Talk:Rumor

Old AFD full
Tito xd (?!? - help us) 08:02, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Vergil
This is the excerpt from Vergil, Book IV of The Aeneid (174-188). In my opinion, it deserves to be added to the article.


 * Rumor, than whom no evil thing is faster:
 * Speed is her life; each step augments her strength.
 * Small, a shiver, at first, she soon rears high.


 * She walks aground; her head hides in the clouds.
 * Men say that Earth, in fury at the gods,
 * Bore this last child, a sister to the Giants.


 * She is swift of foot and nimble on the wing,
 * A horror, misshapen, huge. Beneath each feather
 * There lies a sleepless eye (wonder to tell!),
 * And a tongue, and speaking lips, and ears erect.


 * By night she flies far over the shadowed world
 * Gibbering; sleep never comes to rest her eyes.
 * By day she sits at the watch high on a roof
 * Or lofty tower, and terrifies great cities,
 * As much a vessel of slander as crier of truth.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.139.226.34 (talk • contribs)


 * I must disagree with that, because this article is about verified information of rumors.--Dale S. Satre 21:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dale S. Satre (talk • contribs)


 * I think it might be okay to add it. It would be consistant with an encyclopedia's educational purpose. BTW more needs to be added saying that rumors are often considered to be bad. Borock (talk) 15:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I came to this page deliberately to find this passage as one of the earliest musings on rumor as a concept. I think it's extremely relevant, valid, and should be added immediately. Within the text of Virgil, this is a commentary on how rumor works and the destructive force it can have. It's completely in line with the rest of the page's content. Mccartneyac (talk) 16:38, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Russian sociological sources
`'Míkka>t 17:54, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Objection templates
Hello. I suggest removing the objections at the top of the page, especially about lack of citations. I have significantly developed them. --Unsigned comment by 83.113.85.204


 * I removed the "Noreferences tag" since the article clearly has them, but the other tags are outside my expertise. It would not be wrong to remove the tags yourself if you believe you have met the objections. See WP:Be bold. VMS Mosaic (talk) 17:02, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Psycological information only
This article only talks about the psycological science of rumors. Shouldn't it be known more, such as the effects on innocent peole (particularly at school)?--Dale S. Satre 21:47, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't just talk about psychological effects. It talks about effects on politics, news, and so forth. But it could certainly be developed with examples of effects on schoolchildren,too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.84.31.9 (talk) 16:58, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't The Psychology of Rumor by Gordon Allport and Leo Postman? (Article currently has Joseph Postman). —Preceding unsigned comment added by SamsonSwayne (talk • contribs) 06:43, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it's too much about politics. Most rumors don't have a political purpose. Borock (talk) 15:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

If you want to develop the other aspects (not about political uses of rumors), Borock, then please do. But the new research on and use of rumors in politics is arguably important for the article. July 3, 2009 (GD) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Debordelique (talk • contribs) 11:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I am writing to ask that you please do not erase/efface the section on political communication and the rumor bomb. It's an important contribution to rumor study and political discourse, I have usedboth in my own work and in teaching studuents about political communication. Curtismayfield2010 (talk) 21:45, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * you may want to take a look at wikipedia's meatpuppet policyCoffeepusher (talk) 00:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Unethical editorial behavior by "Coffeepusher"; REversion to July 25 status of article
I am reverting the article to its pre-Aug 11 status. Unfortunately "coffeepusher" has a vendetta, after having responded personally to my criticisms of and suggestions for changing the article he almost entirely wrote on "the public sphere." The discussion section there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Public_sphere) shows that I launched a discussion of his sources on Aug. 11, which continued through Aug. 14 (so far). He took my criticisms and suggestions extremely personally. I didn't edit or erase what he had done there, though I could've done so. I simply suggested ways the article could be improved. He then appears to have searched for other areas on Wiki where I have contributed with my expertise, currently in rumor. Curiously, he showed up on this page (rumor) in the middle of that exchange, though there is no trace that he had any interest in the topic before. It seems pretty obvious that he came here out of personal reasons, and then erased the section that makes reference to my own scholarly work. First, I added to the article in other ways besides adding a political communication section, demonstrating both my expertise in the subject and my interest to develop the article. I had originally made a Wiki entry for "rumor bomb," and after discussion with an editor, accepted his suggestion to delete the entry and develop the concept in the article on rumor. Now, coffeepusher erased that section, justifying it thus: "(cur | prev) 23:52, 15 August 2010 Coffeepusher (talk | contribs) (7,421 bytes) (→Rumor as Political Communication Strategy (2006): WP:WEIGHT, WP:SPAM, AND WP the "rumor bomb" article has been cited twice in four years and is otherwise only spoken of by Jayson, who wrote this section". I've already demonstrated that he has come to this page not out of care for the article (or interest in  the topic or wiki standards), but from resentment. However, if someone thinks that the "rumor bomb" part of the article is "over weight," then I am happy to have that part compressed. But the section in Wiki on source neutrality and weight, speaks of articles where different scholars disagree on some subject or theory (they use the example of "flat earth theory"). That has nothing to do with rumor and rumor bombs. No one has said it is some bogus theory (quite the contrary; see below) The point is that practically no one in contemporary political communication studies is working on rumor besides me/Harsin. If they were, I would be happy to develop the article in that direction. This is the reason why I helped develop the section on social and cognitive psychological approaches to rumor. It's part of my duty as a researcher to learn what else others have had to say about the subject, especially if they have researched its use and impact on politics. As I also said, early research on rumor in mass media studies was linked to war and propaganda. This is why I developed distinctions between misinformation, propaganda, etc. and "rumor bombs." Furthermore, coffeepusher justifies his effacement saying that only four people had cited ONE of the articles I've written on it in the last four years. Even if that were true, only two citations is not grounds for discrediting the development of the section. Lots of specialist-researchers work in an area where only a couple of other people work on the same subject. Second of all, the research that produced that concept has appeared in highly respected, competitive, peer-reviewed professional conference proceedings, such as the International Communications Association (the major international professional association in communication studies), which is included in academic search databases for the field, such as Communications and Mass Media Complete (where one can download articles), such as the following versions of the research:

The Rumor Bomb, Convergence Culture and American Post-politics. By: Harsin, Jayson. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 2008 Annual Meeting, p1, 0p; (AN 36957460

The Rumor That "John Kerry is French," i.e. Haughty, Foppish, Elitist, Socialist, Cowardly, and Gay.Full Text Available By: Harsin, Jayson. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 2007 Annual Meeting, p1-1, 1p; (AN 26951142)

The first version of the article in Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture was deemed important enough to appear a year later in a cultural studies collection (CULTURAL STUDIES) edited by a veteran scholar, Michael Ryan (a Dean now at Temple University) on a major press (Blackwell), in the section on "Discourse." The wide-ranging collection contains giant intellects impacting this interdisciplinary field such as KARL MARX and JUDITH BUTLER.

More recently, I have published on the Rumor Bomb "JOhn Kerry is French" in a cutting edge collection on POlitics and Diffusion, with top scholars in the fields of sociology and political science, "The Diffusion of Social Movements" (July 2010) on one of the most respected academic presses in the world: Cambridge University Press. As with everything that appears on that prestigious press, this collection was carefully peer-reviewed.

