User talk:Hans Adler/Archive 1

My welcome message
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Welcome! Hello, Hans Adler, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Help pages Tutorial How to write a great article Manual of Style I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!  You may be interested in joining WikiProject Mathematics, you can add your name to the list at Contributors and join discussions at the talk page. Good to see another Leeds mathematician. --Salix alba (talk) 12:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC) Hello Richard, thanks for the greeting and the information, especially the bit about the helpme-tag, which I am going to test at once. --Hans Adler 13:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I try out the "helpme" template
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Login to sister sites? {{helpme}} My login information does not seem to work in de.wikipedia.org or in en.wikiversity.org. I succeeded in creating a user of the same name in de.wikipedia.org. Is this how it is supposed to work, or is there a way to sign up for additional projects with the same login? (That's what I expected from having worked on ODP ages ago.) --Hans Adler 13:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC) At present, you have to sign up separately to each sister site (that is, each language/project combination). It's hoped that at some point in the future it'll be possible to share accounts across projects, but this is proving hard to implement, so for the time being making separate accoutns is the only workaround. --ais523 14:04, 12 November 2007 (UTC) Thanks. It's not a big problem, I just didn't want to break anything. --Hans Adler 14:25, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

My first conversations with CBM and Zero sharp
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Math ratings I noticed you have been doing a lot of good editing on math logic articles. The entire field of model theory is, as you can tell, not well represented. It's good to see someone working hard on it. I also noticed you added some {{maths rating}} templates to talk pages. When you do that, it would help if you take a second to assign quality and importance ratings. The details of the rating system are here. Otherwise, someone else has to do the thankless job of ranking lots of unranked but tagged articles. Even if you wrote the article yourself, you can rate it; anyone else may change the rating later, if they disagree. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC) Structure (mathematical logic) I noticed you marked that article for deletion and then reverted yourself. Did you want to move the article to a different name? — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC) Thank you... ...for your recent edits to various Maths articles, in particular Model Theory and friends. Please do use the Edit Summary, even if you're just making small edits. This makes it easier to see what's going on with these articles w/o having to do a diff (which, yes, is an extra two clicks, but still). Zero sharp (talk) 00:33, 18 November 2007 (UTC) prompt for edit summary - brilliant! thank you for pointing that out Zero sharp (talk) 02:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Two technical matters
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Contact Us (Village Pump) Thanks for your input on this. I've got the entire "Contact Us" lined up for a review in December; when I do, I'd enjoy hearing your view on it. I'm a bit busy for a week or so till then though. Thanks again! FT2 (Talk | email) 12:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC) zeteo Tool Hallo, der Bug, den Du beschrieben hast, ist jetzt behoben. Fröhliches Referenzieren... Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:30, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The two most unlikely editors discuss gay nightlife in Leeds
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RE: edit to the Leeds article IMO it looks like a brochure or advert, and in the general overview of Leeds is not notable. I certainly have never heard of Leeds been described as some sort of "gay capital of the UK" or anything along those lines, which that section seems to portray and advertise it as. I think it would probably need some vertification for such a claim (perhaps to be found on Google.com) though I'm quite squeamish and would have reservations about searching such terms, since this is the internet some of the results are bound to be explicit. - Yorkshirian (talk) 09:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Feedback from a site owner whose links I removed
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deletion of external links -please explain Hello, I have a question about your recent deletion of external links which has been added to some city pages such as Sydney. The external link was pointing to a video site which shows recent videos of cities, in very good quality, and updated several times a day. Here you can see an example of these links: http://www.earthtv.com/en/location/sydney In my opinion, this is a nice resource for someone interested in Sydney, as I don't know any other site who has almost live videos in such a quality to offer. Moreover, I read the WIKI guidelines for external linking, and I don't see why a link to this site should be inappropriate (the site has free access, free content, no ads, no offending content...) I would like to get to know your reason for deleting these links - don't you like the content? Maybe you could explain this to me - I don't want to push here these links, I really thought it would be a usefull resource for people interested in a city.. I wrote you an email a couple of days before, but haven't got an answer from you yet, so maybe I will get feedback when using the talkback page here.... Seeing forward to your reply Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Contribute te (talk • contribs) 13:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC) I didn't receive your email (which, incidentally, you can't have sent more than 36 hours ago, because that's when you or somebody you had commissioned tried to add the links. At the time I had a short look with Firefox, no plugins installed. While this is obviously not the right configuration for your site I got a very good first impression. As this wasn't really relevant I didn't look into it any further. Now I had a somewhat closer look, and I do like it. I will bookmark it for my personal use. Thanks for the nice free site. The first thing to be aware of is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. There is a lot of things which it is not. It doesn't follow from this that your site is unsuitable, it merely means that it is somewhat tangential. If one editor had added a link to your site to the article on one city, it is quite likely that it would have remained there for a long time. Especially if the editor was prepared to defend their decision on the talk page associated to the article. If many other editors had done the same for many other city pages, eventually somebody would have started a general discussion as to whether we want your links all over the place. The most likely result of such a discussion is "no", in my opinion. You need not trust me on this. You can create a user account and ask your question in an appropriate place where you are likely to get answers from many wikipedians. If you are interested I can try to find a suitable place for that. You will no doubt be interested in our guideline on "external link spamming". (Ignore the stuff about "video", it obviously doesn't apply in your situation.) I suspect you will be most interested in the section "How not to be a spammer". Also note that with respect to adding a link leading to your site you always have a conflict of interest. Basically this means that you are expected to self-censor your actions in a strong way. Adding links in the way you tried it is almost certainly not acceptable. What you can do, however, is: create a user account, state on your user page that you are related to the website and have a conflict of interest, and try to convince other editors to add your links. If you do this for individual cities at a time it might work. If you try to have all your links added in this way you are very unlikely to succeed. Obviously this is unlikely to make sense for you from a business point of view, but that's intentional. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC) PS: WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided (items 4 and 9) and WP:EL#Advertising and conflicts of interest are also relevant in this case. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Two people cleaning up the Freiburg mess in parallel
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Freiburg history section edits Hi Hans- You and I were doing the same thing at the same time! I got an edit conflict when I went to save, so I looked at what you'd done. I was doing essentially the same changes, plus a few, so I overwrote yours with mine. Hope you don't mind, and let me know if I got anything wrong. -Eric (talk) 19:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC) Great, I am glad somebody is putting more work into it. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Personal discussion with Gregbard, metalogic
