Talk:Russ Nelson

Nominated for Deletion.
I nominated this for deletion. The article looks like self promotion. Much of the editing is done by the person the article is about. Doesn't this violate the POV? 3D jonny 22:39, 10 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I started this article when Russ Nelson became president of the Open Source Initiative, an influential organisation. I am in no way affiliated with him, so it's a stretch to call the article "self promotion". He has since edited the article himself, but those edits have been largely verified. I'm removing your deletion notice. Please nominate the article properly if you still consider that it should be deleted. —Pengo 00:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Errrr, I also have added negative information about myself. Would that be self demotion?  No policy against that! RussNelson 15:34, 11 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Even Jimmy Wales got in trouble for editing the Wikipedia article about himself. At the very least, editing your own bio displays an unattractive hubris and shows that you are are not well acquainted with Wikipedia, specifically WP:Autobiography, which suggests that you edit the talk page for your bio, or place a notice on the WP:help desk when you see problems. Sanpitch (talk) 02:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not "my own" bio. It's an article about me. I claim no ownership and reject your suggestion that I do. --RussNelson (talk) 20:05, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Better image
Could we get one? The facial characters aren't too visible on the current one (maybe just crop it?). --91.145.72.48 (talk) 20:12, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That he's playing with his sword is ridiculous too. I found another, less ridiculous one on commons that was posted by Damiens.rf and replaced it. Toddst1 (talk) 15:16, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Self published sources
Just wanted to note that I've restored this source. It's being used to verify the political party with which he identifies and should be no issue underWP:SELFPUB. We can run it by WP:RSN if need be, but it would be good to discuss it first if its use is still seen as problematic. Maybe it's because I'm not especially political, but I have a hard time seeing that as being "unduly self-serving", and it doesn't really seem to cross any of the other boundaries at WP:SELFPUB. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

No Mention of his Railroad History Research in "Personal" ?
Russell Nelson is cited in at least two of Michael Kudish's books on the history of railroads in the Adirondacks. The citations make it clear that Russ Nelson has participated in actual field archeology - tracing and mapping the physical remains of long-gone rail routes. It would seem to me that this should be added for the sake of completeness. I'm not sure if it should be added to the Personal section or perhaps a new section somewhere between [paid] career and Personal should be created. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnRRuth (talk • contribs) 19:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And I'm credited in the "Rutland Remnants 1" DVD by Tell-Tale Productions. I was just watching it today. Got to the credits and "Hey! Look! That's me!" RussNelson (talk) 06:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Another COI allegation
I don't know what to make of the following second edit by a WP:SPA, as both the article and this talk page have been untouched by a human for 6 months. —  Jeff G. ツ (talk)   20:40, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Please look at Russ Nelson
 * The subject repeatedly edits his own page. It was nominated for deletion and ultimately kept, but doesn't seem to have any serious admin's attention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.1.13.235 (talk) 04:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

My recommendation would be to ignore or delete the comment, or give a brief reply perhaps mentioning WP:HELPDESK because it is either completely misinformed or is an attempt to poke someone. Either way, it's not helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 22:28, 26 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Misinformed how? The guy brags about his Wikipedia page all over the internet, and it's sources are predominantly his own website. His personal interest in his own page is unacceptable by Wikipedia's policies.67.1.13.235 (talk) 00:33, 27 July 2012 (UTC) Sorry - wasn't logged on. Webberkenny (talk) 00:39, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I used the word "misinformed" because the report starts "The subject repeatedly edits his own page" when the article history clearly shows that is not correct. In general, the community is not concerned about activity in the distant past, so whether something inappropriate happened in the past is not relevant to whether this article needs attention now. There is no policy or guideline which prohibits the subject of an article from expressing an interest in an article, particularly if such interest is off wiki. If this discussion is to continue, please explain exactly what text in the article needs attention, and why. Johnuniq (talk) 02:06, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Re the recent edits: please bear in mind that it is perfectly acceptable to have a self-published source verify uncontentious personal statements where there is no reason for doubt. For example, if someone's blog (here) states "I am a pacifist", there would need to be a good reason to not accept that statement as verification. Johnuniq (talk) 01:31, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Blacks are lazy
Here is a link to a cached copy of the original "Blacks are lazy" article that Russell Nelson wrote and posted on his blog, that led to him losing his job as President of the Open Source Initiative. And I will copy and paste the text below in case it disappears.