That is not all. While the larger topic of rumor in non-wartime politics is almost completely ignored in interdisciplinary scholarship (practically nothing in anglophone communication studies), my work is indeed starting to get attention in interdisciplinary circles and in popular media. Here are some samples, mostly from 2010, again suggesting the growing importance of a very new contribution (even if the first article on it appeared four years ago). MOst of these are available online, and everyone knows it takes longer for books and articles to get into print.

Hutter, Bridget (2010) Anticipating Risks and Organising Risk Regulation, p. 100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Renard, J. (2010) "La construction de l’image des hommes politiques par le folklore narratif. Anecdotes, rumeurs, légendes, histoires drôles." Mots Les langages du politique 92: n° 92, 2010/1

Musangi, J. ‘Only a few cases of skirmishes here and there’: Interrogating the ‘truth’ of an election in the Kenyan blogosphere [Part of a special issue on the 2007 elections in Kenya]. Africa Insight v. 39 no. 1 (June 2009) p. 86-9

Kleinberg, John (2010) "The flow of on-line information in global networks," Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on Management of data table of contents (KEYNOTE SPEAKERS SESSION) available at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1807167.1807169

(2009)Leskovec, J., L. Backstrom, and J. Kleinberg (2009) "Meme-tracking and the dynamics of the news cycle." International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining archive. Available at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1557077

Tarrow, Sidney [eminent Cornell sociologist] (2010) "War, Territorial States and Contention:Lasswell v Tilly," Presentation to the University of Pennsylvania Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionalism series on “Sovereignty, Territoriality and Plural Citizenships”, Available at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/dcc/documents/WarTerritorialStatesandContentionLaswellv.Tilly.doc

Newspapers around the world have been citing Harsin and Rumor Bomb, too. Some examples. South Africa: http://www.rapport.co.za/Weekliks/Nuus/As-die-gerugte-begin-vlieg-het-jy-n-goeie-bomskuiling-nodig-20100327 Sri Lanka: http://www.island.lk/2010/02/10/midweek5.html Thailand: http://www.bangkokbiznews.com/home/detail/politics/opinion/pijitra/20100518/116177/วิกฤติการเมือง...วิกฤติข่าวลือ.html El Salvador: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/revistas/septimo-sentido/68352-son-rumores.html France: http://www.la-croix.com/article/index.jsp?docId=2359407&rubId=5547 And large Alt.news sites such as Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/bratich06222009.html

Finally the concept and one of the articles has been used in courses on political discourse. For example, www.willamette.edu/~ncordova/RHET232Syll06.doc,

and http://www.cse.unr.edu/~mgunes/cs790g/ in this lecture: http://www.cse.unr.edu/~mgunes/cs790g/Karaoglu_HoaxOrTruth

IN sum, I've shown that coffeepusher came here out of resentment (not to improve the article); and also that his claim suggesting scholars don't take the term seriously is false. If I were just out for self-promotion, I hardly would've helped develop the rest of the article. But since I spend time researching it anyway, I thought I would develop it as fully as I could at the time. As I said, I don't mind if other sections are expanded and if the section dealing with rumor bombs is compressed. But I don't see reason to eliminate it, especially in a climate where the rumor Obama is a Muslim now is reported to be at 24% and the Shirley Sherrod is Racist rumor resulted in a media firestorm and her resignation. Debordelique (talk) 17:09, 29 August 2010 (UTC)debordelique, JH


 * no I found out who you were and noticed that the ONLY edits you made to the mainspace (with one exception two years ago)were to promote your own article. Your article is only cited by two different scholarly sources (in one a footnote, and the other a paragraph) and doesn't even show up on a google scholar search of rumor or rumour.  I even checked the prior conversation two years ago when you added it as Beardedpig where you argued that it was a new concept and would catch on soon with the scholarly community... but here two years later there has been little or no impact whatsoever.  This information completely rebukes your claims that you didn't come here for self promotion, or that your article merits inclusion on a wikipedia article on Rumor (seriously, what secondary source shows your article has a significant impact on the concept of rumor that merits inclusion on an encyclopedia) it is hardly notable enough to be included on wikipedia.  Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promotion, something you accused me of doing on the public sphere page, but here we find out you are the one who is out ethics (as the scientologists say).Coffeepusher (talk) 20:21, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * ps, re read WP:WEIGHT and you will find that it says concepts should be included in terms of content and length proportionally BASED ON THEIR IMPACT WITH THE IDEA AS A WHOLE.Coffeepusher (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * so let me summarize really quick, in two years you have made ONE EDIT to the mainspace which wasn't about your article, and you argue that the one edit demonstrates a significant magnanimous effort on your part to prove your purpose here was to improve this page through your scholarly knowledge of the concept rather than pure self promotion.Coffeepusher (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Look at the evidence above. I don't know where you do your research. You make false claims, either out of ignorance or spite. I also notice on your page that there have been threats to remove your editing capabilities, accusations of "disingenuous" behavior, and participating in editing wars. (UTC)debordelique, JH —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.202.170.56 (talk)


 * ...and Mr. Ad hominem strikes again :) I hope your position of chair doesn't includes teaching students about the flaws of fallacies. But my talk page is irrelevant in a conversation regarding a scholar using wikipedia to promote his pet article.  I did look at the evidence above, and a few non-peer reviewed articles written by your colleagues, and mention in conference notes (hell I had two full conference publications as an undergrad, not just a mention...and I am not mentioned on wikipedia...at least I didn't write it :)) does not establish notability for Wikipedia.  look at my post again, those blue highlighted words show my research and evidance.Coffeepusher (talk) 21:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * but on the subject of my talk page, I assume "threats to remove your editing capabilities" was that one editior who copy and pasted that warning template as a retaliation for me posting the same thing on his page after he reverted the AA page two times against community consensus...which as far as I can see is the only time there has been "threats to remove your editing capabilities" as well as "engaging in edit wars" a concept that has some specific meaning here which I don't think you really understand...(that person was banned and the community stated I didn't do anything wrong), Accusations of disingenuous behavior...you really should read more than just the headlines before you post you know, read that section.Coffeepusher (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't forever cry "ad hominem," which anyone who has studied fallacies knows can be a kind of fallacy itself! REspond to the arguments. What do you know about rumor research? YOu hardly looked at the evidence, since you're clearly misrepresenting them again. They come from books most recently on Cambridge University Press (and I'm not speaking of my own contribution to one there), peer-reviewed conference papers, which have been published online, and peer-reviewed journal articles in French, too. If anyone is listening, you simply can't fool them by continually misreprsenting factual claims, which readers may look up themselves. These are hardly citations from amateurs, but from professors and Stanford, Cornell, and other fine universities, to say nothing of one of citations by newspapers, and use in courses (by people I don't know). In addition, if you had done your homework on this page, instead of clearly dropping by to be spiteful (is that the way you deal with legitimate criticisms of your contributions on other pages? Do you think that's really in the interest of collaborative knowledge sharing?), you'd notice that in fact I wrote significant parts of every section (though one was strangely deleted (the section on Knapp's influential work) without justification. I simply didn't login to write those passages, by the IP Address will clearly show they're from France. So, once again, you simply misrepresent, and for what? Because you have hurt feelings that I tried to help improve the article on the public sphere, which you wrote almost entirely on your own? (UTC)debordelique, JH —Preceding unsigned comment added by Debordelique (talk • contribs)


