November 2011

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Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, but at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Alberger process, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted.

  • Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Note that human editors do monitor recent changes to Wikipedia articles, and administrators have the ability to block users from editing if they repeatedly engage in vandalism.

Thank you. 7&6=thirteen () 11:22, 30 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Your recent edits

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  Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button   or   located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when they said it. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 22:12, 22 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

In response to your feedback

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Yes, the world is full of people with bias..... but if we write using reliable secondary sources we should be able to illuminate different points of view... for a hard headed statement on references see WP:42.

Ariconte (talk) 09:57, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Jake, if you continue to post comments like this to a talk page, which are not constructive in any way, you will not last long here. Ditto for removing sourced material, as you did here. You also need to make clear what you mean by "bias." Basically, just because there is something in an article that you don't like...it does not mean that it is biased. If something is backed to reliable sources, that is just the way it is, per WP:Verifiability, although the sources can be checked against other sources for their accuracy...and articles should usually be WP:Neutral. I believe that all of the information in the Adolescence article is presented in a neutral manner. Flyer22 (talk) 12:06, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

You should read through Help:Getting started to learn about editing Wikipedia. Flyer22 (talk) 12:11, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
As I stated on my talk page: It is not discrimination to state a fact. It is a fact that young adolescent minds are not as cognitively developed as the minds of older adolescents and adults past 20. If we state the fact that a child's mind isn't as cognitively developed as an adolescent's or adult's, for example, would that also be bias and discrimination? Hopefully, your answer is no...because small children simply do not think on the same level as adolescents and adults (not even genius children). That's how it is for young adolescents vs. older adolescents/adults. I did balance out the lead as best I could without removing the material (with the exception of removing the part of the age range that went all the way up to 30 for a fully developed mind), as explained on the talk page. I can see how the following line can be offensive to young adolescents: "Partially because of this, young adolescents are generally less equipped than adults to make sound decisions and anticipate consequences of sexual behavior." But basing it on cognitive development, it is true with regard to young adolescents, like 13-year-olds. I was pretty well-equipped to make sound decisions as well as any legal/older adult when I was 16 and 17. But at 13? There was definitely a lot more immaturity there, even if I made sound decisions here and there.
Your edits about youths and to the talk pages of such articles have baffled me, partly because you are on some crusade to eliminate any facts you see as disparaging and any negativity about adolescent/teenager behavior and society...and partly because you are editing in a way that is not at all in accordance to how Wikipedia is supposed to work. You need some WP:Mentoring asap. Flyer22 (talk) 19:50, 24 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Word to the wise

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Thanks for your note on my talk page.

As far as the "evilness" of WP, I want to challenge your conception. It's not that the project itself is evil, because despite it's flaws, it is a mostly objective tool in itself. It's operating norms are where the project does have flaws, particularly around the faux-democratic nature of the editing process. By allowing the masses to voice their opinions on any and everything through citations and WP policies, a sort of intelligencia has emerged where those who know how to use the system can make virtually any article go in their perspective, or at least towards consensus with others who use the tools as well.

This is problematic in as much as majority bias emerges; this is true of many articles in WP focused on children and youth. The are obviously biased against young people themselves. However, this is reflective of the larger fields of study that are used within the project as citations. Most articles cited in the project come from mainstream sociology and education sources. Those fields are inherently biased towards adults' perspectives of young people, as there is no room for young people as academicians within them. I have been successful in broadening the base of articles on WP focused on children and youth only as far as I could play within the boundaries established on the site. There have been times when I've tried to go beyond the boundaries, and those times have led to smackdowns from the larger community, and from a few targeted detractors.

If you want to change WP, you have to commit to changing society. One way to do that is to change academia; another is to change popular social perspectives towards children and youth. But railing against WP is ultimately a small skirmish in a much, much larger war against young people.

Good luck.

Freechildtalk 16:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

P.S. FYI, from my perspective most editors' responses to your edits so far have been right, according to WP policies. Again, if you want to change WP, learn to use the tools here in order to challenge the predominant perspectives. WP:RS and WP:PG are our friends... • Freechildtalk 16:36, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Talk page guidelines

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Jake, see WP:TALK about what you should use talk pages for and what you should and shouldn't do on them. If you want this material, which I reverted, removed from the talk page, you should remove the whole section. But only because I am okay with you removing it. You typically shouldn't remove a section full of replies. See Wikipedia:TALK#Own comments for details about editing your own comments. Per that section: It is best to avoid changing your own comments. Other users may have already quoted you with a diff (see above) or have otherwise responded to your statement. Therefore, use "Show preview" and think about how your amended statement may look to others before you save it. Substantially altering a comment after it has been replied to may deny the reply of its original context. It can also be confusing. Flyer22 (talk) 01:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

You can always cross out your comments if you want. See the TALK#Own comments link above for how to do so.
And, again, Wikipedia is not discriminating against youth. We are reporting what reliable sources say. And like I stated, some things (like cognitive development) are without a doubt true. I repeat: Some of these things, about how adolescents think or behave, are positively true. An editor already explained to you that you are not going to change the view on adolescents and their behavior by challenging reliable sources. If you want to change the view on adolescents and their behavior, then you first have to change the world outside of Wikipedia, so that some of these sources don't say what they do.
I told you before to look into getting a WP:Mentor, someone who will help you with your editing at Wikipedia. Flyer22 (talk) 20:46, 28 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Your recent edits

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  Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button   or   located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when they said it. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 05:43, 30 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#cavitation

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Please acknowledge my answer to your question. Bo Jacoby (talk) 12:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC).Reply