User talk:MastCell

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Chuckle

... on your "fascism" comment. That's very true; it's actually quite funny. It seems to have become a generic term of abuse, typically invoked when the aroused party has run out of (or never had any) rational arguments. Cheers! Antandrus (talk) 21:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I can't really take credit - it was Orwell's observation. You can't throw a stone without hitting an Orwell analogy on Wikipedia - someone mentioning doublespeak, or thoughtcrime, or memory holes. It's worse than Nazi analogies; even less actual thought goes into them. It is ironic to imagine Orwell reading Wikipedian discourse - the terms he invented to describe fascism have suffered the same fate (mindless, meaningless, thoughtless overuse) as he that which he observed in the term "fascist". Or maybe I'm overthinking it. MastCell ^Talk 22:01, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Funny, I was just thinking about how the use of the term consensus on Wikipedia represents a form of doublespeak. II | (t - c) 01:04, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I didn't mean you - you're thoughtful and have read the book, I'm sure. It just seems that 1984 references have become a bit tired around here. Or maybe I really have come to love Big Brother :P MastCell ^Talk 03:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Haven't noticed many 1984 references, but I know you didn't mean me because I think the above was my first one. ;) By the way, everyone at my high school (which was quite average) had to read the book, so that doesn't say much. I don't know whether I think any 1984 references aside from the one about consensus make much sense. The thought on consensus was provoked by someone saying that a 60% majority against autopromotion was a "clear consensus". I sometimes see people invoking the word consensus even when they are significantly in the minority. The word consensus is an easily and often-abused term, though. I've been reading Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929, and on page 70 he has a quote from Princeton professor Joseph Stagg Lawrence in 1929: "The consensus of ... the millions ... is that stocks are are not at present overvalued ... where is that group of men with the all-embracing wisdom which will entitle them to veto the judgment of this intelligent multitude"? Of course, Stagg Lawrence was probably closer to the consensus of economists at the time than many other statements which you see on Wikipedia. II | (t - c) 06:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, "consensus" on Wikipedia actually means "consensus among people who know what they're talking about." That may look substantially different from "consensus of everyone who registered an opinion." That sort of distinction is essential if one is trying to build a serious, respectable reference work with an open-editing model. Of course, a judgment about whether someone is capable of ass-elbow differentiation always carries a subjective component. MastCell ^Talk 19:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

...I'll just go back to writing doubleplusgood articles, or maybe just plusgood ones...Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:55, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

<ri, as in la vache qui > What a splendidly swift response. Unfortunately the external link you provided gives me the rather Orwellian message 403 Forbidden You don't have permission to access /library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc on this server. Apache/1.3.31 Server at www.orwell.ru Port 80, so will just have to catch up on other reading. By the way, did you know that the Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters in Dundas House has splendidly fascist railings ? . . dave souza, talk 19:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Seen on NewYorkBrad's talk page

Your comment: "It's a bit troubling when people reserve their harshest criticism for those who share their general worldview but are insufficiently zealous in enforcing it. That's one dividing line between responsible advocacy and fanaticism." Thanks for that: concise and useful. Is it original with you? Either way, I'm sure I'll be quoting it in the future, so thank you. Mike Christie (talk) 00:11, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

It's original with me, I think - but then I have been known to suffer from cryptomnesia... glad you liked it. :) MastCell ^Talk 03:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep - not a bad saying at all. My great great grandfather, a politician and wit, said that nationalism is collective egotism. Dunno if he was the first but I never saw it elsewhere. Liked it.

PS: I was in the organic supermarket today and saw some beet sugar for folks who are allergic to cane sugar - I think my body would have some massive anaphylaxis with a sugar allergy....

[1] - gosh, should I be worried XD. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:53, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Fresh eyes

Since you were the first person that I saw on the Administrators' noticeboard to talk about fresh eyes, I'm picking you at random. ☺ Please take a look at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Leanne and tell us whether the evidence adds up the same way for you. Uncle G (talk) 13:08, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that was a truly exhaustive report. I came to the same conclusion as you - but then, I tend toward the suspicious side when it comes to sockpuppetry. It looks like the case has already wrapped up - I went ahead and tied up one loose end. I think you reached the right conclusion. Happy editing. MastCell ^Talk 16:16, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Need a hand

here's one..(couldn't help myself)

I hate to do this to you, I know you are rather busy/stressed, but I could use a hand with the sniping on talk:Abortion and a san check of what I've been doing. If you can't/won't/don't have time to do it, could you refer this to someone who does?--05:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have only one rule on Wikipedia: avoid abortion-related articles at all costs. I broke my own rule once - because of an aggressively counterfactual and ideological article at abortion and mental health - and it led to a 6-month saga culminating in the only ArbCom case I have ever filed. That said, I will take a look, but I can't promise much. The go-to people on those topics, in terms of sanity, used to include User:Andrew c and User:Severa. Severa is long gone; not sure if Andrew c still participates. You could try User:GTBacchus as well - I think he has tried to resolve abortion-related issues on-wiki before. MastCell ^Talk 05:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I miss Severa, and GTbacchus and Andrew c when they're around do their best. Thanks anyway.--Tznkai (talk) 05:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I do actually have one other rule on Wikipedia: try at all costs to avoid getting into a back-and-forth with User:Ferrylodge. Admittedly I did break this one recently at Talk:Clarence Thomas, but every time I violate it I regret it. And it looks like this would involve breaking both rules. :) I will take a look, but my past experience with Ferrylodge on abortion-related topics is probably somewhat prejudicial. I have a fairly strongly formed opinion about his editing on those topics, and so am not approaching each new incident with a completely open (or naive) perspective. MastCell ^Talk 16:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Attachment pages

Unfortunately as soon as these pages became unprotected the same sock edits have appeared courtesy of this IP and this new userFainites ^barleyscribs 22:45, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Reprotected. MastCell ^Talk 05:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

quell surprise....aargh. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

11 out of 10 for persistence, eh? Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

it's still blacklisted at meta

From here, the lenr-canr.org website is still blacklisted at meta[2], in case you weren't aware. Your statement sort of makes it look as if lenr-canr was no longer blacklisted. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction; I will profess ignorance about the workings of the spam blacklist. I suppose then it was only New Energy Times which was deblacklisted, then. MastCell ^Talk 20:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. lenr-canr was blacklisted first at the local blacklist, and then it got delisted when it was added at the meta blacklist, since the local blacklist mechanisms use both its local blacklist and the meta blacklist. Having the same link in the two blacklists is redundant and it's just extra work for the blacklist filter. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Crappification

Add a no-bot tag, abandon ship and remove inbound links. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

If you wanted to work on something that huge numbers of people are actually reading, your expertise would be most welcome at influenza, influenza pandemic, 2009 swine flu outbreak, swine flu and Influenza A virus subtype H1N1‎. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look; thanks for the suggestions. MastCell ^Talk 16:17, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Origin article doesn't look so bad. Guessing from your username, might you be a person who could help with cytokine storm? Another suddenly-prominent article that is in pretty bad shape. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Broda Otto Barnes

I just want to weigh in that I am impressed with your level headedness on this AfD. It's an excellent case study of the good and bad of the process. Anyway, I could give you a barnstar (still might), but thought you might just appreciate a modest "well done" and "keep up the good work" message. --Quartermaster (talk) 14:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

That's very kind of you. I've been feeling like it's not my proudest moment on Wikipedia; I think I've probably given in to frustration more that I should have. I appreciate your note; it's good to know I'm not totally out in left field. MastCell ^Talk 05:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

You're not. At the same time I can agree with DGG. But on the third hand I gave up reading the AfD about two thirds of the way through, and thus (as well as perhaps for other reasons) do not feel qualified to "!vote". (Would that more others had similar qualms.) Oh well, old man Barnes did also manage to publish in peer-reviewed journals (PRJ). Of course, such journals can publish stuff that it utterly wrong or even plain bad, but all in all we can have some trust in PRJ, or at least we can in those on (conventional, atomistic) medicine, if not those on "neurolinguistic programming" and so forth. ¶ Or so I thought until just today. And how naive I was (slashdotted). Isn't "free enterprise" wonderful?! -- Hoary (talk) 08:56, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem is that even the most august peer-reviewed journal cannot be expected to be eternally relevant. Material published in Science in the 1930s is not necessarily any more "correct" today than material published in the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine in the 1930s. In 1942, it was reasonable to use body temperature as a way of measuring thyroid function. Today, it's ludicrous to do so, because of the existence of far more accurate, specific, useful, and sophisticated measures. But that obvious and crucial point is lost in translation once the "process" starts proceeding.