 * first off, I hope you don't mind, I fixed your formating so that your citations didn't look like one giant block quote.
 * I am not forever crying ad hoinem, you keep dishing them out. you keep jumping and rabbiting, I'm going to keep calling you a frog...unless you have a better definition for your former statement about my talk page, its kinda a textbook ad hominem argument.
 * now you claim I am misrepresenting the argument, but I claimed it was only published in two peer reviewed journals, and you raised me by...4 of your own works...2 more peer reviewed...and 2 conference proceedings (I seem to remember you arguing that an article with over 150 citations was not nearly notable enough for inclusion on wikipedia). So besides your own work with your own work, a total of 4 scholarly publications have cited the Rumour Bomb in 4 years (and the newspaper trends don't look much better)this isn't a misrepresentation, so far there has been little impact...unless you are making the argument that 4 scholarly contributions are significant for your field, which would mean that your field isn't notable enough to merit inclusion on wikipedia.
 * so no this isn't based on resentment, it is based on the fact that you are self promoting a concept which does not merit inclusion on wikipedia.Coffeepusher (talk) 00:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

First, you should be responsible for fixing all the formatting damages from your sabatoge. That's great irony. I don't have time to mend them all at once. I'm sure that will be a collective project for people in the future (or do you plan to continue your shenanigans indefinitely?) It's nice that you received an introduction to fallacies, but you might want to read some more advanced work on them. There is a difference between telling someone he or she is incompetent, ignorant, and an idiot, and reasoning from evidence to that conclusion. Your behavior on Wiki, including traces on your page, reveal that you have had problems with others, "edit wars" and other questions of your ethical motives. If you have a history, it's not hard to follow the evidence to your coinincidental appearance here and your efforts to sabotage an informed article on a topic you've demonstrated you know nothing about. That's not an ad hominem; all one has to do is measure your reasons with your constant whining that you're being "ad hominemed." I support my claims with evidence, as a researcher on a topic that is practically un-researched (Politics and rumor usage from a communication studies standpoint; there are treatments by legal scholars such as Sunstein, journalists galore, and psychologists who don't have much to say about politics, which I've mentioned in the article). You make claims with very little support and with links that suggest they are supportive of your claims, but when one follows them, one finds they have nothing to do with this issue. For example, weight. AS I said, if you follow the link for wiki's policy, it speaks of giving equal weight to different positions. The rumor bomb concept is not one that is opposed to some other theory of rumor. That is a different concept of weight than the one you're citing here. That's called the fallacy of equivocation. You also cited "notability," and that also is a red herring, for it refers to topics that are worthy of their own article, not subtopics that broaden an article on a topic. As I mentioned, when I first came to wiki I did indeed author an article on the rumor bomb concept, which as a newcomer I learned was inappropriate because of the notability policy which also raised issues of self-promotion. I've read the policy on self-promotion. YOu might want to also read it more closely. I don't think my contributions to the overall subject can be classified as self-promotion, though an article alone on wikipedia by me would be. Here's what it says about self-promotion and writing about yourself (a problem wiki constantly has with people creating biographies about themselves, their bands, etc.): "It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles is unacceptable." Do I violate a "neutral point of view" policy on my work? I don't say it's the most important contribution ever made to rumor research. I simply state what is fact: that no one else has contributed to it as a professional political communication strategy, and including it adds to our understanding of rumor. Do I create "overly abundant links and references"? If you think so, please point to a universal definition of "abundant links and references." Wiki has obviously worded this section understandably as a precaution against those self-promoters who are not in fact interested in developing and deepening a topic but in simply getting attention. As I mentioned, IP traces suggest that I have contributed quite a bit to this article through it's development, prior to your sabotage. Further yet, Wiki on notability: "Notability does not directly affect the content of articles, but only their existence." YOu also compare yourself to a PHd who has given plenty of peer-reviewed conference presentations, and published through peer-review. YOu? YOu can't even get a literature review of the public sphere right (not to mention your delusional misunderstandings of fallacies). Thus, it's a hilarious false analogy mixed with ad hominem when you write: "I did look at the evidence above, and a few non-peer reviewed articles written by your colleagues, and mention in conference notes (hell I had two full conference publications as an undergrad, not just a mention." REally? You're a peer-reviewed published scholar? Interesting? Where? What is your evidence? Or is this simply another fallacy designed to create a credibility that is obviously quite lacking (no matter how many articles you meddle with and sabatoge). Despite all your fallacies buried within fallacies and moral posturing, you have the trace of an == Unethical editorial behavior by "Coffeepusher"; REversion to July 25 status of article ==

I am reverting the article to its pre-Aug 11 status. Unfortunately "coffeepusher" has a vendetta, after having responded personally to my criticisms of and suggestions for changing the article he almost entirely wrote on "the public sphere." The discussion section there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Public_sphere) shows that I launched a discussion of his sources on Aug. 11, which continued through Aug. 14 (so far). He took my criticisms and suggestions extremely personally. I didn't edit or erase what he had done there, though I could've done so. I simply suggested ways the article could be improved. He then appears to have searched for other areas on Wiki where I have contributed with my expertise, currently in rumor. Curiously, he showed up on this page (rumor) in the middle of that exchange, though there is no trace that he had any interest in the topic before. It seems pretty obvious that he came here out of personal reasons, and then erased the section that makes reference to my own scholarly work. First, I added to the article in other ways besides adding a political communication section, demonstrating both my expertise in the subject and my interest to develop the article. I had originally made a Wiki entry for "rumor bomb," and after discussion with an editor, accepted his suggestion to delete the entry and develop the concept in the article on rumor. Now, coffeepusher erased that section, justifying it thus: "(cur | prev) 23:52, 15 August 2010 Coffeepusher (talk | contribs) (7,421 bytes) (→Rumor as Political Communication Strategy (2006): WP:WEIGHT, WP:SPAM, AND WP the "rumor bomb" article has been cited twice in four years and is otherwise only spoken of by Jayson, who wrote this section". I've already demonstrated that he has come to this page not out of care for the article (or interest in  the topic or wiki standards), but from resentment. However, if someone thinks that the "rumor bomb" part of the article is "over weight," then I am happy to have that part compressed. But the section in Wiki on source neutrality and weight, speaks of articles where different scholars disagree on some subject or theory (they use the example of "flat earth theory"). That has nothing to do with rumor and rumor bombs. No one has said it is some bogus theory (quite the contrary; see below) The point is that practically no one in contemporary political communication studies is working on rumor besides me/Harsin. If they were, I would be happy to develop the article in that direction. This is the reason why I helped develop the section on social and cognitive psychological approaches to rumor. It's part of my duty as a researcher to learn what else others have had to say about the subject, especially if they have researched its use and impact on politics. As I also said, early research on rumor in mass media studies was linked to war and propaganda. This is why I developed distinctions between misinformation, propaganda, etc. and "rumor bombs." Furthermore, coffeepusher justifies his effacement saying that only four people had cited ONE of the articles I've written on it in the last four years. Even if that were true, only two citations is not grounds for discrediting the development of the section. Lots of specialist-researchers work in an area where only a couple of other people work on the same subject. Second of all, the research that produced that concept has appeared in highly respected, competitive, peer-reviewed professional conference proceedings, such as the International Communications Association (the major international professional association in communication studies), which is included in academic search databases for the field, such as Communications and Mass Media Complete (where one can download articles), such as the following versions of the research:

The Rumor Bomb, Convergence Culture and American Post-politics. By: Harsin, Jayson. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 2008 Annual Meeting, p1, 0p; (AN 36957460

The Rumor That "John Kerry is French," i.e. Haughty, Foppish, Elitist, Socialist, Cowardly, and Gay.Full Text Available By: Harsin, Jayson. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 2007 Annual Meeting, p1-1, 1p; (AN 26951142)

The first version of the article in Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture was deemed important enough to appear a year later in a cultural studies collection (CULTURAL STUDIES) edited by a veteran scholar, Michael Ryan (a Dean now at Temple University) on a major press (Blackwell), in the section on "Discourse." The wide-ranging collection contains giant intellects impacting this interdisciplinary field such as KARL MARX and JUDITH BUTLER.

More recently, I have published on the Rumor Bomb "JOhn Kerry is French" in a cutting edge collection on POlitics and Diffusion, with top scholars in the fields of sociology and political science, "The Diffusion of Social Movements" (July 2010) on one of the most respected academic presses in the world: Cambridge University Press. As with everything that appears on that prestigious press, this collection was carefully peer-reviewed.

That is not all. While the larger topic of rumor in non-wartime politics is almost completely ignored in interdisciplinary scholarship (practically nothing in anglophone communication studies), my work is indeed starting to get attention in interdisciplinary circles and in popular media. Here are some samples, mostly from 2010, again suggesting the growing importance of a very new contribution (even if the first article on it appeared four years ago). MOst of these are available online, and everyone knows it takes longer for books and articles to get into print.

Hutter, Bridget (2010) Anticipating Risks and Organising Risk Regulation, p. 100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Renard, J. (2010) "La construction de l’image des hommes politiques par le folklore narratif. Anecdotes, rumeurs, légendes, histoires drôles." Mots Les langages du politique 92: n° 92, 2010/1

Musangi, J. ‘Only a few cases of skirmishes here and there’: Interrogating the ‘truth’ of an election in the Kenyan blogosphere [Part of a special issue on the 2007 elections in Kenya]. Africa Insight v. 39 no. 1 (June 2009) p. 86-9

Kleinberg, John (2010) "The flow of on-line information in global networks," Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on Management of data table of contents (KEYNOTE SPEAKERS SESSION) available at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1807167.1807169

(2009)Leskovec, J., L. Backstrom, and J. Kleinberg (2009) "Meme-tracking and the dynamics of the news cycle." International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining archive. Available at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1557077

Tarrow, Sidney [eminent Cornell sociologist] (2010) "War, Territorial States and Contention:Lasswell v Tilly," Presentation to the University of Pennsylvania Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionalism series on “Sovereignty, Territoriality and Plural Citizenships”, Available at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/dcc/documents/WarTerritorialStatesandContentionLaswellv.Tilly.doc

Newspapers around the world have been citing Harsin and Rumor Bomb, too. Some examples. South Africa: http://www.rapport.co.za/Weekliks/Nuus/As-die-gerugte-begin-vlieg-het-jy-n-goeie-bomskuiling-nodig-20100327 Sri Lanka: http://www.island.lk/2010/02/10/midweek5.html Thailand: http://www.bangkokbiznews.com/home/detail/politics/opinion/pijitra/20100518/116177/วิกฤติการเมือง...วิกฤติข่าวลือ.html El Salvador: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/revistas/septimo-sentido/68352-son-rumores.html France: http://www.la-croix.com/article/index.jsp?docId=2359407&rubId=5547 And large Alt.news sites such as Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/bratich06222009.html

Finally the concept and one of the articles has been used in courses on political discourse. For example, www.willamette.edu/~ncordova/RHET232Syll06.doc,

and http://www.cse.unr.edu/~mgunes/cs790g/ in this lecture: http://www.cse.unr.edu/~mgunes/cs790g/Karaoglu_HoaxOrTruth

IN sum, I've shown that coffeepusher came here out of resentment (not to improve the article); and also that his claim suggesting scholars don't take the term seriously is false. If I were just out for self-promotion, I hardly would've helped develop the rest of the article. But since I spend time researching it anyway, I thought I would develop it as fully as I could at the time. As I said, I don't mind if other sections are expanded and if the section dealing with rumor bombs is compressed. But I don't see reason to eliminate it, especially in a climate where the rumor Obama is a Muslim now is reported to be at 24% and the Shirley Sherrod is Racist rumor resulted in a media firestorm and her resignation. Debordelique (talk) 17:09, 29 August 2010 (UTC)debordelique, JH


 * no I found out who you were and noticed that the ONLY edits you made to the mainspace (with one exception two years ago)were to promote your own article. Your article is only cited by two different scholarly sources (in one a footnote, and the other a paragraph) and doesn't even show up on a google scholar search of rumor or rumour.  I even checked the prior conversation two years ago when you added it as Beardedpig where you argued that it was a new concept and would catch on soon with the scholarly community... but here two years later there has been little or no impact whatsoever.  This information completely rebukes your claims that you didn't come here for self promotion, or that your article merits inclusion on a wikipedia article on Rumor (seriously, what secondary source shows your article has a significant impact on the concept of rumor that merits inclusion on an encyclopedia) it is hardly notable enough to be included on wikipedia.  Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promotion, something you accused me of doing on the public sphere page, but here we find out you are the one who is out ethics (as the scientologists say).Coffeepusher (talk) 20:21, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * ps, re read WP:WEIGHT and you will find that it says concepts should be included in terms of content and length proportionally BASED ON THEIR IMPACT WITH THE IDEA AS A WHOLE.Coffeepusher (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * so let me summarize really quick, in two years you have made ONE EDIT to the mainspace which wasn't about your article, and you argue that the one edit demonstrates a significant magnanimous effort on your part to prove your purpose here was to improve this page through your scholarly knowledge of the concept rather than pure self promotion.Coffeepusher (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Look at the evidence above. I don't know where you do your research. You make false claims, either out of ignorance or spite. I also notice on your page that there have been threats to remove your editing capabilities, accusations of "disingenuous" behavior, and participating in editing wars. (UTC)debordelique, JH —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.202.170.56 (talk)


