User talk:Steeletrap/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

April 2013

Welcome to Wikipedia. We welcome and appreciate your contributions, including your edits to Argumentation ethics, but we cannot accept original research. Original research also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. You really are injecting your own ideas into articles. While this edit is a few days old, it provides an example: [1]. Why do I say this? Because you are describing the other people as Hoppe's friends. No reliable source supports this particular edit. None of the various respondents to the theory are described as friends. This is improper editing. By adding "friends" you imply that they are prejudiced in Hoppe's favor. Please take a critical look at yourself and your edits. Your Master's thesis is focused on what you perceive to be a group/institute which you consider non-notable. Beyond the improper editing, I fear this attitude is motivating you to bad-mouth the various people you are writing about in WP. The motivation for doing this is subtle, but I speculate that you are doing so to preserve the work you are doing on your thesis. After all, if Wikipedia "finds" these people to be notable, that finding undercuts your thesis. Perhaps I am wrong in this analysis, but I am not wrong about the addition of non-sourced material into the article. – S. Rich (talk) 16:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't accept this criticism. Even though many (probably most) cited Responses to "Argumentation Ethics" clearly come from Hoppe's personal friends (and this can be sourced), I swiftly removed friends within minutes after editing (without anyone telling me to do it), so I think your criticism there is superfluous. (I agree that phrasing was over-the-top but my removing it shows that I am able to acknowledge when I (might) be stepping over the edge). None of my other edits constituted OR in any way. All I did was look at the sources cited and pointed out that literally all of them were from the Mises Institute (i.e., "colleagues" of Hoppe). My edits vastly improved the article, which was previously entirely -- and uncritically -- based on one source (the Ludwig von Mises Insitute), by avoiding misleading the reader into thinking that "responses [have] varied" from the broad academic community, when in fact they have only "varied" among a fringe group of anarchist libertarians who typically are Hoppe's personal colleagues. Your speculations and insinuations about me personally are irrelevant and border on personal attacks. However, if you drop that stuff and point to specific, concrete examples of edits I have made (which are recent enough to have been after I was told about the OR criteria of Wikipedia -- i.e. within the last few days -- and have not personally reverted within minutes -- which, again, shows self-awareness and a desire not to inject my bias into the article) which have diminished the integrity of the article, or deviate from Wikipedia criteria, I am happy to listen. But it reflects an assumption of bad faith to jump on me for an "unsourced" edit that 1) could easily be sourced (ask me if you doubt this) 2) was personally deleted within minutes. Given your (false) speculative statements about my motives, I would ask that you take a step back and think about your own. Steeletrap (talk) 16:29, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Please don't react negatively to my criticism. It is offered in completely good faith. I specifically mentioned the "friends" because it was your edit and it was not removed. (I removed "friends" with this edit: [2].) Yes, you are injecting over-the-top material, and yes, you are removing it. But putting it in from the get-go suggests that POV is a motivator. This suggestion is underwritten by your AfD comments/disclosures about your feelings regarding LvMI. I admit my thoughts are speculative. But they are not a PA. I am urging you to speculate about yourself. Something like "Am I letting my feelings about LvMI et al influence my WP editing or thesis?" Or "Why would S.Rich bring this up?" Please don't think I am being hostile. You are providing useful contributions to WP and I appreciate them. And your edits have improve greatly over time. And I hope you use this exercise (of editing in general and this discussion with me) as another vehicle for self-improvement. – S. Rich (talk) 16:59, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

It's hard to view this discussion as productive when you inject speculative, negative insinuations about my motives -- without, I might add, any evidence -- into the mix. It's also difficult when you make false statements like "no credible source [supports]" my friends edit (a statement which implies that I made it up). Actually, a quick google search shows that (according to two sources Wikipedia deems credible http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/wile13.1.html and http://mises.org/journals/jls/22_1/22_1_31.pdf), Hoppe is personal friends with both Block and Kinsella. I am sorry about falsely stating that I removed the "friends" bit; I intended to but you apparently got there first. I think the reasonable interpretation is that I wasn't lying about this (since such a statement would be easily falsifiable but Wiki editors), but that I genuinely tried to make the edit but you made it first. Steeletrap (talk) 17:08, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I did not say "no credible source". (The template message uses the term "reliable source".) The issue is "What sources are provided in the article?", not what sources are available to an enterprising editor. (Also, I did not look at the history of intermediate edits between your addition of "friend" and my deletion of it. It might have been the case that someone else added it after you removed it, so I tried to focus on what you had added as an illustration.) I am not implying that you made up the stuff about friends. They probably are friends. But we need a source that says so. Please -- I think you are reacting too defensively to my comments. They really are intended to be helpful and I regret that you find them otherwise. – S. Rich (talk) 17:22, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that you made it personal by making speculative personal insinuations based on no evidence. I certainly wouldn't have reacted this way if the message had simply addressed my lack of sourcing for friends. (I don't believe that noting the fact that all RS responding to HOppe's argument came from his colleagues was OR, or irrelevant in any way; but if you had disagreed and criticized me for it, I would have been fine hashing it out in a civil manner.) Steeletrap (talk) 17:25, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Update- Given Hoppe's comments in the following piece (http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=257), it appears that literally every "positive" endorsement of Argumentation Ethics discussed in the article comes from people who are not only colleagues but personal friends. You can object to my having included this as OR (though, again, I subsequently tried to remove it), but it wasn't out of left field. And again, a big problem with all the LVMI-related articles is that critical editors like myself are held to stringent NPOV and anti-OR standards while (as SPECIFICO observed) the pro-LVMI authors are running riot with OR and COI. Steeletrap (talk) 17:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Talk page comments

Part of this edit to the LRC talkpage made a change to my comment: [3]. I am sure it was a mistake, but please note that "refactoring" the comments of others is not permitted. Accordingly, I ask that you self-revert the entire comment, thereby restoring my original comment. Then please add your own comments. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 06:07, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I apologize. That's completely inappropriate (which I know/knew) and I assure you it was unintentional. What did I change? Steeletrap (talk) 13:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh: it was just that one typographical error? Obviously that was an accident and had no substantive effect on the conversation. Of course, I'll change it, but I don't know that this was an appropriate comment to leave on my talk page. My edit was obviously accidental but your discussion of "refactoring" on my talk page implies that I made a substantive deletion or revision of your comments (as opposed to accidentally typing a few letters into one word) that made you look bad, and that I therefore need to learn not to "refactor" other peoples comments (implying that intentionality was plausible, when -- looking at the edit -- it obviously wasn't). Steeletrap (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I put "refactoring" in quotes because it is a term of art in WP. WP:REFACTOR gives more info. (Please note that even minor stuff is a refactor. Also, I "refactored" your comment above by changing the indent, which is an acceptable change.) And I pointed out I saw it as a mistake. The best way to fix the mistake is to undo that particular edit entirely. Then add your comments. That will give a clean version of your comments. Your apology is certainly accepted. And I apologize if my tone implied that you did something wrong. – S. Rich (talk) 14:20, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

– S. Rich (talk) 14:27, 24 April 2013 (UTC)