The Barnes article illustrates what I consider a problematic phenomenon: his publications in reputable, peer-reviewed journals are listed to provide him with an air of notability and respectability, but the actual text of our article simply cites brodabarnes.com 50 times to hype the aspects of his work which are completely at odds with modern medical knowledge. Our article inappropriately commutes the respectability of his (outdated) peer-reviewed publications to his more outlandish claims. But perhaps AfD was the wrong venue in which to address that problem.

I have occasionally been approached to be on the editorial board, or even "editor-in-chief", of startup medical journals. I suspect many others in my position have as well. I can see the appeal - it's a line on the resume with (often) little actual work attached. But it doesn't shock me that Merck had a "house journal"; the peer-reviewed literature is full of traps like that. Interestingly, Wikipedia has made me more aware of them. MastCell ^Talk 05:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I have modified a comment of mine there. You were right to object to it. My apologies. DGG (talk) 15:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

No worries; I appreciate your response, and I'm sorry for giving you a hard time about it. You're a good egg. MastCell ^Talk 05:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Isn't he? My life would be so much poorer without disputes with DGG. I particularly enjoy those rare occasions when he votes "merge" (or even "delete"?) and I vote "keep". If he's ever around my part of the world, I'd be delighted to meet and buy him a beer (or whatever) or three. Anyway, noting that he voted to keep this article, I felt honor bound to vote delete. ¶ Really, this article gives me a queasy feeling. I do believe that a lot of honest work has gone into it, that it's genuinely informative, and that DGG and others bring up good arguments for it. If I may wildly fantasize for a moment and, in a damnably un-Wiki elitist way postulate a special WP for access by intelligent, highly literate adults only, I'd certainly say that this article should belong there. But as it is, it seems somehow deceptive in its likely effect. And as you say, its sourcing is very brittle. So, to an AfD that's already long, I've just added a long and tedious delete vote. (Sprinkle "!" in front of "vote" to taste, of course.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't participate much at AfD but what really jumped out at me is that the two "sides" were almost talking past each other. Those voting to keep repeatedly responded to delete arguments by stating that the quality of the science wasn't the issue, even when those voting to delete weren't making that argument but were instead speaking to the quality of sourcing. Knowing the personalities involved I don't believe this was willful misrepresentation but failure to communicate. Whether that failure was on the part of the reader not reading critically and responding to what he or she expected to see, or the writer not writing sufficiently clearly, I can't say. But it's something we all should work on. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 09:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure would be a shame if something happened to that intellectual reputation I've built up here... MastCell ^Talk 04:58, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

When writing my "delete" "!vote", I wondered if I might be exaggerating a little. If so, I've been overtaken: it now seems that its contributors have decided to amplify those weaknesses that you, I and others pointed out. -- Hoary (talk) 05:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• I can see where you're coming from here, and the article should be probably be trimmed. However, it does attribute the beliefs to Barnes, and his theories do not seem to be completely at odds with the medical literature. I don't think the article is that big of a deal. The subclinical hypothyroidism controversy is a real scientific controversy. In 2005 pro and con articles on revising the upward reference TSH number down argued about it (lowering TSH reference would increase the diagnosis of subclinical hypothyroidism), with the pro article noting that a 2002 guideline proposed revising the upper range down from 5.5 to 3; a 2009 Mayo Clinic article says revising it down to 3 would increase diagnosis of hypothyroidism 4-fold. A 2007 HUNT article found a linear relationship with cholesterol; a 2008 article by the same group found a relationship with CHD morality. Findings like these aren't consistent; a massive 2007 review shows the situation to be fairly complicated, but it's not a wacky theory. By the way, all articles I've linked to have free full-text available. II | (t - c) 08:12, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• The sources at Broda Otto Barnes are being used in a strange way, giving an impression of an unbalanced article. Conventionally in WP, we think that a person is notable when others write about them, even when those who write are non-technical. In an article about a medical scientist, we also want to know what the mainstream thinks about the medical theories of the article subject. A regular medical doctor with some conventional publications (dating from many years ago) who also holds views now generally considered to be fringe might need a bit of work to be sure the article comes out balanced. This work could probably be done but finding consensus for the needed changes could be messy. EdJohnston (talk) 20:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Ed, I agree on all counts.

II, the issue of subclinical hypothyroidism is a genuine medical controversy, as you mention. There are advocates of both lowering the TSH threshold (that is, relaxing diagnostic criteria) and making TSH criteria more stringent, for example by using age-adjusted norms for TSH. One could write a well-sourced, neutral, encyclopedic article covering this controversy, drawing on numerous reputable sources from the peer-reviewed medical literature much as you've done in your post, perhaps including PMID 14722150 (hopefully, something of this sort already exists in our hypothyroidism article, but I'm afraid to look). The Barnes article isn't going that route. In any case, Barnes' claims fall demonstrably outside even the fringes of the debate in mainstream medical circles. No change in diagnostic criteria would bring the prevalence of hypothyroidism anywhere near 40%. Even people who advocate treating subclinical hypothyroidism limit their arguments to improved lipid profile and possibly improved fatigue/nonspecific symptoms - the range of maladies ascribed by Barnes to subclinical hypothyroidism is, to use your word, wacky. There is no scientific evidence that I am aware of which supports Barnes' claim that "natural" thyroid hormone is superior to synthetic levothyroxine. Most importantly, Barnes did not employ the scientific method; he relates his own observations and hypotheses, supported by testimonials, anecdotes, and so forth. It's hard to be part of a scientific debate if you're not interested in rigorously testing your hypotheses; I'm sure I don't need to belabor the true-believer effect when subjective improvement is recorded in an uncontrolled setting where the observer believes strongly in the effectiveness of the treatment.

But of course these are mostly arguments about the subject itself; I find it interesting to discuss here, but I'm not going to pursue them on the article talk page. My main difficulties with the article content have to do with a) the obnoxious behavior of a couple of editors at the page, and b) the use and misuse of low-quality sources to create an article that is unreadable at best and misleading at worst. MastCell ^Talk 21:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I said the theory wasn't wacky because several of the maladies are symptoms of hypothyroidism, ie depression, joint pain, "apparent laziness in children" (lethargy). There might be some associations to cancer (eg hepatocellular carcinoma reported in 2009). By the way, the 2007 article you cited on the Barnes' talk page about age-adjusting the TSH acknowledges the problems with their hypothesis, and also said lowering the standard to 2.5 could diagnose as much as 35% of older people as hypothyroid. I haven't done enough research to say how much science Barnes did, but his article previously said that he spent much of his time looking at autopsy reports. Have you read his more recent research papers (PMID 4594123, PMID 472084, PMID 1206190). His hypotheses seem only a little more wacky than the hypotheses/conclusions surrounding antidepressants and stimulants for psychological problems ("wonder pills"), Vioxx, and the use of various drugs off-label. II | (t - c) 17:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Many of the symptoms of hypothyroidism are vague and non-specific. They overlap extensively with the symptoms of myriad other conditions, as well as the more general category of medically unexplained symptoms. Someone with excess fatigue, weight gain, lethargy, hypothermia, etc should definitely be evaluated for hypothyroidism, if it seems clinically appropriate. But virtually every human being suffers from fatigue, weight gain, menstrual irregularity, joint pain, etc at some point in their lives. It's part of the human condition. Occasionally it's due to hypothyroidism. Often it's not.

It's nonsense to claim that anyone with some combination of these common symptoms has hypothyroidism based on a slightly low basal temperature in the presence of normal thryoid-function testing. As to science, where is it? The basic algorithm for evaluating any diagnostic test is to choose a population of interest and a "gold standard" for diagnosing the disease in question. The population then undergoes both the experimental test and the "gold standard" test. That's how the operating characteristics of tests are explored systematically. Has anything like this ever been done with Barnes' test? Has anyone ever looked at the false-positive rate? How many people with fatigue or joint pains and a basal temp below 98.0F turned out not to have hypothyroidism?