 * ...and Mr. Ad hominem strikes again :) I hope your position of chair doesn't includes teaching students about the flaws of fallacies. But my talk page is irrelevant in a conversation regarding a scholar using wikipedia to promote his pet article.  I did look at the evidence above, and a few non-peer reviewed articles written by your colleagues, and mention in conference notes (hell I had two full conference publications as an undergrad, not just a mention...and I am not mentioned on wikipedia...at least I didn't write it :)) does not establish notability for Wikipedia.  look at my post again, those blue highlighted words show my research and evidance.Coffeepusher (talk) 21:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * but on the subject of my talk page, I assume "threats to remove your editing capabilities" was that one editior who copy and pasted that warning template as a retaliation for me posting the same thing on his page after he reverted the AA page two times against community consensus...which as far as I can see is the only time there has been "threats to remove your editing capabilities" as well as "engaging in edit wars" a concept that has some specific meaning here which I don't think you really understand...(that person was banned and the community stated I didn't do anything wrong), Accusations of disingenuous behavior...you really should read more than just the headlines before you post you know, read that section.Coffeepusher (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't forever cry "ad hominem," which anyone who has studied fallacies knows can be a kind of fallacy itself! REspond to the arguments. What do you know about rumor research? YOu hardly looked at the evidence, since you're clearly misrepresenting them again. They come from books most recently on Cambridge University Press (and I'm not speaking of my own contribution to one there), peer-reviewed conference papers, which have been published online, and peer-reviewed journal articles in French, too. If anyone is listening, you simply can't fool them by continually misreprsenting factual claims, which readers may look up themselves. These are hardly citations from amateurs, but from professors and Stanford, Cornell, and other fine universities, to say nothing of one of citations by newspapers, and use in courses (by people I don't know). In addition, if you had done your homework on this page, instead of clearly dropping by to be spiteful (is that the way you deal with legitimate criticisms of your contributions on other pages? Do you think that's really in the interest of collaborative knowledge sharing?), you'd notice that in fact I wrote significant parts of every section (though one was strangely deleted (the section on Knapp's influential work) without justification. I simply didn't login to write those passages, by the IP Address will clearly show they're from France. So, once again, you simply misrepresent, and for what? Because you have hurt feelings that I tried to help improve the article on the public sphere, which you wrote almost entirely on your own? (UTC)debordelique, JH —Preceding unsigned comment added by Debordelique (talk • contribs)


 * first off, I hope you don't mind, I fixed your formating so that your citations didn't look like one giant block quote.
 * I am not forever crying ad hoinem, you keep dishing them out. you keep jumping and rabbiting, I'm going to keep calling you a frog...unless you have a better definition for your former statement about my talk page, its kinda a textbook ad hominem argument.
 * now you claim I am misrepresenting the argument, but I claimed it was only published in two peer reviewed journals, and you raised me by...4 of your own works...2 more peer reviewed...and 2 conference proceedings (I seem to remember you arguing that an article with over 150 citations was not nearly notable enough for inclusion on wikipedia). So besides your own work with your own work, a total of 4 scholarly publications have cited the Rumour Bomb in 4 years (and the newspaper trends don't look much better)this isn't a misrepresentation, so far there has been little impact...unless you are making the argument that 4 scholarly contributions are significant for your field, which would mean that your field isn't notable enough to merit inclusion on wikipedia.
 * so no this isn't based on resentment, it is based on the fact that you are self promoting a concept which does not merit inclusion on wikipedia.Coffeepusher (talk) 00:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

First, you should be responsible for fixing all the formatting damages from your sabatoge. That's great irony. I don't have time to mend them all at once. I'm sure that will be a collective project for people in the future (or do you plan to continue your shenanigans indefinitely?) It's nice that you received an introduction to fallacies, but you might want to read some more advanced work on them. There is a difference between telling someone he or she is incompetent, ignorant, and an idiot, and reasoning from evidence to that conclusion. Your behavior on Wiki, including traces on your page, reveal that you have had problems with others, "edit wars" and other questions of your ethical motives. If you have a history, it's not hard to follow the evidence to your coinincidental appearance here and your efforts to sabotage an informed article on a topic you've demonstrated you know nothing about. That's not an ad hominem; all one has to do is measure your reasons with your constant whining that you're being "ad hominemed." I support my claims with evidence, as a researcher on a topic that is practically un-researched (Politics and rumor usage from a communication studies standpoint; there are treatments by legal scholars such as Sunstein, journalists galore, and psychologists who don't have much to say about politics, which I've mentioned in the article). You make claims with very little support and with links that suggest they are supportive of your claims, but when one follows them, one finds they have nothing to do with this issue. For example, weight. AS I said, if you follow the link for wiki's policy, it speaks of giving equal weight to different positions (as I quoted earlier, their example is "flat earth theory"). The rumor bomb concept is not one that is opposed to some other theory of rumor. That is a different concept of weight than the one you're citing here. That's called the fallacy of equivocation. You also cited "notability," and that also is a red herring, for it refers to topics that are worthy of their own article, not subtopics that broaden an article on a topic. As I mentioned, when I first came to wiki I did indeed author an article on the rumor bomb concept, which as a newcomer I learned was inappropriate because of the notability policy which also raised issues of self-promotion. I've read the policy on self-promotion. YOu might want to also read it more closely. I don't think my contributions to the overall subject can be classified as self-promotion, though an article alone on wikipedia by me would be. Here's what it says about self-promotion and writing about yourself (a problem wiki constantly has with people creating biographies about themselves, their bands, etc.): "It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles is unacceptable." Do I violate a "neutral point of view" policy on my work? I don't say it's the most important contribution ever made to rumor research. I simply state what is fact: that no one else has contributed to it as a professional political communication strategy, and including it adds to our understanding of rumor. Do I create "overly abundant links and references"? If you think so, please point to a universal definition of "abundant links and references." Wiki has obviously worded this section understandably as a precaution against those self-promoters who are not in fact interested in developing and deepening a topic but in simply getting attention. As I mentioned, IP traces suggest that I have contributed quite a bit to this article through it's development, prior to your sabotage. Further yet, Wiki on notability: "Notability does not directly affect the content of articles, but only their existence." YOu also compare yourself to a PHd who has given plenty of peer-reviewed conference presentations, and published through peer-review. YOu? YOu can't even get a literature review of the public sphere right (not to mention your delusional misunderstandings of fallacies). Thus, it's a hilarious false analogy mixed with ad hominem when you write: "I did look at the evidence above, and a few non-peer reviewed articles written by your colleagues, and mention in conference notes (hell I had two full conference publications as an undergrad, not just a mention." REally? You're a peer-reviewed published scholar? Interesting? Where? What is your evidence? Or is this simply another fallacy designed to create a credibility that is obviously quite lacking (no matter how many articles you meddle with and sabatoge). Despite all your fallacies buried within fallacies and moral posturing, which I amply demonstrate, you have the vague semblance of an argument based on critical feedback I left for improving the public sphere article. YOu write: "I seem to remember you arguing that an article with over 150 citations was not nearly notable enough for inclusion on wikipedia." This is a gross false analogy fallacy. YOu are suggesting there is a universal rule for inclusion based on citations (regardless of topic). There are millions of articles on the public sphere. So there one must compare the amount of scholarship and quality of reviews of the scholarship on it (something also, which can not be proven by shallow citations of number of citations--an article could receive quite a few negative responses, and I would not include it then in a survey of the scholarship on, say, the public sphere). There are practically no articles on political rumor. I criticized you for the format of YOUR article and the lack of interdisciplinary attention and influence in that interdisicplinary space. For example, I pointed out that it was strange that you'd cite some scholars mainly cited insularly by colleagues in their own discipline (to say nothing of popular media impact) when you leave out one of the canonical works, such as Michael Warner's Publics and Counterpublics, which, by your googlescholar measure (you obviously don't have access to academic search databases) has 881 hits!! As I said in that talkspace, I could give you many more examples of how surface your treatment was and how it suggested that you simply went with what you admitted: your pet interests (you called yourself a "rhetorical theorist"). The analogy between that article and this doesn't stand. We are not talking about the rumor bomb as an article of its own, but as a part of research on a larger topic that is thus far only beginning. Debordelique (talk) 18:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)Debordelique


