AlexCovarrubias RfC

Hello, I have added the RfC you just created to this list: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct/UsersList. Please rectify if my wording is inappropriate. Missionary (talk) 07:06, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Stereotypes of white people

I have no problem with the word essentialist because it's very appropriate. However, I wrote just oversimplifications because someone was arguing about the definition, so I grabbed one from a dictionary. So don't be surprised if someone tries to change it to something which implies that stereotypes can be correct or rational. BillMasen (talk) 15:52, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I am always prepared for that - an armed with a body of literature for defense purposes. Thanks for the heads up.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:09, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Your reading skills or effort

I've undone your unconstructive revert here. In the future, please pay closer attention to what you are reverting. Thank you. --87.79.119.75 (talk) 17:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

In the future please refrain from adding personal attacks in your edit summaries, people tend to get more hostile and less inclined to reason when confronted with those.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:32, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Give me a better word for someone who reverts without looking at what he is reverting and I will use that word instead. There is also nothing to "reason" about whatsoever in this particular case. You and your revert were unequivocally wrong, and done out of a lack of effort or capability (in hindsight, the former appears to be the case rather than the latter as I presumed in my edit summary). --87.79.119.75 (talk) 17:43, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Here is a reason: because fasiling to follow our policy of civilty will eventually get you blocked, and because acting like a dick doesn't accomplish anything other than getting other people to stop talking to you. Now please leave my talkpage or I will have you escorted out.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:44, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Erzurum

Adding semi protection and Level 1 PC doesn't go any good; PC1 holds non-autoconfirmed editors edits for review, while semi stops them from editing altogether. PC2 can be used in addition to PC1; but the only result of PC1 on top of semi is to make the page load at a snails pace, so I removed PC1 from this article. Courcelles 05:44, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I hadn't tried using PC before.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

South Caucasian languages

Maunus, a move request at South Caucasian languages has been decided in favor of moving the article to Kartvelian languages. Since you weren't involved in the discussion, would you be willing to close the RFM and move the article? Thanks. --Taivo (talk) 04:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Done.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks :) --Taivo (talk) 13:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

As you did the move could you also close the requested move discussion at Talk:Kartvelian languages#Requested moves. Instructions on how this is usually done are at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions. Thanks. Dpmuk (talk) 19:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yeah i forgot that.·Maunus·ƛ· 1|9:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

For future reference when closing requetsed moves please also remove the {{Requested move/dated}} tag as otherwise the bot will continue to list it at WP:RM. I've done it for you in this case. Dpmuk (talk) 19:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!·Maunus·ƛ· 20:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)