You're sophisticated; I'm sure you know that anyone can mine PubMed to support any idea, no matter how out-there. Anything is theoretically possible; I'm talking about things that have some empiric evidence behind them. If M.D. Anderson reports an association between hypothyroidism and HCC in a case-control analysis, then I think that's an interesting finding that warrants further study. If a guy writes a book claiming that cancer (along with virtually every other human disease) is caused by hypothyroidism, then I'm a bit skeptical in the absence of supporting data.

Has there been any actual scientific evidence generated to support Barnes' claims? It appears to me (and I'm not an expert on Broda Barnes) that most of his work on hypothyroidism is in the form of testimonials common to late-night television ("Jane was feeling down and had gained 10 pounds. Her doctors told her she was depressed, but I put her on my special thyroid blend and 4 weeks later she was a new person!"), as well as anecdotal evidence and clinical impressions that uniformly support his preferred hypothesis. You're more sophisticated that the average talk-page denizen, so I'm sure I don't need to belabor the problem there. MastCell ^Talk 17:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thx

You nearly made me spill my coffee, I laughed so hard.LeadSongDog come howl 17:42, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

As Langston Hughes said (or maybe it was Madonna), we laugh to keep from crying. MastCell ^Talk 17:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Did you count the grilled cheese sandwich?LeadSongDog come howl 20:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

A new approach for dealing with conflict?

Hi MastCell, I started this section on Woonpton's talk page about a couple of ideas that have been floated for areas of conflict. One comes from SlimVirgin originally on the workshop page of the current Israel / Palestine ArbCom, the other from rootology on ANI in relation to the baronets dispute. Both approaches might have potential for fringe science areas, and I thought you'd be interested. I'd welcome your thoughts. Best, EdChem (talk) 05:55, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not MastCell but I'll answer anyway because I'm obnoxious like that. A proposal requiring that every edit opposing the flat earth hypothesis or perpetual motion to be balanced with an edit favoring flat earth or perpetual motion is not something I would support. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 09:06, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

That would not be 'balanced' within the meaning of WP:UNDUE, and (from my perspective) everyone is welcome to chip in their view. EdChem (talk) 13:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

?? That's not how I read SV's proposal. The way I read it, it does away with the notion of WEIGHT altogether. Fringe editors' favored interpretation of NPOV that says neutrality means having the article say "Some say the earth is flat, others say the earth is not flat," is bad enough, but Slim's proposal takes another step away from NPOV by mandating that every single editor must edit both ways; if the panel of uninvolved neutrality arbiters can tell that your edits are more toward "the earth is not flat" POV and don't favor the "earth is flat" POV enough, then you are tagged as a not-neutral editor and topic banned. This doesn't seem crazy to you?

In my initial response on my talk, before I'd looked at the specific proposals, I said that my first reaction to any suggestion that something that would work in geopolitical or ethnic conflicts should also work for fringe science topics is, "been there, done that." Perhaps a further word of clarification would be helpful: Elonka. Woonpton (talk) 04:07, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to MastCell for opening up his Talk page for this interesting debate. I think that there could be some value in SlimVirgin's proposal, if the team of neutrality checkers were picked differently. For nationalities, having some people from each side is good. For fringe, the team would need to be selected another way. Elonka's system for ethnic conflicts was trying to make a single admin do too much, and the diffusion of responsibility to a larger group would be good. I could even imagine the neutrality-checkers being elected (like we do now for checkusers), though that would take one election for each major controversy. EdJohnston (talk) 13:57, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, what a good idea, an election, something like an RfA. What could go wrong with that? As to MastCell "opening up" his talk for this, you'll notice he's not commenting. Perhaps anyone wanting to continue the discussion to do so on my talk, although you'll notice I'm not too keen on the idea myself. Woonpton (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought the checkuser/oversight election was rather civil. (No comments were allowed with the votes). The advantage of the mainstream over the fringe is that there are more people in the mainstream. With an election, you will presumably wind up with people who are typical of regular experienced editors, and maybe with some fringe people who are generally trusted. EdJohnston (talk) 17:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I don't mind people discussing this stuff on my talk page. I guess I think SlimVirgin's proposal is reasonable as a means of addressing the problems at Israeli-Palestinian articles - certainly it can't be any less successful than what's been done so far, right? I'm a bit leery of the idea of generalizing it, though. Political and nationalistic disputes are one thing - there is no "right" and "wrong" side, or rather both sides are both "right" and "wrong", or whatever - you know what I'm saying. It's not unreasonable to start from the understanding that both the "Israeli" and the "Palestinian" points of view (as if such monoliths existed) are equally valid for presentation in the encyclopedia. Scientific and technical disputes are different. Some concepts are "right", some are "wrong", and some are controversial. I don't think that you can apply the same precepts used for nationalistic or political disputes to scientific/medical articles. But I get tired of commenting at those sorts of debates, so I figured I'd sit this one out. MastCell ^Talk 00:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

"Stepping Back" eh?

You've still got the energy to block me. This madness is both frustrating and mildly embarrassing - for LK not me. I don't embarrass easily (I hope that's obvious by now). My soul request (or should that be sole?): Could you please (as a now ACTIVE administrator) clean up the typos and graffiti I had cleaned up before my actions were reverted. This occurred on credit crunch where some idiot has inserted "finance" crunch in the first sentence just to be a smart*ss and "bubbles" to "bubble" in DBMS. If you have a soul you'll improve WP by cleaning this up. If you don't you won't just out of spite. We'll see. If you're really a hard nut you'll delete this and do nothing (rot in H*ll if you do). - Lizzy"KeenEye"Coleman (talk) 08:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

In all honesty, when I drafted that notice at the top of my page, one of the few areas where I figured I'd remain administratively active (as I expect no one else to bother) was in handling your sockpuppets. I suspect that your apparently boundless energy and enthusiasm for this topic could be put to more productive use, but that's your call. No comment on whether I have a soul - I like to keep people guessing. MastCell ^Talk 00:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Ahhh...so you admit you knew no one else would "bother" if a sockpuppet cleaned up typos. So you had to step up to the plate on your lonesome, eh? The question is: If no one else would bother doing something so petty and spiteful and damaging to the "project", why would you? - Lizzy"KeenEye"Coleman (talk) 08:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I think other admins would probably agree that your sockpuppets should be blocked. I don't think that the long-suffering, law-abiding editors on your favorite topics should have to go through the lengthy process of familiarizing a new admin with your habits each time you create a few dozen new accounts, so I keep an eye on it. Let's not go any further with the charade that you're interested in fixing typos - it insults both of our intelligences. MastCell ^Talk 02:59, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

If you knew me better you would have used the term "masquerade" not charade. I once sweated for two days over which word to use. I went with masquerade as a hidden homage to George Benson. No one got the link, but then so much of my stuff goes over people's heads if they found all the connections their heads would explode. I don't deny I have an agenda, a purpose, a goal, a target. Yes, you are in my sights. No doubt your people have me in theirs. But the simple reality is that you reverted my edits that were SOLELY and EXCLUSIVELY cleaning up typos. You used the agenda to affect your decision-making as an adminstrator. I would not. That's the difference between me and you. You can't help yourself. I can. - Lizzy"KeenEye"Coleman (talk) 08:50, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Banned User

The DPeterson entity/Weidman has amde another brief appearance here.Fainites ^barleyscribs 07:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

OK. Looks quiet for now, but if it picks up feel free to let me know and I'll handle it. MastCell ^Talk 16:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Whey protein

This might very well be the worst article of all time? It has it all: uncritical advertising copy, biological nonsense , unreliable sources AND commercial spam. Is there some kind of award I could nominate it for? Tim Vickers (talk) 03:26, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's my suggestion:

This article sucks and is in need of attention. Please improve it in any way you can, if such a thing is possible.

(Modified from one of the deleted revisions of Template:Sucks) Antandrus (talk) 03:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

As a valuable bonus prize the prose sparkles like a divot. It's got that finely balanced almost-but-not-quite-gibberish quality that's hard to imitate. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

You guys really need to take your whey supplements. They can cure cynicism and empiricism (along with cancer, AIDS, and jock itch). If you don't believe me, just follow the 20+ links from our article to the "Whey Protein Institute" (wheyoflife.org), a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In all seriousness, Something Should Probably Be Done about that article.