I believe it's interesting for people to read, and the link should be included in his wikipedia page, since I had a hard time finding the original on the internet, and he's withdrawn it form his blog, so people should be able to read his original post, to draw their own conclusions.

Note that although Russell withdrew the article, and admitted it was badly written, Eric S. Raymond is on the record as having defended it by accusing people asking Russell to step down as being "fools and thugs". Note that "thug" has been called a "dog whistle" term for "nigger". https://aattp.org/thug-just-a-dog-whistle-for-n-word-says-nfl-star-richard-sherman/

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/New-OSI-President-Steps-Down/#sthash.EJtgGdxJ.dpuf

Eric S. Raymond wrote: “The people who knew Russ as a Quaker, a pacifist and a gentleman, and no racist, but nevertheless pressured OSI to do the responsible thing and fire him in order to avoid political damage should be equally ashamed,” Raymond said. “Abetting somebody elses witch hunt is no less disgusting than starting your own.”

“Personally, I wanted to fight this on principle,” Raymond said. “Russ resigned the presidency rather than get OSI into that fight, and the board quite properly respected his wishes in the matter. That sacrifice makes me angrier at the fools and thugs who pulled him down.”

http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson/journal/98015

The economist is here, and boy is he pissed.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005

Blacks are lazy

Black people are lazy in that they work less hard than whites. Not only that, but they are rational to be lazy! After black slaves were freed, they worked less. The value of their leisure time (highly valued after a lifetime of slavery) exceeded the pay from their work. Also, ongoing American racism has caused blacks to be paid less than whites. If everything else is the same, a black person is less likely to want to work as hard as a white person. I think that is what led people into the mistaken idea that blacks are lazy--as a characteristic of being black. They're not; it's an economically-ignorant idea to say that they are. They're just rationally valuing their leisure time at the same rate as whites, getting paid less for the same work, and deciding to work less because of it.

Actually, come to think about it, we had about 150 years of black slavery, and it hasn't even been 150 years since the Civil War. It wouldn't surprise me to find that blacks are still taught to value their leisure time more highly than whites. When their forebears were slaves, their leisure time was very precious to them. Cultures change slowly.

Disclaimer: Everyone is an individual, and you cannot pre-judge the characteristic of an individual from the characteristics of a culture or race. From that mistake comes prejudice. My brother-in-law is a highly paid lawyer and he works sixty hours a week if he works a day. But that just makes my point: stop (actually) being racist and blacks will stop being (perceived as) lazy.