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Talking down to me. Hans, I have been studying logic (and apparently metalogic) since 1996. I'm betting that's as long or longer than many of these people. I learned using these terms. It seems some of them may be different than the terms that many have used by this crowd before. I don't know if you have heard or seen any of our discussions at WP:MATH and Talk:Theorem, and other places about the relation between mathematical logic and logic, (or in some minds philosophy v math). The motivation for deleting this category is POV not accuracy. Furthermore, it is obvious that this is the case, and I don't have to pretend it isn't. I would think this is their chance to learn about a new perspective on familiar things, but they are hostile instead. That is a very close-minded, ignorant, arrogant, not to mention very non-intellectual way to be. We have a source for these terms I'm using, and I am using them correctly. The source is an excellent one (still being used a source for this subject, not obsolete). There is no reason to reject the category, or any of the terminology that I am weaving into articles about this subject. You should learn to respect the different terminology and perspective that others have on things, and not be so hostile it. This deletion debate is only about territory and personal identity as a mathematician (not being a lowly philosopher). Arthur is a troublemaker plain and simple, and his talk page tells the story. Exactly what makes you believe I don't "really understand[...] the full context of the book"? I invite your correspondence on that issue particularly. Maybe you could quiz me? I think you are really just ramping up your sensitivity (read:intellectual snobbery) level a bit much there. I wouldn't be awaiting Arthur's opinion for anything. He is a trouble maker plain and simple. I learned these concepts from within the context of metalogic. Others may have learned them in the math department. Why is the existence of this category such a threat? I'm pretty sure you don't understand the context quite frankly. Carnap and Tarski both wrote on the metamathematics v metalogic issue. It's not a neologism and its not obsolete. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC) Greg, I have been studying model theory since 1993. That's long enough to understand the curious position of mathematical logic, even without looking at (shudder) Talk:Theorem. And even longer than that I have known that I am not a philosopher. In fact, as conversational subjects I prefer religion to philosophy, and polytheism to monotheism. (Less abstract and more colourful.) I have chosen my field because it is a very abstract and efficient way of doing generalised hardcore algebra. I respect the historical connections to philosophy, but I don't really want to know about them, because I have never been interested in the meaningless questions that philosophers ask. In my opinion philosophy has been in decline ever since Plato started hallucinating about "ideas". Things got even worse with Aristotle, and I don't even know what happened after that. So much for full disclosure. Now the simple explanation for what has happened. As a philosopher you probably know enough German to understand the proverb "Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus." I think it's better than the English version "We reap what we sow." The problem is that for someone with a philosophy degree your rhetorical skills are appalling. And, of course, you lack common sense. I have seen enough of your edits in mathematical logic so that I was aware of your existence and the fact that you know something about the subject. From your userpage I got the impression that you are the typical class joker. No problem with that. When I noticed that you recategorised some of the articles I am most interested in from Logic or Model theory to "Metalogic", which I had never heard of before, I thought: "It looks strange, but these philosophers will know what they are doing with this category. Not a good idea to remove the articles from the other categories, but I can fix this later." Up to that point I assumed, on your part, competence, good faith, rational behaviour, good manners, basically everything positive. The turning point was your post to the Logic project. You made a personal attack ("somewhat famous") against an unnamed mathematician. You mentioned your new category but not that it was your new category. You complained about "math-centric culture" after you removed purely mathematical articles from mathematical categories to add them to yours. And you built the "threat" strawman. And to crown it all: "Silly." In short: Your post was like a caricature of the kind of arrogance that makes it obvious where it comes from: a complete lack of confidence. If you want to be treated like a pseudoscientist you have basically two options. The simplest method is to claim that you are an expert on something like concave hollow earth theory. But you have obviously decided to do it the hard way: Choose something you actually have knowledge about and behave as if you only pretended that. Make a preemptive attack against all other experts, and make it absolutely plain that you expect to be mistreated by them. And above all, make pompous value judgements based on your status as self-styled expert. Having read this, I had a completely new mental image of you, but I was still prepared to revise it based on what I was going to find. I found the discussion on your talk page. Obviously Arthur Rubin had made the same observations that I had made, and he felt more strongly about it. He tried to understand immediately why you messed with the categorisation, and couldn't because there was no description of the category. You replied with a personal attack ("relatively famous"). You did not explain what "metalogic" was supposed to be about but instead made, again (or rather earlier) pompous value judgments based on basically no authority. It was at this point that I suspected you have a serious problem. Judging from your post here I would guess that what you really want is being treated with respect. The best way to achieve this is by beginning to respect others. And try to understand what they write. And be realistic about your goals. Currently the majority of votes in the deletion discussion is "keep", in spite of your attempts to undermine your own position there. I never said I was waiting for Arthur's opinion (he is a universal algebraist); I am of course waiting for Carl's, as he has a much wider background in logic (especially proof theory and the philosophy-related parts) than I do. And nobody other than you ever mentioned the word "threat" in this context. Your category is not a threat, it is a parrot that some joker has put into a henhouse. We don't know if the parrot is going to lay eggs, but somehow it doesn't look right. I don't know the history of your conflict with Arthur. But as a result of wading through all your comments once more, and with more leisure, I am now inclined to think that you have created this category specifically in order make Arthur angry and to "win" a conflict with him. If you want to be respected by me and others it is quite easy: Change your behaviour. Be constructive. Be nice to others and expect others to be nice to you. So long as you don't expect miracles (such as Arthur instantly changing his opinion of you) you may not even have to change too drastically. E.g. tone done your comments a bit and pretend they are ironic. After a while the irony will be true. Accept it when others don't agree with you. Back down when it becomes clear one of your ideas doesn't get general approval. That's what will make people respect you; proving to them that you can shout louder, or even that you are right and they are wrong, will have the opposite effect. You are not the only person in the world who works like that, we are all like that. Finally, I don't think that many people are watching my talk page, as I am relatively new here. Nevertheless, feel free to remove what I have written about you if you think it is inappropriate.--Hans Adler (talk) 02:04, 19 January 2008 (UTC) I don't know how to get rid of the "don't modify" line. If you want to reply please do so whichever way you prefer, including here. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:24, 20 January 2008 (UTC) Greg, I have been studying model theory since 1993. That's long enough to understand the curious position of mathematical logic, even without looking at (shudder) Talk:Theorem. And even longer than that I have known that I am not a philosopher. Do you see this? How is it that you have a strong opinion about that? What do you care if it turns out that an area of study that you know all about is studied by philosophers too? Tell me do you ever do analysis? How about clarifying things? That's philosophy. Just what do you get out of this idea about restriction of subject matter, etc? It seems that the math people are neurotically rigid about these things. In fact, as conversational subjects I prefer religion to philosophy, and polytheism to monotheism. (Less abstract and more colourful.) I have chosen my field because it is a very abstract and efficient way of doing generalised hardcore algebra. I respect the historical connections to philosophy, but I don't really want to know about them, because I have never been interested in the meaningless questions that philosophers ask. In my opinion philosophy has been in decline ever since Plato started hallucinating about "ideas". Things got even worse with Aristotle, and I don't even know what happened after that. This really is consistent with a misunderstanding of philosophy. "...meaningless questions that philosophers ask..." I'm pretty sure people scoff at mathematicians in the same regard. Who cares about the millionth digit of pi? I think you and I both know that that is the simple analysis that is not adequate to the reality. So much for full disclosure. Now the simple explanation for what has happened. As a philosopher you probably know enough German to understand the proverb "Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus." I think it's better than the English version "We reap what we sow." The problem is that for someone with a philosophy degree your rhetorical skills are appalling. And, of course, you lack common sense. Baloney. There is a team of people from WP:MATH who are hypercritical to the point of uselessness and they like to revert my edits (not incorporate them). I am perfectly comforatable with the fact that edits in wikipedia are going to get mish-mashed over time, evolve, etc. This guy just deletes my stuff. I have seen enough of your edits in mathematical logic so that I was aware of your existence and the fact that you know something about the subject. From your userpage I got the impression that you are the typical class joker. I'm not on this wikipedia with info on my favorite band or tv show. I don't play games on this thing. No problem with that. When I noticed that you recategorised some of the articles I am most interested in from Logic or Model theory to "Metalogic", which I had never heard of before, I thought: "It looks strange, but these philosophers will know what they are doing with this category. Not a good idea to remove the articles from the other categories, but I can fix this later." Up to that point I assumed, on your part, competence, good faith, rational behaviour, good manners, basically everything positive. No articles were removed from any category other than logic which is a supracategory of metalogic. That is what is supposed to happen with overpopulated categories. Do you see that this is a sensitivity to territory issues? The turning point was your post to the Logic project. You made a personal attack ("somewhat famous") against an unnamed mathematician. You mentioned your new category but not that it was your new category. You complained about "math-centric