I'm actually putting together a script which will randomly generate crappy Wikipedia articles from a set of basic rules and heuristics... a more complex project will be to write a script which will vociferously defend these crappy articles on talk pages by referencing medical-industrial-complex conspiracies and calling anyone who tries to clean up the articles "deletionists". This latter project requires some rudimentary artificial intelligence and I don't have the skill to code it, though. MastCell ^Talk 17:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

A precedent? David D. (Talk) 18:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Hah - if the [REDACTED] turned out in full force to shoot down this AfD, there's no whey an AfD would succeed here. More to the point, there has been some cursory scientific investigation into potential antiinflammatory or anticancer properties of whey protein. It's a typical problematic case for Wikipedia: there are a bunch of individual animal studies, many from the same group of researchers, claiming that whey prevents tumors in mice. There is no human data that I'm aware of.

So the whey marketing types come here and feature each of the mouse studies at great length, implying that they're relevant and ignoring the innumerable cases where advances in rodent cancer prevention have failed to translate into advances in human cancer prevention. Since the mouse studies are, technically, reliable sources, it becomes a policy quagmire. WP:MEDRS was drafted partly in response to this problem, and aims to avoid the laundry lists of primary animal studies which are generally touted at dietary-supplement articles as proof of benefit. Anyhow, I think with a few minutes of hardcore editing, the article has improved substantially. MastCell ^Talk 18:14, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Let me guess, the only citations these papers have are from letters to the editor saying that their research is complete crap? David D. (Talk) 18:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... I haven't checked the citation index or Google Scholar. The thing is, each of these articles heavily cites the others, which is understandable but hardly indicative of widespread acceptance. There is also a substantial literature from various dairy-farming trade groups on the many benefits of whey protein, though they should probably be taken with a grain of lactalbumin. MastCell ^Talk 18:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

User Phillind again

Hi, I see you are off admin duties. So, quickly ...

I raised the issue of the hoaxing user Phillind back in April with you.

He's responsible for this oddball children's author page "Ferzakerly Kernott".

He left us a little clue to his hoax:
He describes the author's husband "whom she met at a pub in Middle Wallop".
Middle Wallop is a geographical oddity in England. Ha, ha. She married at age 66.

So, it would be appropriate to delete page "Ferzakerly Kernott". Is there a procedure to follow? Should this be notated in some standard way?

Thanks, Varlaam (talk) 06:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hoaxes generally cannot be speedily deleted, and need to go through articles for deletion. I'd suggest nominating the article for deletion, explaining that it appears to be a hoax (certainly there's no Google presence for this supposedly notable author). If you need help with the AfD nomination, let me know. MastCell ^Talk 17:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Your talk page stalkers sometimes come through for you. I've opened Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ferzakerly Kernott based on not finding any evidence that this person ever existed. (It's hard to hide a published novelist from the libraries of the world). EdJohnston (talk) 17:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. :) MastCell ^Talk 17:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Attachment-based therapy (children)

Hi. That AT sock is back [3]. Please note the user name. This is one of his regular attacks on User:Jean Mercer and one of the things raised in the arbitration. Lester is Mercers pre-marriage name and the rest is spelling. Isn't there some rule about not having offensive user names? Fainites ^barleyscribs 06:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Yup. I semiprotected the target page again as well. MastCell ^Talk 17:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, MastCell, and you too, of course, Fainites. My gynecologist, my husband, and my two sons all confirm that I am not a man and have never been one. Actually, in case any one cares, Lester was the name of my first husband. After divorcing, I returned to my birth name, Mercer, and have kept it for well over 30 years now. (Fortunately, the fellows don't know the name of the present husband.) I legally changed the spelling of my first name, which was given to me by my mother in a fit of ill-advised cuteness. XX to all--Jean Mercer (talk) 14:46, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Thyroid article

This might be useful. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim. MastCell ^Talk 19:45, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hypothyroidism#Diagnostic_testing really needs a good wacking using that source. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Whoa....well,I do stacks of thyroid tests in psychiatry...all teh lithium, plus a one-off screening early on...one positive in the latter category in fifteen years there...and it was when I was working in the UK for six months. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, think of the thousands of cases you've missed by relying on scientific, evidence-based testing instead of one person's anecdotes backed by a handful of obscure infomercials-in-print... MastCell ^Talk 20:45, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Ahaa. Was there not a good peer-reviewed paper rebuffing this that can be added? Anyway, i met a makeup artist who'd picked up hyperthyroidism by detecting the protruding eyes in someone she was making up....Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

As is often the case with fringe stuff, it's far enough below the radar screen of the scholarly community that no one has bothered to specifically rebut this particular person's claims. Ordinarily this would be grounds for deletion under WP:FRINGE, but as the person himself has a claim to biographical notability, it's a bit complicated. Ideally, we could cover the notable aspects of his biography without giving undue weight to ignored or discredited health claims, but there are the usual roadblocks.

Curiously, one of Barnes' modern disciples has marketed the concept of Wilson's syndrome, essentially a slightly less sophisticated version of Barnes' claims, which has achieved sufficient fame (infamy?) to be officially debunked by the American Thyroid Association. MastCell ^Talk 21:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Is this a good place to hang out now OMs gone? I'd add something constructive but I'm far too tired after messing about with a circular hand saw. Goodnight! Verbal chat 21:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't match Orangemarlin's legendary hospitality. But I do have free beer and pretzels, as long as you show your Cabal Membership card. MastCell ^Talk 21:23, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

		Civility Award
		You're a better (more civil) man than I am, Gunga Din. Quartermaster (talk) 21:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

A question

Hi MastCell, you deleted the remarks at this RFC from a sock that went unnoticed for a really long time. My question is this, isn't it usual procedure to strike any and all comments and edits from a sock account when seen? As you can see, your actions were reverted with the comments that there was no need to adjust the RFC after it was archived. I haven't reverted it back to your edits as I want to be clear about the policy here about this. Thanks for your time. I have to admit, I had seen this editor around a lot and was quite surprised by the socking. Again, thanks for clarifying for me. Be well, --CrohnieGal^Talk 10:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find a policy explicitly describing such situations; it's one of the many areas where Wikipedia depends on the common sense of its editors. This seemed like a clear-cut case to me - an editor was using a sockpuppet to egregiously violate a topic ban. As part of the sock's activities, it commented extensively on an RfC directly related to the banned topic. The RfC is sort of a historical document - it will be referenced in the future, and it makes sense to clue in readers that at least one of the most vocal accounts was entirely illegitimate. Especially since people have an unfortunate habit of simply counting numbers of signatures rather than evaluating the quality of support for each RfC view.

But whatever. There are more important things to attend to on this site, and I'm tired of spending my volunteer time here dealing with zealots. The more time I spend interacting with those sorts of editors, the less I enjoy this site and the less patient I become. Thanks for the heads-up, though. MastCell ^Talk 16:22, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

6SJ7 (despite being named for the preamp tube in a highly regarded classic amplifier) is prone to do things like that. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

That reminds me: did you see that Fender is "reissuing" a bunch of classic amps? For the low, low price of $1,500 - $2,500? It's tempting to stimulate the economy by purchasing one. MastCell ^Talk 17:27, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time explaining. I agree with you and I'll do the revert if no one else has. I think common sense should be used here. The editor was very active in a lot of places that I saw, including the recall that got started during the RFC. Thanks again, --CrohnieGal^Talk 09:09, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm not asking you to reinstate the edits. I actually think that edit-warring over it would be worse than just leaving the sockpuppetry stand, which is why I'm not bothering to re-strike the material. It's up to you; it seems like there's some discussion about it on the RfC talk page, so whatever gets decided is fine with me - I'm not going to edit the RfC again. MastCell ^Talk 18:07, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)I understand and I don't do edit wars, 1 revert for me and I'm done unless it's totally obvious that it's vandalism. I saw the conversation and added to it. Someone else reverted it back to what you did. My last look showed a consensus coming to keep the edits like you had them. Thanks for your help and your time, --CrohnieGal^Talk 20:16, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Non-Drug, Non-Vaccine treatment of diseases

If one does a Google Search of >site:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov extracorporeal ultraviolet blood irradiation< one will find that many studies have been done. Some of the studies are a bit silly like exposing blood for many hours in UV, but others are more genuine and honestly done.

UV as a form of electromagnetic / photon radiation is at a frequency that is able to break chemical bonds, as such it can break up pathogenic causes of disease such as viruses, bacteria, and mycoplasmas. As a proponent of the use of vaccines, you should recognize that damaged virus vaccines and also live virus vaccines exist, and that their usage influences the human immune system to fend off those and similar viruses. The purpose of this treatment method is a self-development, as it were, of its own vaccine to the actual blood borne pathogens present in the body.