Xardox (talk) 14:04, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Crynwr Business Description
It's great to see Mr Nelson here contributing first-person information. I see he just deleted a description of his business. I recognise how frustrating it can be for others to describe your life, but I think it's always better to improve than to delete on Wikipedia. Also noting Wikipedia's CoI policy, I volunteer to verify and edit an accurate description if Mr Nelson would like to contribute one here. ClareTheSharer (talk) 12:10, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Crynwr Software's own website states "High-level email system design services. Do you want to send a million emails a day? A million emails an hour? An email system for a million users? We can design a system for you using qmail." That would appear to describe a "bulk e-mail software" ? Theroadislong (talk) 12:15, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed, so I reinstated the deleted text. But the cite does not imply they "make" the software, only that they are experts at configuring it. I hope Mr Nelson (or another subject expert) will drop by the Talk page to offer a good summary we can validate against citations and adapt for the article. ClareTheSharer (talk) 12:27, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That is WP:SYNTH. Find some other wording because the company clearly does not make any kind of email system. WP:BLP requires that contentious and unsourced statements be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 12:34, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I really don't understand how you can say that? It clearly says "High-level email system design services"on his website. How is it contentious? Am I missing something?Theroadislong (talk) 13:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi there Johnuniq. To my eyes the text now clearly matches the citation (which was there when Mr Nelson deleted the text originally). I really don't understand why you didn't fix it yourself instead of telling me to do it as if I'm your student, but I expect there's a WP:* rule for that too :-) ClareTheSharer (talk) 16:59, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * @Theroadislong: qmail is a well-known mailer that is nothing to do with Russ Nelson, and the crynwr drivers are nothing to do with mail. As crynwr.com states, they can design a mailer, meaning they can take existing software and configure it for you. Anyone with even a little background in the area knows that "a company that made bulk e-mail software" is wildly wrong. @ClareTheSharer: There is no need to be condescending—the OP is offensive. Nelson's edit summary included "uncited. Not to mention not being true", and a suitable post here would have been to ask why the statement was not true, and why the crynwr.com page was not consided a valid citation. Johnuniq (talk) 09:34, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Is there an edit to the current text you are proposing someone make? Apologies if I am not understanding you clearly, I find your condescending tone discouraging. ClareTheSharer (talk) 11:11, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Discussions at Wikipedia generally avoid the worst of open Internet forums, and editors should not snipe at each other. My earlier comment has a bit of snipe, but my point was focused on the original post in this section. Johnuniq (talk) 11:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation Johnuniq. All good wishes. Theroadislong (talk) 11:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "That would appear to describe a "bulk e-mail software" ?" - No, it describes a large-scale message transfer agent installation a.k.a. large-scale e-mail system (in fact, qmail is specifically an MTA, so there's no ambiguity here). "Bulk e-mail" has a specific meaning in the industry - it means to send massive quantaties of a small set of messages (usually "spam") and such a description of a company would not only be misleading to somebody with industry knowledge, it would likely be seen as disparaging.  It's also a small facet of what the company page says they do.  Since I'm familiar with the industry jargon, I fixed the description to accurately reflect the cited source.  BillMcGonigle (talk) 03:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, as Bill suggests, "bulk e-mail software" is a pejorative term. It's a tool used by spammers spit. I actually did have one of the major spammers ask me for help around 1996. I was polite, but turned down his business. Yes, "large-scale email systems" is an accurate and value-neutral description. RussNelson (talk) 04:29, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation (and the confirmation) -- that's just what was needed to help me understand both the problem and why the solurion works. ClareTheSharer (talk) 21:57, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Please see the edit summary for https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russ_Nelson&oldid=740202873 . This is completely unacceptable, for the reasons stated above. I'm quite tired of Damiens.rf's hostile POV edits. How do I get Wikipedia to block him from editing my page? I don't care if he impugns other people's pages. I don't care if my page gets called out for citations far beyond any other Wikipedia page ever published. I just don't want him casting aspersions on me without evidence. There's a word for that: libel. RussNelson (talk) 06:29, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There's also a word for people who claim that "Blacks are Lazy", Russ: RACIST. Pence Headlines Event for PAC Whose “Advocacy Director” Says It’s a “Statistical Observation” That Black People Are Lazy: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/pence-headlines-event-for-pac-whose-advocacy-director-says-its-statistical-that-blacks-are-lazier-than-whites.html Xardox (talk) 04:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, please read the text of the posting (which you'll find quoted above). It states pretty clearly that if blacks don't work as hard as whites while receiving lower pay than whites, that is rational behavior on the part of blacks. The title was clickbait, and like most clickbait titles, was refuted by the body of the posting. It is absolutely not racist to say that blacks behave the same as whites given the same incentives, and differently from whites when given different incentives. I was trying to make the economic point that people put a value on their leisure time, and that in the Antebellum South, blacks could easily be seen working less hard than they used to when they were being threatened with beatings. How is that racist? I don't understand, and I've never understood. Yes, I could have made the point better, but it's not a racist thing to say. That's why I greatly