culture" after you removed purely mathematical articles from mathematical categories to add them to yours. And you built the "threat" strawman. And to crown it all: "Silly." In short: Your post was like a caricature of the kind of arrogance that makes it obvious where it comes from: a complete lack of confidence. I am not the one who named Arthur as "relatively famous" mathematician. It was on his talk page for a long time. It is such that everyone knows who that is. Furthermore, it is not a slight in any way. I could easily have just said "some guy," is proposing this. Would that have been more or less of an attack? No. It is unfair to characterize that as an attack. Furthermore I really don't look at the category as "my category" in any way. I really hope people find in useful however. No articles were removed from under any mathematical categories. Please stop accusing me of that. We have Arthur to thank for that confusion. This belief is exactly the result of the hypercriticality and paranoia of these math editors as I have previous described. If you want to be treated like a pseudoscientist you have basically two options. The simplest method is to claim that you are an expert on something like concave hollow earth theory. But you have obviously decided to do it the hard way: Choose something you actually have knowledge about and behave as if you only pretended that. Make a preemptive attack against all other experts, and make it absolutely plain that you expect to be mistreated by them. And above all, make pompous value judgements based on your status as self-styled expert. I have never claimed great expertise in anything. However I think I am beyond having every single project I embark on questioned to hypercriticality and torn apart to the hilt by these guys. I respect the critical view and the academic view, but this is beyond that. Hans the truth is that I'm TIRED of this. This is a freakin' hobbie! I don't need these people riding my ass. The proposal to delete the category is a big hassle. Do you see how long it took for me to respond to you? This is all big wasted time. (Although I suppose it still is a pleasure to make your aquaintance in general.) Having read this, I had a completely new mental image of you, but I was still prepared to revise it based on what I was going to find. I found the discussion on your talk page. Obviously Arthur Rubin had made the same observations that I had made, and he felt more strongly about it. He tried to understand immediately why you messed with the categorisation, and couldn't because there was no description of the category. You replied with a personal attack ("relatively famous"). You did not explain what "metalogic" was supposed to be about but instead made, again (or rather earlier) pompous value judgments based on basically no authority. It was at this point that I suspected you have a serious problem. You don't think you are being a little dramatic Hans? Poor Arthur couldn't understand why I would do such a thing. I'm so terrible. The article in its original form had a clear rigorous definition. The claim that he couldn't understand it is exactly why I am so angry and frustrated and JUSTIFIABLY SO. It is disingenuous to cry about how he just couldn't understand. That's being a hypercritical, ivory tower, spoiled baby. He wants everything on his own terms, and this is not how it works around here. No category description? He proposed its deletion WITHIN AN HOUR OF ITS CREATION. So don't cry to me about poor Arthur. If there are different perspectives on a topic THEY SHOULD GO IN. People use different terminology, and it should be accounted for NOT REJECTED. The guy thinks if he doesn't know it it doesn't exist. The truth is that he is probably emarrassed to being exposed to new terms and perspectives in his own field by a cab driver. The result is that the whole wp has to suffer. Judging from your post here I would guess that what you really want is being treated with respect. The best way to achieve this is by beginning to respect others. And try to understand what they write. And be realistic about your goals. Currently the majority of votes in the deletion discussion is "keep", in spite of your attempts to undermine your own position there. I never said I was waiting for Arthur's opinion (he is a universal algebraist); I am of course waiting for Carl's, as he has a much wider background in logic (especially proof theory and the philosophy-related parts) than I do. And nobody other than you ever mentioned the word "threat" in this context. Your category is not a threat, it is a parrot that some joker has put into a henhouse. We don't know if the parrot is going to lay eggs, but somehow it doesn't look right. No argument here. However, there have been many discussions about math v logic in the past. There have been edits on the part of some of these guys that are obviously for the purpose of emphasizing their pov as displayed in those discussions. I don't know the history of your conflict with Arthur. But as a result of wading through all your comments once more, and with more leisure, I am now inclined to think that you have created this category specifically in order make Arthur angry and to "win" a conflict with him. This is a fascinating interpretation. I would like for an average person to have all the tools they need to learn mathematical logic. This really is the base motivation for me. The terms I am working on are the ones that I would point to in trying to teach someone else. So I am not too happy when these guys take my tools away because they in their ivory tower just don't see the need, the importance, etc. I think the real question is why propose to delete the category in the first place. The reason he states is disingenuous. The concept was well defined. If you want to be respected by me and others it is quite easy: Change your behaviour. Be constructive. Be nice to others and expect others to be nice to you. So long as you don't expect miracles (such as Arthur instantly changing his opinion of you) you may not even have to change too drastically. E.g. tone done your comments a bit and pretend they are ironic. After a while the irony will be true. Accept it when others don't agree with you. Back down when it becomes clear one of your ideas doesn't get general approval. That's what will make people respect you; proving to them that you can shout louder, or even that you are right and they are wrong, will have the opposite effect. You are not the only person in the world who works like that, we are all like that. I think you are being a little harsh and really over-dramaitizing to a degree here, however, I take your advise seriously. You are giving me the straightforward and forthright view that you have. So, Thank you for that. Arthur and I have managed to exchange plenty of civil discourse, some of it productive too. I think we all are capable of putting the interest of the content above the personalities at this point. However, I sure wish he would leave me alone. I'm not really concerned about recognition in any regard, I just want the material on these topics out there. I stand by my mainspace edits. I do not play around. I really just want the tools that I use available to me when I wish to use them in the future. These are the terms I use to explain things, so lets work them into the scheme here. Finally, I don't think that many people are watching my talk page, as I am relatively new here. Nevertheless, feel free to remove what I have written about you if you think it is inappropriate.--Hans Adler (talk) 02:04, 19 January 2008 (UTC) I am at all times aware that these discussions may yet be here long into the later years of our lives and be seen and be accessed by others. I'm fine with letting history be the judge. Thanks for your attention to this matter. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Personal discussion with Zenwhat after a WQA incident
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Please relax Part of this conversation took place on Zenwhat's talk page and has in the meantime been deleted. I initially assumed Cheeser1's comment was made in good faith, which is why I said: "Escalating"? That sounds like something a person would do in bad faith. You mean going to the next step in dispute resolution, right? All Cheeser1 had to do was say, "Yes, the next step in dispute resolution." Instead, he decided to insult my intelligence by implying I don't know the definition of escalate: Escalating is when you go from one part of a resolution process to the next one. You know, as in "escalate" - to go up (think of it like stairs). It's the correct word, pretty much standard. I know the definition of the word. There's definitely some sardonicism there. You know, sardonicism, as in "pithiness." (I don't mean to be rude here, like Cheeser1 was -- just using his same language to demonstrate the point). I am distressed because I have come across a number of cases where Wikipedia is mismanaged. When I turn to the places I'm supposed to turn -- wikiquette alerts or the noticeboards, I'm either ignored or I'm told my comments don't belong there. I am extremely humble, polite, even to the point of being self-deprecating, but still, people have to make comments like that. At the very least, he could simply apologize and say, "I'm sorry if it came across that way," or something. Here is an example of something I put through in ArbCom a while back. [1] I've tried to address this by attempting to improve policy -- for instance, by writing extensive essays, emphasizing the fact that WP:IAR is the first rule and attempting to add clarification, and by re-wording WP:NPOV so that it encourages "objective" analysis, not POV-pushing. In this case too, I was obstructed. I cannot make any edits unless Wikipedia's collective bureaucratic democracy (despite WP:NOT, that's what it is) agrees with my edits. Since you edit stuff on mathematics, obviously, you aren't going to come across these problems because there aren't hordes of "math POV-pushers." Try editing anything either political or religious. And finally, worst of all, there aren't even any places to turn for help on this, since WP:Esperanza and every single fork of it is dead. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 10:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC) "Your version of reality"? More pithiness. Goodbye. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Personal discussion with Gregbard, continued