What is your view on extracorporeal ultraviolet blood irradiation for assisting the mammalian immune systems? Oldspammer (talk) 19:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Extracoporeal irradiation of the blood with UV-A has a variety of reasonably well-described effects on the immune system. The most widely used approach is called extracorporeal photopheresis, which involves separating lymphocytes from the blood via apheresis, incubating them with a photosensitizer (usually 8-methoxypsoralen), exposing them to ultraviolet light, and then reinfusing them. However, the effect of photopheresis is immunosuppressive, and so it would likely be counterproductive in treating an infectious disease. In fact, photopheresis is used to suppress inappropriate immune responses, as in the treatment of graft-vs.-host disease after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, the suppression of graft rejection after solid-organ transplantation, and the (experimental) treatment of some autoimmune disease.

The classical explanation for the effectiveness of photopheresis was simple damage from UV light, preferentially affecting activated lymphocytes. More recently, a few more complex mechanisms have been proposed, involving alteration of natural killer cell reactivity, regulatory T cell production, or selection of suppressive-phenotype antigen-presenting cells (eg PMID 18411417).

I'm not aware of any evidence that extracorporeal ultraviolet irradiation of the blood would be useful in treating infectious diseases. As I mentioned, the predominant effects are immunosuppressive, which would be counterproductive right off the bat. Some wavelengths of UV may cripple or destroy bacteria and viruses, but then you get into the age-old problem of all "blood purification" methods. You can't treat a systemic infection simply by "purifying" the blood, no matter how effectively you do so. Infectious organisms are not confined to the bloodsstream. They reside in tissue, in extracellular fluid, and in other reservoirs separate from the blood pool. Even if you eliminated every last bacterium circulating in the bloodstream, a person could (and likely would) be left with a substantial reservoir of infectious organisms in non-hematologic tissues and compartments.

As a means of "damaging" (attenuating) a virus to create a "vaccine", it seems awfully involved, expensive, invasive, and potentially dangerous to have someone undergo extracorporeal photopheresis when the desired effect can be achieved by simple vaccination. Did I address your question, or am I misunderstanding it? MastCell ^Talk 20:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I accept that what you say has been found. Another link for a Google search has numerous articles about what I was initially thinking about vis a vis viruses, bacteria, mycoplasma, fungus, etc

Also the following Google search >extracorporeal UV irradiation vaccine Berger OR Salskov-Iversen dendritic cell cancer< found articles regarding research that,at first inspection, seems not to be indexed at Pub-Med for whatever reason. Is any of this information valid? Oldspammer(talk) 18:19, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Proportion of pro-fringe editors

Re "more editors available to protect the majority position": [4] I agree with you that among editors of any particular fringe article, there tends to be a disproportion of editors favouring the fringe POV on that topic. I'm not sure whether you mean that you think there's a disproportion of pro-fringe editors on Wikipedia in general. I assume there isn't. People who believe in a particular fringe view will tend to edit that article; but if we can somehow poll all Wikipedians on a question, I think we would likely find a similar range of views as in the general population. People who are pro-fringe on one topic are not necessarily pro-fringe on some other topic. This is why RfCs can help, by bringing in input from broader community consensus. As soon as I have a bunch of spare time I'm planning to participate in a bunch of RfCs, to help increase overall involvement in them. Other methods include: asking the pro-fringe editors to recognize that they're disproportionately represented at the page and to avoid aggressive editing (repeated reverting) for that reason; and focussing on literally following policies and guidelines rather than, in effect, voting. Somehow the right balance has to be achieved, neither too much nor too little information about fringe views in articles on fringe topics; different people will have different opinions about what is the right amount.

I'm sorry you went through the frustrating experience you mentioned. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:10, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Somehow the phrase "the fox guarding the henhouse" pops into my mind. I wonder why that could be? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:15, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

This reveals a great deal. --Abd (talk) 01:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Coppertwig, there are a load of reasons why there will be a high proportion of pro-fringe bias here - promotional health claims are easy to read, numerous and accessible, heck, online or in any chemist (drugstore) or supermarket, let alone television. Many absorb this more than attempting to analyse metaanalyses which show an apparent affect but with insufficient benefit to be confirmed as real, or things like placebo effect etc. So I think many laypeople don't really give it much thought - speaking of unproven remedies, think of how many of us take vitamins (hahahahha) when we have a healthy diet which should provide us with everything - I reckon it's be 90% of us all (and I am guilty as well as I pop another vitamin C and cross my fingers I don't get too many viral URTIs this winter in Oz). Many scientific experts are too time-poor to edit here and have no direct benefit to do so, unlike many proponents of various fringe theories and practices, who may have a big incentive to be here. Some I suspect are playing for keeps and will really not be interested in negotiating. Others I presume (hope) are better. I come here to relax, and like Mastcell, I am not keen on spending time slugging it out on contentious article and talk pages either and have spent little time doing so. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:38, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Certainly some experts are too busy to edit Wikipedia, but there are also many experts here. I would guess that the overall level of education and expertise is higher on Wikipedia than in the general population, since the type of person who is an expert is also more likely to be interested in, and capable of, writing and editing articles. (We also need to think about how to make this place welcoming to experts.) Your arguments about people reading ads etc. would apply to the general population too, not just to Wikipedians. (I hope MastCell doesn't mind me continuing this conversation here.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 12:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

....and hence my comment about the popularity of vitamins..I also presume even normal chemists in your neck of the woods have ever-growing alternative/herbal sections? :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, by "chemists" you mean stores that sell drugs and stuff (what I call "drug stores" or "pharmacies" or even an "apothecary"). At first I thought you meant scientists in the field of chemistry. Not sure whether they're growing, but drug stores and some grocery stores and natural food/health food stores have big vitamin/herb/etc. sections. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:48, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) chemist in Australia = drugstore in US of A. Must go and take my vitamin C tablet as there are lots of colds and flu about and it has just gotten cold the last week or so...Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry

neverending. Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:05, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Blocked as matching the now-familiar pattern. MastCell ^Talk 01:11, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject User Rehab

Would you be interested in joining this project? We need more editors who share a burden for rescuing promising editors who have gotten into serious trouble because of behavioral issues. IF (a fundamental condition!) they are interested in reforming and adapting to our standards of conduct, and are also willing to abide by our policies and guidelines, rather than constantly subverting them, we can offer to help them return to Wikipedia as constructive editors. Right now many if not most users who have been banned are still active here, but they are here as socks or anonymous IPs who may or may not be constructive. We should offer them a proper way to return. If you think this is a good idea, please join us. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I've occasionally taken a stab at this informally, if I'm in the right mood, but I don't have the time or (more importantly) the energy and optimism to undertake a structured project along these lines. I do wish you luck, though. MastCell ^Talk 08:07, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't bother to wish them luck; or perhaps wish them a lot of luck. It looks just like the AMA to me and several other "older" editors. KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of the AMA, it's apparently alive and well at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Mattisse - funny you should mention it, since I just did the same. One more repetition of its name and we're screwed, like in Beetlejuice. MastCell ^Talk 18:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I hate to break in here, but what's the deal with this "AMA" thing. It's obviously not the American Medical Association, but some ghost from wikipast. What's the story? -- Brangifer (talk) 05:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh like we're not already screwed? Hah. I love you, MastCell, and one of the things I love about your is your boundless, almost childlike, optimism and AGF. You're adorable. KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's good to hear - I've been feeling pretty cranky and cynical recently. I think I'm definitely past the apogee and on the downswing of my Wikipedia-admin career arc. I think the turning point can be found here. According to my calculations, I am 2 months and 14 days away from telling some particularly obnoxious (but relentlessly "civil") miscreant to go fuck himself. It follows that I am 3 months and 1 day away from deleting my user and user-talk pages with a frustrated "retirement" message, 3 months and 6 days from returning out of addiction to Wikipedia, and 4 months and 5 days away from being desysopped for failing to uphold the august standards expected of Wikipedia administrators. MastCell ^Talk 18:43, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to reality. The sooner you go through these stages, the sooner you'll be on the road to recovery.