resent these accusations being published, and want them removed. RussNelson (talk) 05:32, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The fact that you admit you were just trolling for attention and your claim that you didn't actually mean what the title of your blog post literally said is a terrible excuse for your blatant racism, and in no way justifies it. If you spread false racist propaganda like "Black are Lazy" (see: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/03/30/25050610/the-myth-of-the-lazy-nigger ) as clickbait for the purpose of getting attention, that's racist. It hurts people. You don't get to call all black people lazy, then get off scott free by whitesplaining to black people that they're wrong to be offended by your racism, because you were just trying to get attention by posting "clickbait". Posting clickbait is bad enough, without you trying to use it as an excuse for your racism. You aren't indemnified from the harm you caused, simply by admitting you didn't actually mean what you said, which was obviously clickbait calculated to offend people. You don't have the right to demand that people read your entire posting and agree with all of your ridiculous arguments, which is extremely poorly written and formulated even by your own admission, to justify your weak excuse that you wrote the opposite of what you really meant in the clickbait title in order to trick people into reading the rest of your article. Eric S Raymond might do that all the time, but it doesn't make it right for you to emulate him, or (as ESR helpfully suggested) for OSI to spend their precious time, resources and reputation fighting the "thugs" (another racially loaded term ESR likes to throw around) who called for you to resign. You should check yourself when your staunchest defender is on the record as saying stuff like "The BLM crowd, which would have an average IQ of about 85 if it's statistically representative of American blacks as a whole" -- and worse: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 -- (that's only a small sampling of ESR's long well documented track record of racism, which you yourself have even tried to whitewash on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Eric_S._Raymond/Archive_3#Controversial_opinion_statement ). Russ: Since your logic of your "Blacks are Lazy" article was so flawed and poorly thought out, your argument that it was only clickbait doesn't hold any water. Self-identifying yourself as a troll who writes click-bait titles for attention doesn't give you a license to be racist, and doesn't mean people who you offended are "thugs". If it wasn't offensive and racist, you wouldn't have resigned because of it. You resigned because of it. It was offensive and racist. I and others have asked you many times to clarify what your wrote and address the points we raised about the flaws in your argument, and you have repeatedly ignored and refused to address those issues. So it's pretty obviously you know your arguments are flawed, since you refuse to stand by what you wrote and explain it, and would rather whitewash what you publicly posted. Xardox (talk) 12:28, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Russ Nelson still trying to whitewash the article about him
This nonsense has been going on since 2011. Mr. Nelson refuses to abide by the guidelines at WP:COI and Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject). Time for a topic ban as BWilkins threatened way back then? Toddst1 (talk) 04:53, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree, if the one-person edit war this time continues. ClareTheSharer (talk) 10:05, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * If we can't get this article published without the accusations of racism, can we at least delete it? Yes, it may be well-cited that I was accused of being a racist, but not everything which is tell-cited belongs in a Wikipedia page, particularly one about a living person. RussNelson (talk) 05:20, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You know, I felt sad for you so I tried really hard to rewrite that text in a way that conveyed the indisputable facts while avoiding speaking in a way I'd be hurt to see written about me. What's there now is the best I could do; I think it succeeds at reporting without reinforcing any accusation. If you can do better, propose it here and I'll gladly edit it in if I agree. Or of course you could try another AfD, but I'm afraid you've proven too notable for that. ClareTheSharer (talk) 23:41, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying, but that edit is no improvement at all. The problem isn't that the blog posting existed or that people read it. It's that people read ONLY the title and jumped to conclusions that were not justified by the contents of the posting. Incorporating the title into the article isn't helpful.
 * I'm notable for one thing. That means I'm not notable at all by Wikipedia's guidelines. I haven't done anything notable before or after that. Other OSI board members have had pages removed, why not mine? RussNelson (talk) 03:12, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Russ: As I've said before, and you've never acknowledged or refuted, your arguments in the "Blacks are Lazy" article you wrote and published don't hold any water and aren't supported by facts. And you're also notable for your record of white-washing Eric S Raymond's long record of racism . So your suggestion that "ONLY the title" makes people "jump to conclusions" is wrong. The content and tone of the entire article sounds quite racist and ignorant, as well as "ONLY the title". Your title used to be "President of the Open Source Initiative", then it was not. Your wikipedia page should explain why you resigned. Don't blame and shame the "fools and thugs" like ESR did: take responsibility for your own words and actions. Xardox (talk) 17:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Xardox: I don't owe you any explanation. Nonetheless, since you didn't comprehend the blog posting, I'll explain the idea better than I did on the first go-round. People assign values to things. These values are individual, not absolute. See Diamond-water paradox. People assign a value to their leisure time. They could be working but they choose to consume some of their production in leisure. It begs reason to think that blacks put zero value on their own leisure Ante-Bellum yet it is certain that a slave-owner would put zero value on a slave's time. Thus, logic dictates that blacks didn't work as hard Ante-Bellum as they did before. Do you think that's why people slandered them with 'lazy'? I do. Do you have an alternate theory? So far you haven't presented one, you've just spewed accusations inappropriate for a Talk page at me. RussNelson (talk) 23:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)