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end run by math people Do you see the latest proposal to depopulate the category, and/or segregate it from mathematical logic? In the face of the impending results, they are taking their toys and going home. This is a total bait-and-switch operation. Do you see what I have to deal with? Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC) I am not sure I get your point exactly. If you mean they are not keen on playing with you, then I agree in a sense. I recently heard the theory that the reason people using a cell phone in a public place make us more angry than normal conversations at the same volume is that somehow we are forced to fill in the other side as well, which takes a lot of effort. I think something else is going on on mathematical articles. There is a certain sense of group ownership of them by mathematicians, and a feeling that things get complicated as soon as any non-mathematicians come in. In practice this often means that an outsider makes an change that is not mathematically correct, and then after many discussions we have a new version that looks basically the same to the mathematicians, but which the outsider is happy with. I think these reactions are natural and can only be suppressed to a certain degree. Arthur's behaviour is as one would expect after your initial confrontation. Lambiam is a hardcore mathematician who also defended the article on average against any attempts to make it easy to understand. I think he would be much more happy with a Mathpedia. I had to look up bait and switch. Can you explain how you think it applies here? --Hans Adler (talk) 01:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC) It's a bait and switch because we have been having the discussion about metalogic consistent with the source I am using. Now that it looks like they will not be able to kill the category they are going to empty it out completely. That is not what I or anyone who voted in favor to keep had in mind. That's a bait and switch. I think these people need to learn respect a lot more than I do. Here we have a different view than the one they have and they are hostile to the point of destruction. Furthermore, it looks very much like game-playing on their part. That's a problem. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 16:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC) I am not sure it's the best mental image to have for what is going on, but today I was beginning to see could make sense, and also how I can be seen as involved in it. At this point in the discussion I really don't know what to say. One of the reasons is that by now I am thoroughly confused as to what everybody wants, and of course what metalogic actually is. If it is mathematical logic then I don't think it's notable at all. If it is philosophical logic that just happens to overlap with mathematical logic then it should be a subcategory of mathematical logic or not depending on how relevant and significant the overlap is, which can only be decided from the philosophical side. But really, stepping out of all this, this entire dispute seems to be as silly as that. (By "silly" I mean my reaction, not what prompted it). Categories don't really have a clear function. Articles are a completely different matter with their high Google ranks, but categories are nearly invisible. It might have been more diplomatic to defer the creation of the category until there was some more philosophically oriented content, and/or to discuss this first. (In the Logic project, in the Philosophy project, or with a trusted mathematics editor like CBM). As it was, several mathematicians' fringe bells rang violently, and it's hard to correct a first impression. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC) Hans, first, thanks for your patience. I suspect that part of the motivation to address metalogic in articles on logic topics is, in fact, not desirable (there's a political issue in the U.S. regarding the defintion of Science, e.g.: "my friends and I publish each other, peer-review each other, award degrees to each other, and accredit each other's degrees, so we are Science just as much as Anybody"). However, there is legitimate interest in what broadly is Philosphy, in the foundations of logic. I think it's complicated: 1. Metalogic within Mathematical Logic. For example, the program to reverse-engineer necessary axioms from extant theorems. That's metalogic within mathematical logic. 2. Metalogic pertaining to, but outside, Mathematical Logic. The bit of Aristotle I hastily grepped could be viewed as reasoning to necessary logical constructions (the necessity of some first principles) from Theory of Mind, which is tied up in Metaphysics. If such thinking ever got anywhere it might be applicable to us :-) But in a way, Philosophy never gets anywhere. When they start making progress, the topic becomes a science and isn't properly philosophy anymore (as we use the term today). So Alchemy becomes Chemistry once they start having reproducibility &c. Theory of Mind becomes Psychology and cognitive neuroscience. What remains may always be vague and confused, but that's ok; it's the Chaos from which the Word emerges :-) Metalogic could be both a subcategory and a parallel category to Math Logic. I think it would be impracticable to subsume the huge, ancient field of Math Logic as a branch of Metalogic, besides inaccurate. Many topics could be referenced by both categories. Metalogic would also reference things in Philosphy that would not normally be referenced in math logic, e.g. epistemology and Theory of Mind. The current description of the category needs work. Pete St.John (talk) 18:59, 22 January 2008 (UTC) Funny to be accused of patience, but now I think about it it might be true even as a general trait; although on Wikipedia I often make a conscious effort to stay calm. (Not always, as in the average discussion.) But I am not sure that all my contributions to the CfD were as constructive as they could have been, especially before your devious "devious" answer. (Which I found very spirited. For a moment I even suspected you of being a certain famous mathematician whose name might have been twisted into yours for semi-anonymity, but your user page set that right.) For now I have stopped thinking about metalogic. My first reaction to the category was to ignore it, and I was only drawn into this by a Pawlow effect upon seeing a brawl in my pack. I am probably the last person who should voice an opinion on philosophical aspects of the mathematics I love, as I am in a conflict of interest as well as a conflict of non-interest. (Someone should write this essay; it might have been helpful in the discussion.) --Hans Adler (talk) 10:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I try to mediate in the Barzilai/Krantz discussion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Krantz FWIW, I suspect that people are misreading Krantz's tone. I don't know him personally, but I do know a lot of people in this area, and have read a great deal of the literature. Setting aside a few people like Savage, there just isn't much concern for gentility. While there is no question that Krantz has low regard for Barzilai, I wouldn't expect a discernibly different tone were Krantz simply annoyed. —SlamDiego←T 04:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC) Without knowing Krantz or anyone else in this area I agree completely with your last sentence, since this is very much as I read Krantz's paper: Irritation about what he sees as incorrect mathematics pretending to contradict him. While I can understand only a fraction of his arguments, everything sounds reasonable and does not sound any "hurt academic pride" alarm bells with me. Especially his attempts at finding something valuable came across to me as sincere rather than condescending in intent. This doesn't mean I am convinced he is right. It's easy for me to keep an open mind about this matter because it's so far removed from my interests. – I didn't think this was an important point, but since you seem to care about it I will tone down my comment. WRT this strange conflict that went to WQA (which is how I became aware of the AfD), I suppose you are already aware now how you and Zvika ran into this quite innocently? The semantics of talk page layout just aren't completely standardised, and the rules about what you are allowed to other people's comments and what you are not and when you are allowed to do it are also a bit fuzzy. I think this is a good example of what AGF and WP:AAGF are intended for. BTW, having seen your user page I can't resist mentioning the Language Log post "'Singular they': God said it, I believe it, that settles it". Be sure to read the followup (link at the bottom of the page, under "Update #5") as well if you don't know it yet. As a fellow atheist you are probably not easily converted by God on such an important matter, but perhaps you will understand why some non-morons believe in this. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2008 (UTC) First, let me say that I don't regard those who use singular “they” as morons. I slip into it occasionally myself, and my partner uses it all the time. But, in general, I think that simply yielding to tradition is not a Good Idea. (And that neither is simply yielding to those who've managed to grasp control of formal institutions such as dictionaries.) My problem with singular “they” is that it introduces costly, avoidable ambiguities without delivering much real benefit. Second, I wasn't alerted to the WQA until just now by you. Frankly, I think that RJC (who appears to regard himself as something of a logician) has been nursing a grudge since called on a point of logic. Third, I completely agree that Zvika had no intention to libel me when he made the comment to which I objected. I was, honestly, very irritated with that comment, as it followed immediately upon my having “bit my tongue” for the sake of discussion when an editor called ugly my assertions that the Krantz article should be included amongst the references until they were properly upgraded; but that didn't mean that I thought that Zvika was malicious. I can labor the issue further if you wish, but I doubt that you wish. Finally, if you have the odd question about this utility stuff, then please feel free to pop 'round to my talk page and ask it. I'll try not to give you more discourse than you want, while at least giving you the gist of the answer. —SlamDiego←T 12:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC) I am not interested in getting involved any further, or in learning about this subject (there is so much else to learn). It very much looks like deletion anyway, and I think that's probably the best thing for all parties concerned, Barzilai and Krantz. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Elementary substructure