Re the "user rehab" project: In the real world people who kick over the office furniture and delete all their coworkers' data get fired. In Wikipedia we shower them with the attention they crave, sending an implicit "up yours" to all the constructive users whose time they have wasted. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:52, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh nonsense. If I can watch Wikipedia "keep" an article on a redneck teenager whose claim to notability is that he fucked his girlfriend, you can surely survive an article on a woo-pushing crank being kept. :-P Boris: your point? KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec a go go) ::::::::See skew lines. The "user rehab" project involves disruptive users, not fringe articles. (FWIW, I'm fascinated with "woo-pushing cranks" and in the pre-interweb days used to seek them out on late-night shortwave radio.) Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:00, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Boris: That's true of an employer/employee situation. The really interesting thing, to me, is that virtually all volunteer organizations have strict criteria in terms of screening and accepting volunteers. I used to volunteer at a homeless shelter, and the screening for volunteers was substantial - they turned people away if they got a bad feeling about them, or informed them that their volunteer services would no longer be needed if they didn't uphold the organization's standards. It's hard to believe that Wikipedia is more desperate for volunteers than the average charity, soup kitchen, or after-school program, but for whatever reason our expectations of responsible behavior are several standard deviations lower than the average volunteer-staffed organization. MastCell ^Talk 18:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

That AfD is depressing. Honestly - an arbitrator voting with the most basic "per X", and citing someone whose version of reliable sourcing is "Per Amazon reviewer who said blah blah"? Nuts. Nathan ^T 19:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Which afd? Which arb? KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:25, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

MastCell mentioned it above as the turning point [5]. Could've threaded it better I guess, but I hate breaking into the middle of a section. Nathan ^T 20:09, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a sucky Afd all around. Teh Idiots R Winning, head for the hills! KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I think my favorite part was when a particular user accused me of deceptively stubbing the article, despite the fact that I specifically noted and diffed the stubbing (which was done by an anomymous IP) in my nomination statement. When called on this, the editor in question altered his post (thus destroying the context of my complaint for subsequent readers) while simultaneously accusing me of "further deception" in his edit summary. But we're talking about someone capable of making an ArbCom case out of the use of quotes in footnotes - there is no winning outcome in arguing with such a person, as the WOPR would say. I was a bit nonplussed by the Arbitrator's vote (and it was, simply, a vote) - he seemed to be endorsing behavior that I thought was objectively appalling. But what the hell. As Lao Tsu said (or maybe it was Johnny Cash), I don't like it, but I guess things happen that way. MastCell ^Talk 20:40, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

... and, of course, I have sought solace in my campaign to vandalize the article. MastCell ^Talk 21:08, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not the trolls and vandals that make this place so unpleasant, it's the Milos and Nortons and the rest who get away with dishonesty while staying within the letter of "the rules." And there should be a special room in purgatory reserved for those "respected admins and content creators" who shelter and enable them. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not following "that" article actively, but have dropped in occasionally to check what's going on (I confess: it's like watching a horrible car accident unfold in slow motion - I can't turn away). My favorite part was the claim that letters to the editor are considered reliable sources, and when that source was removed, it was reverted once because it is claimed that "LTE are a reliable source unless a retraction is printed". Hang in there. --Quartermaster (talk) 13:03, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

@BR way on up there - AMA = Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates in this context. I was not around for it myself, but it gets mentioned at the MfD (which you may have seen since posting that, I cannot be arsed to check the chronology). I am not going to express much of an opinion regarding User rehabilitation as such work lies outside my skillset, but every time I think maybe we could have ScienceApologist back I have to counter with maybe we could have Firefly322 back.

I am also mildly curious how it can possibly be considered that Milo is staying within the letter of civility; my clever stratagem of waiting until the screaming stops and then just writing a decent article in the calm appears not to apply in this case. Meh. If I wanted to collaborate with people who enjoy disagreeing about project aims, I would just mentor undergraduates whose argument that they should not be kicked out of the lab for gross negligence is but then I cannot get into my favorite medical school. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

You know, when I was an undergrad, I used to wonder why my chemistry and physics TAs were so mean to pre-meds. Then I looked around at my fellow pre-meds, and I was amazed that anyone could put up with them (us). :) MastCell ^Talk 17:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Funny, when I was an undergrad, I didn't wonder at all; I hated the pre-meds as much as the chemistry and physics TAs did. I wasn't a pre-med but I took basically a pre-med curriculum, lots of chemistry and biology. I kept a household going (cooking, cleaning, running kids to the orthodontist, picking up the dry cleaning, all the stuff a housewife does--ah, I've just given myself away-- yes, I'm a woman) plus I had two part-time research jobs, and I still managed to take 18 hours of science classes and get straight As. But these guys, most of whom had nothing to do but go to school, couldn't even seem to manage Cs without cheating. The college had to keep instituting new practices to foil cheating, like taking photographs of everyone taking tests, to make sure the people taking the tests were the same people whose names were on the tests, otherwise they would pay other people to take their tests for them. They used to even steal the chemistry homework answers out of the reserve library to keep everyone else from checking their homework, just to try to give themselves a little boost up on the grade curve. I had no respect for them at all, and doctors still have to work to earn my respect, after that experience. It's possible that none of those losers were actually accepted to med school; I can hope, but let's just say I wasn't impressed with premeds as a group. Woonpton (talk) 18:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I read an interesting essay once, entitled: The Pre-Med as a Metaphor of Antipathy. The author was (IIRC) a basic-science professor trying to understand why pre-meds were such jerks, and whether the qualities selected for by the pre-med process were necessarily the ones that would make for an exemplary physician. Taking the pre-med curriculum was among the most depressing experiences of my life - a relentlessly grinding, competitive exercise in rote memorization of material that held little interest or applicability for me. I felt bad for people who took organic chemistry and biology because they were actually interested in those subjects - they were trampled in a horde of people who had come from the top of their high school classes and were trying to beat the curve, inexorably normed to a C+/B-, to get into med school.

I certainly witnessed a reasonable amount of cheating, and I'm sure there were more egregious things happening out of plain sight. I was amazed, when I took the MCATs, at the level of security and anti-cheating measures in place. They did basically everything except a retinal scan, but I suppose such things are necessary. The question, of course, is whether such learned behaviors and coping mechanisms can be switched off. MastCell ^Talk 18:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

As compared to the LSAT, where cheating is virtually unheard of... Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but those are aspiring lawyers... it's probably part of assessing their vocational aptitude (ducks and covers). It's like Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test. MastCell ^Talk 19:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I laughed. I KILLED AMA BEFORE AND I CAN IGNORE IT NOW. Hipocrite (talk) 19:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) We may soon be able to return the favor. MastCell, the problem of admin burnout is a very real one, as you obviously know. In my view, our structure, such as it is, causes this and many other problems that we face. Solutions are possible, but are vigorously resisted, even when they fit within our existing structural philosophy. In the recent RfAr over myself and JzG, you commented that we hadn't been involved before. That wasn't accurate. Remember WP:PRX? This was a trial balloon for a structural supplement that would have the potential, if implemented broadly (participation would be totally voluntary and would remain so), to set up conditions where burnout could be converted to recognition and intelligent and efficient process. Obviously, it wasn't understood as that, it was seen merely as a kind of voting, which it was not. It was, in fact, the seed for a growth of new structure that would supplement what we already have, as nervous systems supplemented more primitive diffusion methods of cellular communication. Good luck in facing your identity crisis, I'd much prefer to retain your experience. At a certain point, though, we move foot-soldiers up to command (or, in this case, advisory positions), and they don't fire weapons any more. To give a present example, my opinion is that ArbComm members should not use tools other than for research purposes. ArbComm can be viewed as a controlling body, or as an advisory body, and the latter is technically more accurate, the former is only true to the extent that the editorial community and the Foundation voluntarily respect ArbComm decisions. Advisors should not be executives, and when they are, it's a structural error which leads to problems, it can be predicted. --Abd (talk) 13:23, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I honestly don't remember interacting with you before the ArbCom case. Did I comment on WP:PRX somewhere? I can't remember taking a stance of any sort on the issue, but it was awhile ago, so please refresh my admittedly spotty memory.

