Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 November 12

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November 12

Barefooting--Bioelectric factors

I am not trying to edit or correct an error, only to point out an omission. In what I read about not wearing shoes or what "earthing" means in the field of electronics: Somewhere on WIKI there should be a treatment of the popular trend of going shoeless or "grounding" one's own body by electrical devices, e.g., when sleeping, for health or performance reasons. There is a new book called Earthing (2010), numerous utube videos, and even an article in a scientific journal on public health about the benefits of allowing people to reestablish contact with the earth's plentiful supply of electrons. Books have a considerable lag time in coming out with new information. Shouldn't online sources such as WIKI be faster?

That sure sounds like a whole steaming pile of pseudoscientific bullshit. Statements like: "the earth's plentiful supply of electrons" really screams "this person understands absolutely nothing about electricity". The number of electrons is tied to the chemistry of the atoms - and that is precisely the same in the human body as in the rest of the planet. I don't know where you found out about this - but, trust me, it's bullshit.

Here on the reference desk, we've come to understand that if there is a YouTube video about some scientific-sounding subject, that makes it significantly less likely to be true...not more! YouTube is the beloved playground of fakers, quacks, fraudsters and idiots.

Could you please give us a reference to this "article in a scientific journal" - it would be interesting to see where that is.

As for reporting about it on Wikipedia...we are an encyclopedia, we have very specific rules about how we report "fringe theories" and it's quite unlikely that there will be an article about it until/unless it's a much more well-known phenomena.

SteveBaker (talk) 05:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The authors of the book seem to be Clint Ober, Stephen Sinatra M.D. and Martin Zucker. See the article on Stephen Sinatra for a mention of his fringe theory. For the scientific facts, see Ground (electricity). The fact that the fringe theory has not seen mention in serious scientific publications during the last two years suggests that most scientists regard it as pseudoscience. We do have a mention of "Earthing" in our article on List of topics characterized as pseudoscience, so there is no omission in Wikipedia. Dbfirs 08:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

That doesn't surprise me. A lot of nonsense is put out by a lot of crazy, misguided or money-grabbing people with few moral scruples. Since going barefoot sounds kinda neat and compelling to a lot of "back to nature" people - it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that someone can make money by writing a book about it, because those new-age hippy types are into all of the other bullshit theories like crystal healing, indigo children, astrology and so forth.

Even supposing it were true that there were health benefits to being in electrical equilibrium with the planet...you can earth yourself by touching something metal that's connected to ground...the faucet in your bathroom, would work very well...or the metal casing of any electrical appliance with a three pin plug. Either of those will ground you much more efficiently than walking in bare feet in dirt. But writing a book that says that you should go around obsessively touching faucets and toasters at every opportunity wouldn't catch the attention of the kind of people who buy those kinds of bullshit books...even though this approach offers the benefits of not cutting your foot every time you step on a sharp rock or burning your soles on the sidewalk on a hot summer day and getting frostbite in winter! SteveBaker (talk) 16:02, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

All very true, but it's worth noting that Americans have somewhat limited access to electrical appliances with three pin plugs! So they need to touch faucets more often maybe, or avoid wearing clothing made of synthetic materials :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd bet that most people have refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers with metal casings and three pin plugs...but whatever. The point is that going barefoot isn't the best way to discharge static electrical charge...and you can get yourself charged up to 100,000 volts with a Van De Graaf generator with little or not harm. So discharging yourself regularly is neither necessary, nor difficult without resorting to bare feet. SteveBaker (talk) 21:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Do you know how a Faraday cage works?

Grounded, non-grounded, you choose while working with high voltage electricity & then try pooh pooh the whole concept.

Good luck.. 2A02:C7C:40D2:8300:7CCC:AA4C:6795:534D (talk) 22:49, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Why did wikipedia decide to protest against SOPA?

Why did wikipedia protest against SOPA? Doesn't that go against the policy of NPOV?Whereismylunch (talk) 06:39, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

NPOV is about the neutrality of Wikipedia articles. Are you saying that Stop Online Piracy Act is not neutral? I haven't read it. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 06:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia organized a blackout against SOPA for 24 hours one time to protest against SOPA. Why did wikipedia do this if there is a policy about NPOV?Isn't it making a political statement?Whereismylunch (talk) 07:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

As I said, NPOV is about the neutrality of articles, and only that. It does not preclude Wikipedia (or the Wikimedia Foundation) as an organization from taking a political stance on any issue it wishes to. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 07:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Read all about it at Wikipedia:SOPA initiative. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:16, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Out-of-place debate, per instructions at the top of this page