Dear Hans Adler,

Grüß Gott! Thank You for notifying me about my writing "Material equivalence" in the newly created section of Elementary substructure article. It was a mistake: I mixed the terms, I wanted to write just the opposite, logical equivalence. I wanted to emphasize that the condition

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

is part of the metatheory, and sign $\Leftrightarrow$ is meant as part of the metalanguage. Now I have renamed the section completely to Equivalent valuation of formulae, using the "more restricted" assignments.

I wanted to write since long time: thank You for tidying the articles I initiated but failed to complete. I have yet only very few knowledge and overview in mathematical logic.

From Your greeting, I conjecture, You speak Hungarian? I learn two Eskimo languages: one Siberian Yupik language and the [recently extinct] Sireniki Eskimo language, and their morphological, typological similarity to Hungarian is a great help to me (genealogical relatedness cannot be proven). In generally, I like the rather "mechanistic" mythologies of hunter-gatherer groups. Some Eskimo myths are described in ethnographic literature as blurring [passive] object vs [active] subject distinctions (e.g hunter vs prey, child vs educator distinctions get blurred by assuming strange soul concepts including soul dualism, partial reincarnation etc). The years when I was busy learning Eskimo hard was also a time when I was busy in combinatory logic and lambda calculus, in generally, in functional programming. Because these calculi sort of allow functions to be arguments, and all "objects" (natural numbers, truth values, lists i.e. finite sequences, trees, instances of monads) have to be constructed as functions, thus they gave me a similar flavor of blurring familiar distinctions like some Eskimo myths.