 * I only read the first line and am completely clueless as to what damages you are referring to. I was talking about the formatting in your examples where you tried to insert spaces but it didn't take, so I just added spaces no sabotage took place.  I didn't change a single character of text in any of your comments.
 * huh, am I a peer reviewed published scholar...well yes, now that you mention it I am. however wikipedia doesn't value a person's identity AT ALL except in cases where someone is using wikipedia for personal gain which is not a crime I am guilty of.  so if my identity is so important to you, you will have to figure it out on your own.  Despite your rant, the Rumour Bomb still only has 8 total citations, which is a pretty good reference both inside and outside of academia of how many people are using an academic concept...so we have you and four other people who actually have mentioned the topic in peer reviewed writings.
 * now Rumor is not un-researched...the google scholar search shows an incredible amount of research done on rumors (what this page is), many of them much more cited and WWWWAAAAYYYYY more influential than your article. even political rumors are dealt with in rhetoric all the time (as I recall Aristotle started talking about them, Cicero did some writing...etc.).  My statement is that you came to wikipedia to self promote a concept that has not gained the mileage that is required for inclusion into wikiepdia. at no time did I say you didn't have an interesting concept, I actually quite like it, just that it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia until such time as it has gotten more secondary sources and someone else besides the original author chooses to place it in the encyclopedia (which is kinda the acid test, is someone else writing it up).  Now I agree that we have both been going back and forth quite a bit, in a way neither of us would have in real life, flaming is just one of the problems that occurs through CMC.Coffeepusher (talk) 00:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * if you were anyone else you might have a leg to stand on, but Wikipedia is not your personal vanity press. It is an encyclopedia which means stuff must already merit inclusion, it is not a place to showcase up and coming theories.Coffeepusher (talk) 04:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

You really don't even have the integrity to debate. Simply lob claims right and left, and can't respond except with more claims. You pile up wiki policy links without ever giving support for them as grounds for your claim (as I show above by engaging them, though as anyone who is interested enough can tell by reading our "exchange," they are non-sequitrs). Now you claim there's an "incredible amount of research on rumor...wwwwaaayyyy more influential than your article [sic.]" (of course, not that you can demonstrate you know any of it). Again, that there's a lot of research on rumor has never been the issue. Totally irrelevant. The question is political rumor as a part of an article on rumor, and you have the audacity to further claim there's rhetorical scholarship that deals with "political rumor all the time," citing Aristotle and Cicero! Hilarious! Name one political communication or even rhetorical (since that's what you claim as your pet specialty) that give it sustained scholarsly attention? Right. Exactly. No our identities don't matter, until you say they do, which is precisely what you've done from the beginning, and then in an attempt to gain credibilty you claim you had undergraduate publications. Right. I'm sure they are not only brilliant but influential. Despite your insistence throughout to make this personal and about identity, in the end, on the internet there's no way of establishing that I am even the person I've performed here, as author of articleS on the rumor bomb. At that point, all that is left are the arguments here, and anyone trying to follow yours will, I trust, agree with me. 77.202.170.56 (talk) 06:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC) Debordelique


 * well we will find out. I have contacted two admins via e-mail letting them know that we are both way too deep into this to come to any type of agreement and since the Rumor page evidently doesn't care to voice any opinion I have asked that they look at this and let us know how to proceed.  However on the internet you actually are who you say you are, you have left quite a paper trail (it took me 15 min. total time to be sure).  It's really too bad we will never be friends, you are an interesting chap.Coffeepusher (talk) 07:47, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure some of the rumor community will eventually change it back if I don't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.202.170.56 (talk) 16:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * with the most recent comment by curtis mayfield, you may want to take a look at wikipedia's meatpuppet policyCoffeepusher (talk) 00:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

So someone who disagrees with you chimes in, and they're necessarily a puppet? Predictable response. 77.202.170.56 (talk) 07:35, 1 September 2010 (UTC)Debordelique Ah, I now see this makes sense, pusher. YOu post about puppets at the same time that you have recruited one, a VMS Mosaic. I should remind you that it is great that people take time to contribute to wikipedia and edit it if it makes them feel good. However, as Wikipedia itself notes about "service avatars", "These awards are unofficial – displaying the wrong one carries no penalty, and displaying the right one does not indicate authority or competence." I would emphasize that latter and encourage you to leaving this page to people who can demonstrate knowledge of the topic. Eternally citing wiki policy links that do not apply when examined are false appeals to authority. They actually damage your credibility to anyone reading through this (if it could be damaged any more at this point). People google to read about rumor bomb in the context of rumor, and also like Mayfield, they send students there occasionally. Those who have been here and come back will in all likelihood intervene, and when one comes back and finds what you've done they'll tell others, especially if they are teachers who have sent students here. Please spare me your conspiracy theories of puppeteering, which can easily be read as projections of your own behavior suspicously justified as appealing to more authoritative editors who for all we know are just your pals on wiki.Debordelique (talk) 09:47, 1 September 2010 (UTC)Debordelique