What they actually violated is the rule against "disrupting Wikipedia to make a point." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:41, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Luckily, we have WP:IAR. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC) "Luckily" we have a guy named Wales who does what he wants regardless of any rules. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC) As a wise man said, those who chose to disrupt Wikipedia by shutting it down to influence legislation adopted a new policy: "ignore all pillars." Edison (talk) 20:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Right. I'd like to see some evidence that Congress cares one iota about what Wikipedia does. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:53, 12 November 2014 (UTC) I reckon there'd be quite a few members of Congress unhappy with some of our content. HiLo48 (talk) 02:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC) Congress members care what voters do and a lot of them contacted their representatives. See e.g. [1][2]. Whether you are for or against SOPA and Wikipedia's blackout, it probably did contribute significantly to the shelving of SOPA two days later. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC) SOPA codifies into law the idea that the internet can and should be censored by the US government. That would be the death-knell for free dissemination of information here. When countries like China and Cuba censor the web, it's bad because it prevents their residents from reading our content - and denies us the content that they might produce. That's bad, but it's their choice - and they can always overthrow their government if they don't like it. But if the home of Wikipedia (the majority of our servers are in Florida) started doing it - we'd be applying those sorts of constraints to the entire world on the say-so of just the people living in the USA - and that's not fair to mankind in general. Now, protesting this does indeed violate some of our internal rules (as Bugs points out - we were disrupting Wikipedia to make a point) - but then we have other rules (like WP:CENSOR) that say that we must not permit censorship of our content. In the end, we had a conflict of our internal rules - and fortunately we have another guiding principle Wikipedia:Ignore all rules - which says "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it"...and after some serious consensus-forming !votes, that's exactly what we did. SteveBaker (talk) 15:41, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Rendering it uneditable obviously improved Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC) The intent of SOPA was to prevent people from violating copyrights. I expect the loudest complainers were the ones who don't believe in copyrights. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:26, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Drinking the Kool-Aid a lot? Even assuming the claim, see law of unintended consequences. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:13, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Shutting down Wikipedia was one of the stupidest things that's happened here, and that's going some. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:52, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Very simply, the blackout happened because it had 10-1 community support, see Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative#Tallies. μηδείς (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Yes, every active wikipedian posted a comment there. The hysterical arguments against SOPA remind me of the hysterical arguments against gun control. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:00, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Bugs, given that I heard about this on the nightly news before I heard about it here, you can't exactly say it wasn't well advertised. The problem is one of due process and prior restraint. We don't allow the government to act first and prove after, especially in civil matters. The internet is no different in essence from talking on the phone, which is protected by the First Amendment. The only difference is that one does one's talking digitally. Some very monied interests like Disney co. lobbied to greatly extend what are supposed to be copyright protections limited in time and scope, because Mickey Mouse and so forth were about to enter the public domain. Consider the absurdity that a copyrighted work on Kindle is usually the same price as a paper copy. That's insane, given it's in the cloud, can be erased by Amazon, and is sold with infinitesimal cost in overhead and material resources. Until the monied interests adjust to the new reality, the law will simply be seen as acting on behalf of the monopolies, not in the public interest. Look at the copyright law of the United States, especially the laws of 1790 following the Founders' intent, and those of 1976 and 1998 based on lobbying by studios about to lose copyright on early talking and color movies. Until 1962, copyright lasted 28 years, and could be renewed for another 28, for a total of 56 years. Now it is 120 years, or life plus 70! Consider whether we should have Homeland Security monitoring US citizens and without a warrant and seizing property without a trial so that Mickey Mouse stays out of the public domain. I don't intend to comment further, as I don't want to continue debate. μηδείς (talk) 23:28, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Please, this is not a debate forum. The questions have been answered by Mandruss and Graeme Bartlett: NPOV only applies to articles, and the reasons will be found on the page Graeme linked to. Can we hat this now? --174.88.134.249 (talk) 05:17, 13 November 2014 (UTC) Happy to do that. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 05:32, 13 November 2014 (UTC) The term "community" should be used very loosely there. The "vote" took place on a long holiday without warning and ended abruptly when users learned that it was happening. Any attempts to make note of those circumstances in the SOPA initiative article are quickly eradicated. The so-called "community support" was nice for Wales but wasn't required - he was going to do it anyway. This is par for the course. It will be interesting to see what happens after Flow is imposed upon the "community". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC) Don't criticize Jimmy. You just might end up like this guy. I am too lowly of a peon to be on Wales' radar. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC) I've lowered the hat to cover unsigned remarks and reworded my link to the tally stats. μηδείς (talk) 22:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• The blackout had 10-1 support, among the over 1,000 who commented, see Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative#Tallies. μηδείς (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

About observer country of SAARC

In the article of SAARC , I found some observer countries like USA ,japan,china etc.What will be their role for SAARC?Are they observing activities,policies of SAARC or any other??Diwas Sawid (talk) 12:20, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

http://saarc-sec.org/Cooperation-with-Observers/13/ may help. Dalliance (talk) 13:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

en.M.wikipedia.org

I was referred to a page with the url en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Józef_Warszewicz. (note the M)

It is the same content as en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Józef_Warszewicz but has a different format and is without a talk page. Please, what does the "m" signify and what is the status of pages in en.m.wikipedia.org?

Thanks, 19:28, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

C7nel (talk) 19:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It's the mobile site, i.e. designed for handheld devices (e.g. phones) and similar. No talk pages, and I guess the format is different (simplified) in some ways as well. I'm fairly sure that the content is based on what is in English Wikipedia already - so, different site but same content. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:29, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

You can access the talk pages, and all the other sections, by entering the correct URL. There's no link to talk: at the top of each article thought. CS Miller (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

There is a link at the very bottom of the "m" pages that allow you to go to the "desktop" version. No need to type any URLs. Mingmingla (talk) 00:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This will however mean you get the desktop version of the talk page, unless you switch to desktop, click on the talk page link then switch to mobile. Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Most mobile devices give you the option to request the desktop site too...and that works for all sites, not just Wikipedia. On Android, it's in the top-right menu of the browser...I forget where it is on iPhone/iPad. SteveBaker (talk) 03:12, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This describes how to get it on Safari on iOS8 [3]. The functionality is not available on earlier versions of iOS in Safari, but may be available in third party browsers like Chrome. Nil Einne (talk) 13:51, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I use css for my websites to make them work properly on mobile automatically. My main grouse is about facilities for handling transmission speed and image quality. The speed of smartphones and the quality of their screens is making that less of a worry though. Dmcq (talk) 11:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)