Best wishes and many thanks,

Physis (talk) 21:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey

Re: [2] - His static I.P. address is at User:156.34.142.110 but please bare in mind that he probably wouldn't have done it without good reason :-) Hope this helps, take care. Scarian^{Call me Pat} 16:23, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info and the warning. I had already noticed that it's probably more complicated than it looks. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

First order logic

Sorry about that. It is true that for this article I when too fast, my apologies. However, it is not out of interest, it is just that I don't know much (read anything) in that field. I'll post what needs disambiguation in the discussion page. Randomblue (talk) 19:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for a clear feedback. I didn't view redirects in that manner. Indeed, redirects need to be avoided and if an article "Mathematical theory" gets created then one just has to look up what links to the page and fix the link(s) of any relevant article. Randomblue (talk) 20:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Natural languages

Dear Hans Adler,

Thank You for Your message and reassurement. Thank You also for mentioning the Language Log, I have not known about it before. Although I know almost nothing about the Eskimo words for snow, but I know a similar sophisticatedness for distinctions around "walrus": Eskimos indeed have a dozen, etymologically different words for it: distinct words for walrus

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

…

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

Even more interesting in Eskimo: there are cca a dozen demonstrative pronouns as well (not only "here" and "there" but also ones like "that beyond the horizon", "on the other side [of the river]"). And, for contrast, there are just a few numerals (even those expressed in a lengthy, complicated additive and substractive way).

As for skills in reading inscriptions for everyday use in a foreign country, there is a strange situation in China. "Chinese" is not a single language, but a set of mutually unintelligible languages. This is not so painful as it sounds, because their writing system does not depend on pronunciation (has a grammar of its own, as it is ideographic), thus, it is able to serve as a common tool for the whole area (like mathematics or ideograms). This works well, but this is no help for illiterate people in China. It has happened that an old woman went to visit her relative in a remote town, failed to be met there on the railway station incidentally -- and lost her way seriously (being unable both to read the signs and to understand people for asking help), thus she had to be searched for finally by the police.

You wrote You have Hungarian relatives in Transylvania. At a time, I wanted to learn Romanian (in the 90s there were many immigrants here, and also beggars, many Gipsy children as well, and I often wanted to talk to them, listen to the experiences they narrated, learn what dialects they use etc.), but finally I learnt just a few lections in Romanian. As for most beggar children, I could talk to most of them in Gipsy. I have learnt Gipsy since my childhood, I regularly visited even Gipsy talking families. My family is of Lower Austrian German origin (although having undergone a complete language shift). But if I have to speak German then I simply keep on using our South German dialect (even on my language exam).

Menovščikov, G. A. (= Г. А. Меновщиков) (1968). "Popular Conceptions, Religious Beliefs and Rites of the Asiatic Eskimoes". In Diószegi, Vilmos (ed.). Popular beliefs and folklore tradition in Siberia. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Best wishes and many successs to Your work,

Physis (talk) 00:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Easy, tiger...

...whilst I agree with your sentiment, this edit is probably against WP:NPA! gb ^{(t, c)} 20:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. You are right. Sometimes it's better to call a spade a shovel. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Or take 5 minutes and not call it anything ;-) gb ^{(t, c)} 21:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Pregeometry

Please see my answer to your remarks on my own talk page (since I thought it preferable to keep the discussion in one place). Zaslav (talk) 01:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Upon further investigation (including taking a look at a physics article on pregeometry) I concluded the physics concept is unrelated to the model theory or combinatorics concept. I made separate articles. See the disambiguation page Pregeometry and my talk page. I await your comments (I hope not too distressed!). Zaslav (talk) 07:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

WQA

Threads at the WQA are not archived in the fashion you seem to think they are. Do not mark them with archivetop/archivebottom. The only time we use those is to close discussions that refuse to end on their own (stubborn/argumentative editors, etc.). If you must close one in this fashion, be sure also to put the arthivetop under the section header, or MiszaBot will screw it up royally when it tries to move the thread to the archive. --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ooops. Sorry, this was the first time I did it, and I thought I had done it the way I had seen it done with another thread. Perhaps that was incorrect as well. I see you have fixed it for me. What made me do this was the absurd Jeff G. vs Jeffrey Gustafson and Mr. Gustafson thread. I wanted to make it very clear to Jeff G. that the discussion is over — but perhaps that wasn't such a good idea anyway. Thanks a lot for fixing my mistake. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Responded.

I responded to your message on my talkpage.

To understand my overall frustration with Wikipedia, I suggest you see two things:

• Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Worked on the part about objectivity. -- Wikipedia holds a naive, wishy-washy philosophy which has no regard for reason and relies on ridiculous assumptions of human rationality reminiscient of 18th century Liberalism, Anarchism, and Ayn Rand's Objectivism.
• Question #9 for Aitias. [3]

Very rarely do users quiz potential admins on logic. They just ask them "what do u think about policy x" and "show me why ur a good person." It's the intellectual equivalent of running for class president in high school.

Step outside articles on logic. Try editing articles on either religion, politics, or even just more broad topics that aren't particularly religious or political-in-nature. What you will find is this: WP:Zombies. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 11:04, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Hans, you didn't respond to the above. Why? You've blatantly accused me of bad-faith and I'd like to clarify that isn't true. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:53, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I am astonished by your strange request. Sorry that I have to say this, but you are paranoid. So far I haven't replied because I was interrupted when I was writing my response. I copied it into a text file and forgot about it. Here is how far I got:

Well, concerning the university professors, I am sure you understood my point. I don't consider myself a "fan" of Feynman, although I have a nice edition of his 3-volume "Lectures on Physics" and I read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" a long time ago. The fact that I am a mathematical logician has nothing to do with my opinion on the "Feynman Algorithm", which I never heard of before. As a mathematician I don't think it works (as it usually degenerates into the "Winnie the Pooh Method"), and I agree with Rota's account of the "Feynman method" that is cited at the end of the page.

I can't say much about your literary references: I haven't read any of the three books. One

I have certainly not knowingly accused you of bad faith other than in my post to ANI, where I think I have provided excellent evidence to meet the Duck test standard. Do you want me to say more about that, or can you point to another specific point in my post to you that you object to? You see you have changed the tone in which I am talking to you. I am human, you know, and I react to the way people approach me. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You may not have knowingly did it, but in your post to WP:ANI, you assumed bad faith because (see WP:AAGF) you assumed that I assumed the assumption of bad faith, which is itself a form of assuming bad faith. Particular evidence is irrelevant if extraneous evidence is ignored (which it was, see my response there) and existing evidence is not tied together by logic (which it did not seem to be, you hand-selected various remarks, here and there). Otherwise, what you have is not a logical argument, but conspiracy theorism. Conspiracy theorists, too, could put forth a long bulleted list, of the "evidence" that the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition.