 * Again, read what a meatpuppet is. It is a single purpose account used to try and sway consensus.  Curtismayfield2010 opened an account for the express purpose of chiming in on this specific conversation and identified himself as a professor in your circle.  VMS Mosaic deleted a singe space from the article, and is more than likely completely unaware of this entire conversation.  The links I have cited stand, you opened your wikipedia account to try and gain publicity for an article you wrote, that article in two years has not had the impact necessary to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia article on the concept of Rumor.  While I at no time stated your article wasn't interesting, it is, or something that may generate enough traction in the future to merit inclusion, at this time it has not and wikipedia is not designed to project the future merit of an existing concept.  My reputation is actually not in danger (well I may have mentioned it to one or two of my colleagues...but they haven't chosen to open accounts and comment), but it looks like you are mentioning to people you know about this conversation...a conversation where we have both have totally lost our cool.  I don't think either of us should be proud of our actions here, which is why I contacted a admin to look over and comment (I assure you that all I did was ask them to take a look and let us know what they thought, I actually have never contacted this user before), to end this entire fiasco.  They know wikipedia policy, and have a neutral eye to this entire thing.Coffeepusher (talk) 14:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I have already addressed your attempts to link this to the policy on weight and self-promotion. YOu should go back and read those passages. Weight talks about viewpoints, as if in CONFLICTING VIEWS. There are none about political rumor and the rumor bomb in particular. From the very beginning on the public sphere page you were hostile to any kind of criticism. ON you own id page you brag about pissing people off, and have a history of problems with other users. I don't contribute (under Debordelique or just an IP address anywhere on Wiki unless I know what I'm talking about, have expertise, have done research, and have presented or published peer-review research (as in interventions on public sphere, narratology, and a couple of other places). YOu came here explicitly to cause trouble. I have looked close at the links you continue to cite but never the detail of the link, which I would hope that an administrator would see from our exchange (yes, unfortunate in tone, but you are an extremely provocative person, especially with your snide fallacy accusations from the get go, which force one to address your accusations, which I don't see have ever held up). Your most recent accusation/link is the closest I've seen to you trying to explain yourself, but it doesn't hold up, either. There's no proof that Mayfield opened an account because he's a family or friend recruited for the purpose. He mentioned he was a teacher who has sent his/her students to the entry. If that's the case, it's entirely possible they one of them told him there was nothing about rumor bomb on the page (any more). Either way, there's nothing in his/her comment that suggests he/she is of "my circle." I doesn't interest me whether you've told your "colleagues" about this. If they have any decency, they would be ashamed of you. But then, all they have to do is read your id page to get that impression. Your tone changed immediately when you said you were contacting admins, again, which anyone can see from reading your comments from the beginning. So please spare me the "you're an interesting chap" and you "never stated your article wasn't inteersting." By the way, you've continually referred to "an article," but there have been three different peer-reviewed articles I've published developing the concept and theory. As I've said, if people have been coming here and reading about that entry for two years without engaging in your kind of phony moralized vandalism, it's only a matter of time that they will come back and restore the rumor bomb part, regardless of the outcome of mediation here, which is badly needed, I agree. Debordelique (talk) 18:50, 1 September 2010 (UTC) Debordelique


 * yes I changed my tone when I contacted an admin and stated "I need a sanity check because both of us have gotten so deep and this has gotten really ugly" (an excerpt from the e-mail) and I tried to stop the ugliness on my end because it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately they have not shown up so the ugliness continues.  Welcome to the Matrix, it turns normal people like us into resentful hate mongers attacking the demons in their heads rather than realizing they are actual people...unless you would actually act like this in real life in which case god help you I personally would hate for this exchange to be representive of my real personality (and please re read (sigh) that section, I didn't brag about pissing people off don't frame it as such).  So here is a quoted checklist
 * WP:MEAT " A new user who engages in the same behavior as another user in the same context, and who appears to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose"...brand new user, same context, same goal in mind, one single edit.
 * WP:COI "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for advertising or promoting yourself, or a vanity press. As such, it should contain only material that complies with its content policies, and Wikipedians must place the interests of the encyclopedia first. Any editor who gives priority to outside interests may be subject to a conflict of interest." So you need to keep to an encyclopedic standard...AND
 * "Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is notable and conforms to the content policies."
 * OK,so we need to keep an encyclopedic standard...
 * WP:SOAP "It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other" so what are those encyclopedic standards? well here are some I have stated:
 * WP:WEIGHT now you state “weight talks about viewpoints, as if in CONFLICTING VIEWS” if you kept reading you would have run into this paragraph "Undue weight applies to more than just viewpoints. An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and neutral, but still be disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic." (which is exactly what I said in the second post in this section, here is the quote):so how should we determine the Rumour bomb's significance on the concept of "rumor"...while not an acid test, Google searches and citations work well in establishing if people are talking about a specific topic, this page is Rumor, so lets check the Google scholar hits on "rumor" and find out when Rumour bomb shows up...While I may have missed it, the concept isn't in the first 200 entries then I stopped counting...how about Rumour, not in the first 100 and I stopped.  "political rumor" it doesn't show up at all on the only 90 entries,  Political rumour.  You actually have to quote “Rumor Bomb”, before you find the concept, and it comes up with five different pages total.  So far it doesn’t look like it has much significance in the areas of rumor, rumour, political rumor, or political rumour within the academic community.  Another good way of finding out how well it has been taken up is citations, which we have already stated that between 4 articles you have written four more have been generated by other sources.  While you do make the argument that it is a new concept, I found at least 3 other articles in those google searches which have generated over five times the amount of citations in the same amount of time.
 * Now you read correctly about Notability, it does say it does not have anything to do with article content.  Thank you for pointing that out, I won’t make that mistake again.
 * so my point is that the concept of a rumor bomb as stated in your articles does not have enough significance to the concept of “rumor”, “political rumor”, or “rumour” in either academic or secular circles to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia article about that topic.Coffeepusher (talk) 05:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Throughout your threads, I've identified a couple of recurrent, major problems with your resentment-driven reasoning (which as I've shown for public view, based on your arrival here after my evidence-driven criticisms, suggestions for improvement actually, of YOUR article on "the public sphere," is as ETHICALLY SUSPECT  as any case of Sock puppets you launch as a red herring). First, you hope to dupe a reader who doesn't click on links you cite as evidence for your claims, as if just citing a link will give you authority. Second, when one goes to the explanations of those links, one finds that like a lot of language, it's up to interpretation, as I've demonstrated several times above, after going to the links you've read (such as COI and WEIGHT). I have pressed you to show the evidence in those links. But what you need there in your selections, to support your resentment-driven claims, is transparent statements and guidelines. But Wiki can't help you there. I will not repeat (as you continue to do in your typical way, unattentive to the interpretive nature of language) what I have argued above, but take even the statement from Sock Puppetry: "section appears to be editing." What is the definition of "appears"? When one is in an emotional state, as many of your posts have shown and you have admitted (you have assigned such emotions to me, but I have never felt that way), things "appear" certain ways and not others, as any of the psychological research on conspiracy theory tells us.

I'll move to your other problem, constantly repeated, which you say issues from a policy on weight. You claim that Harsin's articles are not cited enough to be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia article on its umbrella topic, rumor/rumour. You base that claim on number of citations, and citations using Google Scholar. There are several problems with the warrants underlying your claims.


 * First of all you use Google Scholar as the measure of importance, the warrant being that google scholar is a clear measure of importance. But scholars of information and computing have criticized GS for not providing an accurate picture of up-to-date scholarship, and for priveleging heavily cited (older) articles, which also as I've reminded you can get lots of citations because scholars find them bad and what to criticize them. There have been several such articles that you can--google. Here's one presented just last year, which states, "highly cited articles are found significantly more often in higher positions than articles that have been cited less often. As a consequence, Google Scholar seems to be more suitable for finding standard literature than gems or articles by authors advancing a new or different view from the mainstream." Since you're interested in "weight," which speaks of representing different views (which I've already said suggests disagreement and is thus questionably applicable, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) you might want to think carefully about the last sentence. Should Wiki be up-to-date, or should it follow print traditions, which are always two or three years behind the current peer-reviewed conference proceedings? But more importantly, should wiki include peer-reviewed knowledge added to a subject when that knowledge is "new" or "different from the mainstream"?


 * You simply cite weight, and offer this selection: "ON weight, when Wiki says, [sic.]An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and neutral, but still be disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic.'" The real question in that selection is "significance," and how one determines it. It isn't "isolated events, criticisms, or news reports," even if they are verifiable and neutral. What would define "isolated"? You claim that your "acid test" on google scholar should clear that up.