I take a different view of the advisory/executory roles. I think it does us no good to have one set of people who theorize about policy in an ivory tower, and another set who have to get their hands dirty implementing it in the real world. Isolating the people who make decisions from the consequences of their decisions is a bad idea; I'd be happy to adduce any number of historical illustrations of this. Most Arbs are not active as admins, which is understandable due to the nature of the time commitment, but ideally they at least have prior experience applying policy to problem areas. I personally am extremely uncomfortable when people who have no practical experience applying policy in difficult areas start lecturing on How Things Should Be Done. If you can't do something yourself, you shouldn't really be in the business of telling other people how to do it. MastCell ^Talk 23:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I was about to comment that I searched the history of WP:PRX and searched its talk page, and can find no evidence of MastCell editing the proposal or commenting on the talk page, nor is he mentioned on the sock report where it was revealed that most of the editors supporting the proposal and "discussing" it with each other were related sock puppets, so if he was "involved" in that anywhere, it's fairly well hidden, maybe on the now deleted talk pages of the several socks who participated in discussing that very odd proposal. As for the proposal itself, it's one of the worst proposals I've seen on Wikipedia. I don't see any way the proposal could be interpreted as providing a structural basis for rehabilitating burned out administrators, as claimed above. I don't care to get into a discussion here with Abd about the merits of the proposal; it was soundly rejected and I have no interest in resurrecting it. I'm not sure what the point of bringing it up here would be; the intention seemed to be to suggest that Abd and MastCell had a previous involvement that MastCell hadn't acknowledged, but the link given certainly doesn't provide any evidence to back up that insinuation. Woonpton (talk) 23:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

In the immortal words of Emily Latella (Gilda Ratner), it just goes to show. and "Never mind." That wasn't MastCell, my error. I might be able to figure out how I got confused about this, but I won't, don't have the time. The comments wasn't hostile, in any way, and I believed MastCell's denial of memory even when I thought it had happened. As to my experience with policy, it should be understood that, while I was new to serious Wikipedia activity in late 2007, I had, by this time, over twenty years of experience with on-line debate and consensus-formation, plus extensive offline experience with such process. Wikipedia policies generally made complete intuitive sense to me, and still do. I just see (and would have predicted) the edges. And I respect those who have experience applying policies and recognize that this experience can certainly trump my theoretical analyses. Hence I propose changes with caution; an example will be work with blacklisting policy and procedures, where I've been involved in long-term discussion with blacklist administrators and whatever I ultimately propose will be hammered out as consensus with them, to the extent possible. ArbComm, in the recent case, Abd and JzG, validated one of the principles involved, though I did not consider that matter ripe for arbitration.

On the other hand, there was no sock puppetry involved with WP:PRX, and Woonpton has misinterpreted the history. There was one editor who changed his name, dropping one account and starting up a new one, without any concealment, that's all, but arguably inadequate disclosure. Nobody was blocked for sock puppetry, and there was no significant effect on any result. --Abd (talk) 13:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

No sockpuppetry involved with WP:PRX? Woonpton has misinterpreted the history? That's an interesting formulation on both counts. Just because I disagree with your interpretation of the history, doesn't mean I have the history wrong. I'm generally thought to be pretty good at reading a batch of text and quickly boiling it down to its essence. But let's not take my word for it, let's hear what Kim Bruning had to say about it:

"This page was originally created by someone using a small number of sockpuppets. There was in fact very little support for this proposal at all. It is kept in the historic record as an example of manipulation. --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:18, 28 February 2008 (UTC)" [6]

Abd responded (same link) : "Kim, you got most of this right, but not the sock puppet thing. This page was created by one user, Sarsaparilla, but Sarsaparilla was abandoned as an account and that user began using Ron Duvall, consistently. While policy did not require that Ron Duvall be explicitly connected with Sarsaparilla, he should have done so, and promptly acknowledged the connection when the issue was raised. But it was already blatant, anybody who cared could have found it in minutes, and, indeed, that is what happened. Ron Duvall was also, for different reasons, abandoned and Absidy taken up; this time the connection was properly noted with account creation." (more verbiage follows)

But then on the sock puppet investigation for Obuibo Mbstpo Abd argues: "Note that calling Obuibo Mbstpo a "sock" of Sarsaparilla, as has been done in the archives below, is a little misleading. Yes. Same user. But Obuibo Mbstpo was a replacement account for Sarsaparilla, and openly. This user only creates new accounts because he's blocked, he's not other than that -- which I agree is a problem on its own, and I have privately asked him to stop and to go through proper channels if he wants to return to editing -- disruptive on any major scale. Just to be clear. --Abd (talk) 14:02, 24 October 2008 (UTC)" [7]

I'll let the TPS contingent here draw their own conclusions about the implications of this, but the fact remains that by Abd's own admission, Sarsaparilla, Ron Duvall, Absidy, and Obuibo Mbstpo were all the same person (all accounts now blocked) and they all argued in support of the proposal as if they were separate people, making it look as if more people supported that daft proposal than actually did. If that's not sock puppetry, maybe I don't know what sock puppetry is. Whatever you call it, it's misleading and not in keeping with collegial editing and decisionmaking. Woonpton (talk) 17:01, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

They were all the same person, acknowledged being the same person, and did not edit simultaneously, but sequentially. They did not argue as if they were separate people, but at one point it appeared so to some editors. There is no evidence that there was any intention to present the appearance of multiple persons supporting something, and the existence of one more person (say, three, rather than two) would have been completely moot. I believe that during that process, one change of account occurred. Yes, the accounts were all blocked, but each account was blocked for actions taken by that account, and Sarsaparilla wasn't blocked for anything, except later as some kind of technical formality (i.e., user is blocked, this is a former account, so it was blocked). There were no blocks of these accounts for sock puppetry. The editor was apparently embarrassed by one action of Sarsaparilla, a joke, during my RfA, (I reprimanded him for it, in fact) and abandoned the account over that. Sarsaparilla would not have been blocked for this. However, Absidy then suggested to each member of ArbComm that they name a proxy. Given that there was no process under way, this wasn't canvassing, but Absidy was warned for canvassing. It could be argued that it was spamming, and, as well, that it was provocative. The actual block, though, was clearly over a defiant response to the warning. ("Too late! I'm done" -- and an image of an upraised finger.) Indeed, this was my first encounter with a problematic block; an admin blocked for an insult to that admin. I discussed this with the admin, who generously agreed to unblock, and that is how the editor was able to return, to become Obuibo Mbstpo. Each time this user abandoned an account, the password was allegedly spiked. Sock puppetry charges were irrelevant to WP:PRX, and, it might be noted, Kim Bruning was on the side of protecting the proposal from deletion. There were other instances of socking while blocked, i.e., this user did avoid blocks, but did not ever edit with an old account after establishing a new one. I know the real-world person involved and there is much more story that could be told, but which won't be. Sequential accounts aren't sock puppets, unless, perhaps, used to present an appearance of multiple editor support, as in an AfD or other process where !voting is involved. None of the accounts involved were connected through checkuser or sock puppet investigations. In one case (Sarsaparilla -> Absidy), the user hadn't explicitly connected the accounts, though it was blatantly obvious, and in that case the user, when the issue was raised, then directly connected the accounts. The other accounts (Obuibo Mbstpo and Ron Duvall) were created under arrangements to return as a new account. --Abd (talk) 18:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Guys, how's that filter coming? Woonpton (talk) 18:34, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Slightly different

I believe this is still the same person with the same obsessions though. The old Candcae Newmaker was killed by rebirthing, not attachment therapy was a good old sock issue. Adding the quals in this way is another. [8]Fainites ^barleyscribs 07:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suspect you're correct - I mean, how many legitimately new users start out by {{fact}}-tagging? It is a bit outside my range of familiarity, though, so I'll probably have to pass this one on to someone else. Might be worth having a checkuser clear out any nests of sleeper sockpuppets. MastCell ^Talk 17:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

This one looks deffo. Obviously not much going on in the world of AT.Fainites ^barleyscribs 18:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the latter and have blocked it. In that context, the CarbonNot_Silicon (talk · contribs) account looks like it matches the overall pattern - if it persists, let me know. MastCell ^Talk 18:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I should also mention that the fact tagging started on Emily Rosa. If you look at the article, she is the daughter of two of the three leaders of Advocates for Children in Therapy.Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm convinced. MastCell ^Talk 17:23, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Human rights in the United States

Suggesting that a US politician ordered troops to fire on civilians seems like the kind of thing that should probably be, like, sourced, or something

It already appears sourced in two articles on Wikipedia (Kathleen_Blanco#cite_note-0, Criticism_of_government_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina#cite_note-shoottokill-64) and in dozens of sources on GNews. Viriditas (talk) 16:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

OK. Can we source it in the Human rights in the United States article as well? I'll be happy to do this, but our guidelines as well as best practices are pretty clear that quotes should always be sourced (particularly inflammatory or contentious quotes) - that's where I was coming from.