I noticed something which may explain why you are not aware of your assumption of bad faith. In your accusation here. [4] You started off by confirming that you were accusing me of accusing Markussep of lying.

Yes, I am accusing you of that

Later on, your description of events changes:

Now you accuse me of not assuming good faith because I asked you whether you want to accuse Markussep of lying?

Were you accusing or asking? Aside from our subjective biases, the definitions of both terms are quite different.

Falsely accusing of lying != Asking whether I want to make the false accusation of lying

Falsely accusing => Zenwhat has Bad faith Asking => Zenwhat may or may not have bad faith

A duck is not a duck because you say it is. A duck is a duck because it is, in fact, a duck.

I asked about Feynman because based on your remarks, I strongly suspect you believe that the conceptual root of logic is entirely arbitrary which, if it is, is fairly inconsistent. The semantic theory of truth is quite beautiful and consistent within formal analysis, but utterly useless in the real world. I have this suspicion (which is not an assumption of bad faith -- just an assumption of absurd beliefs), because you have not observed the problems on Wikipedia, outlined above and elsewhere.

The idea of critical thinking is not a mathematical or formal logical concept and it cannot be proved formally, but it is clearly the epistemological foundation for logic and, ultimately, all human knowledge. You seem to think that it is not possible to think critically, but rather, reason is something that is arbitrarily created and destroyed by meaningless, aggregate physical forces, i.e. "The world has made you a logician. Therefore, you are logical. The world has made Zenwhat not a logician. Therefore, he is a fool."

A careful examination of this yields what absurdity it is (assuming my observations here are correct). Furthermore, in the absence of recognizing this, you're never going to come up with an original idea, like this or this, but will instead merely repeat, within the framework of your limited mind, what you have heard and synthesized from the various mathematical texts of the day, making you one of many countless mathematicians and philosophers who haven't made any particularly notable contributions to human knowledge.

Finally, "I have certainly not knowingly accused you of bad faith other than in my post to ANI" appears to be a red herring. Because my argument was, "You have accused me of bad faith," not, "You have accused me of bad faith everywhere except WP:ANI. When I said, "You've blatantly accused me of bad-faith," I was specifically talking about your remarks in WP:ANI. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:28, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

"I noticed something which may explain…." It's very easy to respond to that, and mind you: The very fact that I am responding to you at all proves that I am still assuming good faith rather than intentional misrepresentation. I asked you, because I wasn't sure; 12 hours later, after you responded and blew your chance to learn from your mistake, I accused you.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what WP:AGF is about. I told you about the problem before, in this thread. I am pointing you to an old version, but one that already contains comments by KieferSkunk and Seicer at the end; which I am certain you understood as validating your position in the dispute. To anyone who tried to see your side of the dispute it was so obvious that you would do that, that for some time the situation actullay confused me as well. In the end, Seicer (who had health problems at the time) admitted having used WP:SARCASM, and KieferSkunk (who was busy in real life and wasn't aware he was ambiguous) clarified his position later on my request. Search for my name on their talk pages to see the details.

In any case I will try to be much clearer this time. Ever since the beginnings of of Usenet it was clear that there is a problem with online communication because 1) people don't know it each other personally, and 2) an important part of our communication is just not there. For the second problem smileys and abbreviations like "ROFL" were invented, but they don't help much to prevent flame wars from breaking out. The fundamental problem is one that exists in real life as well:

To simplify, let's assume the problem is only "civility", and that "civility" is measurable: A communicative act has a "civility" somewhere between 0 % and 100 %. I know an extremely nice guy from Columbia, whose civility is always 100 %. I had never experienced this before I met him, and I can tell you it's very disconcerting when you are not used to it. For me, the civility in a normal conversation is 40-80 %, say. If it leaves that range I become uncomfortable and want to know what's going on. I would expect that for my South American colleague it's something like 70-100 %. For some people it's 30-50 %. They get furious when you are too polite to them.

In real life the problems of communication that result from this aren't as bad as on the internet: E.g. the fact that my South American colleague is always so impeccably dressed. Seeing this makes it much harder to suspect him of irony when he is 100 % polite. On the internet you can't see the clothes of the person you are conversing with, or that the person at the other end is an internet-addicted young mother who should really stop writing now because her 5-week-old baby is crying very loudly. She is still writing instead of feeding her child, but her civility is around 20% right now (usually it's closer to 40 %). We don't know all this, we have to go by what we see on the screen, and we get a wrong mental image of the person we are talking to.

Wikipedia's fundamental communication rules like WP:CIV and WP:AGF exist to address this problem. If you are following them in a way that does not address the problem, then you can just stop following them altogether. AGF means that you have a duty to behave in the same way that an average person behaves when in a good-faith conversation. On Wikipedia you are not communicating with your parents. You are communicating with thousands of strangers who have no interest whatsoever in your personality. (On the other hand, its perfectly consistent with AGF to privately suspect someone of being on Wikipedia for bad-faith reasons. You can make a private file on them and follow all their moves. It's OK so long as you keep it secret to all of Wikipedia and you behave as if you assumed good faith. That's because it's not disruptive. It's also not stalking if the person never suspects it.)

If you say something that is not true, and if you should have known this, then it does not matter that everybody knows you are a lazy bastard who keeps misinterpreting what he reads and keeps jumping to conclusions all the time and who should never be taken seriously. Or whatever. With your mother this excuse may work three times a day. On Wikipedia it works three times per user account.

On the internet, everything that passes the Turing test for ducks is a duck. Everything else would be too complicated. If you don't want to be called a duck, don't behave like a duck. On the internet the signs "No ducks please" apply to everything that quacks and waddles, not just to ducks.

To your final remark: I was sincerely surprised. I thought you would have understood by now that your behaviour in the ANI thread was completely unacceptable, and therefore I thought you must be talking about something else. Yes, it was a red herring. But not as a rhetorical device. Stressing it as much as you did was a red herring and shows you were not assuming good faith. You see why this way of arguing is disruptive?