 * So what actually do your searches tell us? They tell us that you're using a warrant for your claims (that Harsin's concept is unworthy of inclusion in a section on rumor) that says if it doesn't show up immediately on a GS search for "rumor -ur" then it must not be important enough to be included in an up-to-date encyclopedia article (which if you really believe, you might want to apply to your work on "the public sphere"). Scholarly attention to rumor itself is about as old as the modern social sciences, late 19th and early 20th century. So it's quite understandable that there would be thousands of articles on rumor (from a psychological and sociological point of view). The internet, as you know, is historically quite recent, and so is Harsin's work on the rumor bomb, which begins in a 2006 article published in a peer-reviewed Australian-based communications and politics journal, which is not included in American databases for communications studies, only Australian ones. That article was re-printed in a Blackwell publishers collection in May 2008. The second article on it was published in December 2008 in FlowTV, and the third last month in a cutting edge collection on Diffusion and politics, Cambridge University Press. Small wonder then that the citations in print are just coming out, and that conference proceedings are some of the main areas where it's getting hits,  as this, and this one, where it appears in the KEYNOTE ADDRESS for the 2010 conference. Again, it is cited in a book (the editorial process for which is usually much longer than a print journal article) that appeared on Cambridge U. Press LAST MONTH, Risks. If that doesn't suggest important, up-to-date (regardless of hundreds of citations, based on age and research fetishes of a larger umbrella topic), then once again, we have a real interpretive problem.

You might also want to at least review the interpretive questions (hardly transparent meanings) in wiki policy statements about verifiability and neutral point of view. I quote: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." We are not talking about an article on the rumor bomb. Nor does this policy state a number of citations that must be found for it to be "reliable." This is a point you constantly ignore, because you can't respond to it. Given scholarly criticisms of GS, it's neither helpful nor convincing to cite a GS search for "rumor" to support your claim that Harsin's rumor bomb concept is not important enough to be cited in an article on rumor (as I've said several times, if you think there's a weight problem in the overall article, then please compress it, though it's interesting that noone else has in two years, before your not-so-curious arrival here). Given the algorithm, older, and thus more cited (though that is not the only criterion anyway for weight) work on "rumor" will dominate, but that doesn't mean it's seen as good or even relevant today, especially to the sub-topic of political rumor. Again, the weaknesses of using GS as a measure aside, do a search for "political rumor" or "Political rumour" on GS, because if you just do political rumor without quotations, you get a lot of passing references to rumor dissassociated from uses of "political." Searching "political rumor" and "anytime" renders 59 hits. That in itself should tell you how little attention there's been to this subtopic of rumor, almost completely dominated in the past by pscyhology and sociology research (and of course pre-internet!). Now, take an even closer look (not just citing numbers as you are accustomed to doing), and you'll see that most of those "hits" also just drop the term "political rumor" in passing, again something I've argued above: there has been little to no SUSTAINED SCHOLARLY ATTENTION TO POLITICAL RUMOR, by which I mean an article or even a section of an article, to say nothing of books, devoted to this arguably important area of rumor research. IN fact, we get items like "The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties" at number 2 in the list on my search. Some of the stuff you get is not just pre-internet, but even pre-industrial!!


 * All of which means that you are going to take highly interpretable phrases from wiki policy, again and again, to support your resentment-driven vandalism. I suggest that you and I just leave it alone. And let anyone else (excepting sock puppets of course) who wants to come in and edit it as they see fit, so long as they can support their changes. You do not have a convincing argument, and for whatever reason, I doubt I will convince you at this point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.202.170.56 (talk) 10:06, 4 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That was almost TL;DR. so you make the continued argument that my soul reason for being here is resentment, I make the argument that your soul reason for being here is self promotion and both of us have great reasons supporting those claims. I will accept that neither of us are pure at heart, but even without purity of motives on either one of our sides we still have to accept wiki policy on what merits encyclopedic content.


 * Actually you should re-read my comment, you said "You claim that your "acid test" on google scholar should clear that up" while what I actually said was "while not an acid test, Google searches and citations work well in establishing if people are talking about a specific topic."
 * your claim is that a better test is...what? If a new article or concept author goes to two conferences it should negate the fact that Google scholar doesn't bring up the article whatsoever in determining significance of the topic? Do you claim that we should put more emphasis on specific types of scholarly publications than citations in scholarly publications generally? (and if so, does two cambridge publications signify significance if there are four citations overall).  What is your alternative definition of the weight policy (in its ambiguous language) which demonstrates rumor bomb is significant to rumor generally.


 * the reason I didn't mention or respond to verifiability or neutrality is that those policies don't address any problems with this discussion. Verifiability addresses questions of truth, or conflicts in the idea of truth... It is invoked when an editor adds something which another editor claims isn't accurate.  Wikipedia policy doesn't allow arguments on wither something is true or not, it is only concerned with if a statement can be verified by a third party source.  if there are conflicting third party reliable sources than the community has to figure out how to address that problem in individual cases.
 * Neutrality is invoked when there is a debate within a topic. Wikipedia has to take a editorial neutral point of view.  so "An article and its sub-articles should clearly describe, represent, and characterize all the disputes within a topic, but should not endorse any particular point of view."  There isn't a debate going on within or about Rumor bomb, or an "anti-rumor bomb" faction.  This has most often been used in political or organizational articles where one party tries to silence another faction which disagrees with them.


 * now for the interpretive nature of language...what is your alternative definition of "appears" when applied to the meatpuppet case?


 * I do agree we should probably stay out of this, I will revert and lets see if someone besides the author of rumour bomb thinks it should be added back.Coffeepusher (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanations about why you didn't address verifiability. Referring to critiques by information scientists, I've already explained to you how Google Scholar isn't a very useful measure of importance here and how one might see the rumor bomb theory as more important than you suggest. I have nothing more to add. If someone wants to read the arguments. There they are. However, it's amusing that after agreeing to disagree you propose to revert (to YOUR reverted version) and see if anyone wants to change it. The ethical thing would be to revert from your changes after your curious arrival here from the public sphere entry. After all, the political rumor section existed for two years before you arrived and decided to revert, without any discussion whatsoever. Leave it alone, and if people who really care about the topic (even better, who know something about it) want to come and intervene, then great. Debordelique (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2010 (UTC) Debordelique


 * yah, unless you can justify that rumor bomb is significant to justify it taking up 1/3 of the article length...Coffeepusher (talk) 04:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I have already addressed that above, and following my response there, you should feel free to use your editorial gifts to develop the rest of the article (or streamline the points on RB); the entire article deserves to be built up. I've been doing it from time to time over two years. I'm assuming you know something about the topic and can contribute, or maybe you're just here for principle's sake?77.202.170.56 (talk) 14:04, 5 September 2010 (UTC) Debordelique

suggested 'See also' list
See also- False dilemma JohnsonL623 (talk) 05:42, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

monsieur
monsieur mon voisin me triche il me dit de lui montrer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.47.144.88 (talk) 11:20, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Rumor spread in social network
I suggest that Rumor spread in social network be merged here. Brianga (talk) 20:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

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