As a separate issue, a brief glance at the talk page suggests that your overall take is reasonable - if the UN and other reliable sources have cited Katrina as a human-rights issue, then that warrants inclusion in the article. MastCell ^Talk 16:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

It's ok. I think it should probably stay out of the article for now. The person who originally added the material (I merely attributed the quote and expanded some of the material) didn't really connect it to human rights, but I suspect I'll find a source that does. Until then, it's ok if it stays deleted. I suspect a lot of additional material should be removed as well. Viriditas (talk) 16:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

OK. I will probably leave a brief comment on the article talk page. MastCell ^Talk 16:19, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Beatdown

Diff Feckin' dissing me, punk. Got to block you now, dat's rulz. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

must... resist... temptation to start ANI thread... Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Careful... the last time I was "blocked", it messed with peoples' heads something fierce. And don't even look at my actual block log. MastCell ^Talk 04:33, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

lost your barnstar page?

nevermind, spend US$800 on one of these handy-dandy dowsing stick-things and set to "award page" heh, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:40, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

AN/I drinking game

What happens to the worm? Mathsci (talk) 08:18, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The fate of the worm is to be resolved by civil discussion and consensus among involved editors. :) MastCell ^Talk 20:59, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Help with sources

Hey there! I just saw your reversion on the Passive Smoking page edit I did yesterday. Wanted to know if I could ask your help with the cite tags in that article. I wasn't quite sure how to properly cite the 1999 study from the who. When adding that in, I figured that somebody else who knew more would come along and fix the cite, since it was directly from their page, but... :)

Also, I'm a little confused about the WP: WEIGHT comment. There are prominent adherents to the view that relative risk should be larger before something is seriously considered, and I could reference a few, but I thought that going into any exhaustive detail or adding that many references would've invoked WP: WEIGHT in the first place, and that a short one-line comment on the further controversy would be acceptable. How should I have posted it? Crickel (talk) 16:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry for not providing more detail or explanation when I reverted your edit. I'll cross-post this over to Talk:Passive smoking and respond there, so that the discussion can be seen and followed by other editors of the article. MastCell ^Talk 21:00, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Autism

Watch this video, it is interesting. [9]

With this new therapy you can cure the autism definitively? You can lose the diagnosis and the symptons definitively ?--green island (talk) 17:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

News video released today that shows an autistic girl improving after receiving stem cell injections --green island (talk) 17:08, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Just visiting

Just visiting, thought I'd say hello. So: "hello". Thanks for the pointer to the complaint generator: it is so true! Now I know where all those messages on my talk page came from. Best, William M. Connolley (talk) 22:34, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the drinking game was actually first proposed here, so I should really pour out a bit of tequila on the ground in honor of homies who are no longer with us. MastCell ^Talk 22:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, the development of a algorithm which would generate automated but realistic AN/I complaints, or arguments in favor of using snakeoil.com as a reliable source, etc is an interesting computer-science puzzle. Well, I think it's interesting, anyway. Of course, you could simply generate a MadLibs-style grammar of the most commonly used tendentious nonsense and have the computer randomly parse it, but that's simplistic.

The ideal algorithm would probably require that you feed it a large series of frivolous AN/I complaints, wikilawyering, fringe-theory advocacy, and other tendentious editing. It would then parse the text and create a web of associations, weighting each word according to those it most commonly precedes or follows. If you run this weighted web through a natural-language filter to create reasonably grammatical sentences, you would probably have output largely indistinguishable from that of any number of human-controlled Wikipedia accounts.

I believe that it could be done by someone with better coding skills than I. I started looking at something like this in Lisp once, but I'm probably dating myself. Does anyone use Lisp anymore? MastCell ^Talk 22:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

You know about this and this (the latter resulting in this), of course? Presumably all you'd have to do is load their database with Wikipedia drivel instead of postmodern or CS drivel. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:44, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I initially had in mind - a straightforward random expansion of a context-free grammar, and the trick is coming up with a grammar that captures the formulaic AN/I post. But it would be so much cooler if the program could learn to be tendentious, by observing actual tendentious editors at work. You know - with each additional exemplary post that you feed it, the program analyzes the post and refines its algorithm accordingly. Of course, the problem is that I know nothing about computer science. MastCell ^Talk 03:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you're thinking of something like the Bayesian model for spam filters. I was fascinated with that and read some papers about it several years ago, but don't know if spam filters are still using that kind of model. You keep feeding it examples of the way spammers use language and it keeps refining the filter based on the new information. That's what we really need, not a grammar-generator that generates that kind of language, but a grammar-detector that identifies that kind of language and automatically rejects the input. :) Woonpton (talk) 04:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Spam filters are still all based in Bayesian spam filtering. Nobody has found anything better yet. I see that there is some refinement like Markovian discrimination, but I'm not sure of how popular they are. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:01, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Next!

Here. Fainites ^barleyscribs 07:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Book

I started reading the description of the book in our article, and stopped myself. This sounds so interesting I'm heading straight out to get it myself. Antandrus (talk) 04:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. The French sometimes confuse transgressiveness with literary merit - Michel Houellebecq being exhibit A - but as long as you go in with your eyes open, there's some good stuff there. MastCell ^Talk 23:02, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Health effects of tobacco

From Talk:Passive smoking you seem to be better at handling this. There's an active COI, article is at Talk:Health effects of tobacco. ChyranandChloe (talk) 23:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't quite get it - is the IP accusing you of having a COI and working for a tobacco company? Maybe I need more coffee... MastCell ^Talk 23:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

He's accusing me of PoV pushing. In my opinion it's reversed, but that's probably would not be helpful. His first edit began with the accusation, so I really can't assume good faith. Therefore I've decided just to be simple. Stick to the point on what's wrong with the edit, and hopefully it'll get through. So far I've raised verifiability, and relevance, which is described in my first post, diff[10].

While I was working on the article I've found that quotations and positions really don't improve the reader's understanding. All it ever seems to get across is: don't smoke and that was it. Two months ago I removed the same quotation from the CDC I'm try to remove (again) today, it's at the bottom the section [11]. This is the background to my stance.

The second paragraph in the lead is contentious, it's been like that when I first drafted it and when Vuo decided to rewrite to reflect his understanding. In my opinion, as a whole it probably shouldn't even be there there under verifiability. I've let it slide because I've been working on a draft that replace "studies" and "vectors" using chapter 1 of the surgeon general's report[12], which should both verify and clarify the second paragraph in the old version[13]. Draft is online here[14], but it's not quality, so I've held it back.

I really don't know what to say. Vuo managed to stay out of this COI, I probably should have too. I really didn't want to take the stance: look, we need to check what's going into our 100+ Kb article. It's how I got accused of being the "antagonist". This is what's on my mind. What's on yours? ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:32, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

RfC Invitation

Within the past month or so, you appear to have commented on at least one AN/I, RS/N, or BLP/N thread involving the use of the term "Saint Pancake" in the Rachel Corrie article. As of May 24th, 2009, an RfC has been open at Talk:Rachel_Corrie#Request_for_Comments_on_the_inclusion_of_Saint_Pancake for over a week. As editors who have previously commented on at least one aspect of the dispute, your further participation is welcome and encouraged. Jclemens (talk) 23:00, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

No thanks - I'm over the temporary insanity that led me to comment on that issue. MastCell ^Talk 03:13, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Clarence Thomas

I think you have good points on the CT article, but Ferrylodge and Simon Dodd will tag team to slant the article in Thomas's favor unless you start an RfC or something of the like. RafaelRGarcia (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

One of the few rules that I've set for myself on Wikipedia is this: never get into a back-and-forth argument with Ferrylodge. It doesn't matter who's "right" - it will degenerate into an annoying, legalistic battle of last-wordism. I mean, it took quite an uphill effort just to get Thomas' confirmation hearings mentioned at all in the lead, when they are the single biggest aspect of any reputable biography of the man (including Thomas' own autobiography, for that matter). Arguing with Ferrylodge tends to bring out the worst in me, and it's definitely not how I want to spend my volunteer time. He can write the book on Clarence Thomas; it's not worth it. I would be willing to comment at a content RfC, as a previous editor of the article, but that's about it. MastCell ^Talk 16:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)