I don't even understand your Feynman/logic arguments. You seem to be thinking on a philosophical level that is very strange to me; this might be the root of our communication problems. If that is so, you might want to ask someone you trust and who is not afraid of being critical with either of us: Let them have a look at our conversation and comment on it. How about Kim Bruning, for example? In any case this is just a suggestion, and you can just ignore it. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Assuming Good Faith

You have apparently accused me of something illegal in our discussion. Could you please clarify (and I assume that wasn't exactly what you intended). — BQZip01 — ^talk 21:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarified. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

ROFL.

By "he knows it's illegal" I mean "he can be expected to know it's illegal because he has been told so several times by several people", and by "illegal" I mean "against the express wording of WP:USER".

If-by-whiskey. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It's way too late for me to read your reply to the other thing now. So I will only respond to this: I don't get it. BQZip01 was apparently concerned that I had publicly accused him of having broken the law. I am no expert on these matters, but he is in the US military and a lot of his colleagues seem to be here as well. So I am not even sure it was necessarily pure paranoia on his side to ask for a clarification. So I have clarified that I was not talking about US (or wherever) laws but about Wikipedia rules; and since he had asked nicely I also clarified that I don't think he knew about the rule when he created the page. In fact, I am assuming good faith here (really, not just for show): I think he still doesn't understand the rule, although we are allowed, more or less, to act as if he did, because he really should.

Ah, perhaps I got it now. Do you mean that by toning it down formally, I made it stronger rhetorically? That wasn't what I intended, although it seems to have had that effect. In any case, BQZip01 seemed satisfied, so I think I addressed his real concern. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

• X = If-by-whiskey
• Y = Something else (say bananas)

When I say X, I mean Y. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 03:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Email

Thanks for the email, feel free to email me anytime. I understand your point, but it's still not really a reason to delete anything. I'm not a hardcore inclusionist, but this is so minor I can't fathom why people crusade to deleted it - except of course this whole thing. --Cheeser1 (talk) 22:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that looks like real work. There is a lot of stupid hate in that region, and many people have been killed by their neighbours. We seem to have some genetic programming for that kind of thing. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know genetics, so I tend to blame the TV. --Cheeser1 (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I think in the US and large parts of Europe that's generally a good idea, but in that part of the Mediterranean I would doubt it. But I suppose it doesn't matter which programming is to blame, so long as we can pretend to separate it from human nature. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

As it happens...

I actually knew the German, we're doing the Brahms German Requiem this term, in German. Pure coincidence! Thanks, Guy (Help!) 22:23, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I saw it announced on your home wiki, and so I guessed you were singing it. This is just about the only piece of German romantic music that I like — because the combination of language and music in this piece is extremely effective. I hope that performing it can help you, I am sure that's why it was composed. The choice of bible passages is truly remarkable (and I am saying this as an atheist). --Hans Adler (talk) 23:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Rub it in

Hans, My apologies, I did not intent to 'rub it in'. I am hoping that my edit will bring closure to the chaos. 70.4.248.49 (talk) 01:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

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

I don't think you could back either of those phrases that you've applied to me [5], nor do I think it helpful for characterizing me as such. While I admire your attempts to help PeterStJohn, I don't think false, and potentially negative, characterizations of others is an appropriate way to do so. --Ronz (talk) 00:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

My post was written past midnight of my local time. I hereby apologise that my characterisation of your behaviour wasn't clear enough, nor worded with sufficient care, and didn't even come with enough defensive modifiers. I was talking about my impression. My impression is that you are one of the editors here who are very hard to get along with for people like Peter and me (who seem to be quite similar in some respects). Here is an example for the kind of action that can make me furious if I suspect it was done with conviction. And I do, because of the statements on your user page. I am sure I would have no problems justifying my use of the word "militancy". Unless I get the nuances of the word completely wrong, it can be used to describe people who see fights everywhere, find it hard to say something conciliatory to an opponent, and generally tend to escalate conflicts. Whereas I see misunderstandings everywhere and generally try to give my opponents the benefit of the doubt longer than I feel is warranted, to make up for my errors in judgement. It's not my natural behaviour; I have to force myself to do it, and that makes it all the harder to tolerate people in whose behaviour I can discern no such efforts.

"Profess to be defending science" is more problematic, I admit. I have spent a little time looking at your recent edits, and I found nothing to justify this characterisation. My impression may or may not be the result of my failure to distinguish your behaviour from that of someone else. Unfortunately I don't have the time now to do further research and convince myself completely that it is wrong. I have toned down the statement, and I have no intention of repeating it or characterising you in any way in the near future.

Please take my answer as a chance to learn something about the way some other people perceive you. I am not interested in a conflict with you, and even if I were, this would not be the right time, as I will be very busy in real life for the next 4 weeks or so.) --Hans Adler (talk) 12:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Thanks for toning down the statement.

You characterize as "militancy" the use of level 1 user talk page spam notice (uw-s1) to new editors whose sole edits have been to add the same single link to two articles. If that's "militancy", then I'm afraid you're in conflict with all the editors who use this template. --Ronz (talk) 16:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

By "militancy" I wasn't referring to that. But if you want to talk about this example: What I see is User:Alter.lego obtaining an account and making a single test edit in the sandbox, which involves this external link. Two months later User:80.35.158.73 turns "FRIDE" and "Diego Hidalgo" from text into wiki links (the only contributions from that IP). Four minutes after that User:Alter.lego turns the redlink into an external link. If I make an effort, I can see how this is consistent with a relatively sophisticated attempt at sneaky linkspamming. If you make an effort, you may be able to see how this is also consistent with a new user related to a website (presumably of a somewhat notable organisation) who doesn't yet fully understand all our rules and style guides. That a redlink is considered better than an external link is a peculiarity of Wiki culture, after all. If I haven't overlooked anything (such as persistent spamming of that particular link), please have a look at the second item under WP:VAND#NOT, and at the last sentence of that section. The vandalism templates are carefully phrased so as to be on the safe side (civilitywise) in clear cases of vandalism. But the mere fact that everybody can recognise them as templates makes them unsuitable for ambiguous cases like this one. Their language is also not appropriate in such a situation, because a good faith newbie who is greeted in this way will discern the reproachful undertone. I am not surprised that the user hasn't edited under this account since then. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I disagree and I think I have consensus on my side. The uw-s1 template assumes good faith. I assumed good faith. Please take the time to consider if you're doing the same. --Ronz (talk) 17:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

"I am not surprised that the user hasn't edited under this account since then." Now we're in conflict. Please chill. --Ronz (talk) 17:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Now I understand Peter. Please chill. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

(refactored a bit above)

You understand Peter? Great! Now both of you stop harassing me. --Ronz (talk) 18:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I give you the chance to retract the insinuation that I am harassing you. You probably didn't mean it. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)