User:Kenwarren/sandbox/rktect/EgilEmail

(My initial email to Egil was sent through the Wikipedia "Email this user" interface, so I don't have a copy of it. The first email below shows the content, though. Aplogies for the x'ed words in my first email, but it was a comment I consider incivil if presented for public consumption here. I will restore it if requested by an arbitrator.)

From:  Egil Kvaleberg To:  Ken Warren Date:  Mon, August 22, 2005 9:00 am Subject:   Re: Rktect and standards of measure

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 11:12 +0000, Kenwarren wrote: > FWIW, Rktect is xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx. > > My suggestion is that we simply try to keep the damage under control, as best we can, > on articles like Mile and Eratosthenes, and let him dig his own grave.

I've spent more than enough time on this. If you have any suggestions on how to end this nightmare without spending more time, I'm all game.

RfArb, is that something?

Egil - From:  Ken Warren To:  Egil Kvaleberg Date:  Mon, August 22, 2005 10:55 am Subject:   Re: Rktect and standards of measure

> On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 11:12 +0000, Kenwarren wrote: >> FWIW, Rktect is xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx. >> >> My suggestion is that we simply try to keep the damage under control, as >> best we can, >> on articles like Mile and Eratosthenes, and let him dig his own grave. > > I've spent more than enough time on this. If you have any suggestions on > how to end this nightmare without spending more time, I'm all game.

Yeah, I agree. I've spent as much time as I care to, since I have a personal project I'm trying to find time to work on. My thought: keep the articles that he's modified (to their detriment) as sober as we can, and ignore the stuff he's creating, until it looks like it's probably done. At that point, it can be evaluated.

> RfArb, is that something?

I don't think Rktect is foolish enough to take this to the Arbitration Committee. (But I can hope...) The extent of my potential exposure, if he does, would be listing multiple articles that were all identical when created as a single VfD. This is a technical violation of the VfD procedure, but a common one when dealing with certain types of vandalism. Beyond that, I can show that I've been trying to communicate and arrive at an understanding of Rktect's goals, a required step in obtaining a real consensus.

-- Ken

- From:  Egil Kvaleberg To:  Ken Warren Date:  Mon, August 22, 2005 12:17 pm Subject:   Re: Rktect and standards of measure

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 10:55 -0400, Ken Warren wrote:

> I don't think Rktect is foolish enough to take this to the Arbitration > Committee. (But I can hope...)

FWIW, Rktect put an end to the mediation with me, and said he would bring the matter to RfC or RfArb.

Egil - From:  Egil Kvaleberg To:  Ken Warren Date:  Fri, August 26, 2005 6:35 am Subject:   Re: Rktect and standards of measure

Wrt. the G4 deletion clause, I left an additional comment on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Aroura

Egil - From:  Ken Warren To:  Egil Kvaleberg Sent:  Sun 8/28/2005 2:46 PM Subject:   RE: Rktect and standards of measure

Just so you're aware, I still consider Steve Whittet's contributions to be pseudoscience where they get into conclusions not accepted by mainstream experts. However, that doesn't mean that there's no place for any of his material. He's probably right about relative sizes of amost of the units he discusses, or at least he probably has scholarly sources to back them up. Where he's wrong (IMO) is in thinking that these units can all be related back to a late Neolithic/early Bronze Age knowlege of geodesy.

Since I have almost no time to spend on Wikipedia at the moment, and since I don't consider *all* of his contributions valueless, I'm currently restricting myself to relatively minor and non-controversial edits in the realm of masurements, plus correcting politely his wilder excesses.

I will mention one thing: there has been a great deal of incivility and many assumptions of bad faith, on both sides. Possibly some of the bad faith assumptions are justified. I tend to think so, as Rktect seems to have adopted the tactic of disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, which is a form of bad faith. In any case, this will only serve to damage any case raised as a request for comments or brought before the Arbitration committee. Please be aware of this, and try to be reasonably temperate in comments on talk pages and VfDs. Where you alter his figures, as you might choose to do at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Mouton, you should make sure to include cites.

If this does come before the Arbitration Committee, I will act as an interested party, by the way. I (and others) tried repeatedly to engage Steve in reasoned discourse, which he has ignored, and he has repeatedly acted in ways which are not in the best interests of Wikipedia.

Best wishes,

Ken Warren - From:  Egil Kvaleberg To:  Ken Warren Date:  Sun, August 28, 2005 3:34 pm Subject:   RE: Rktect and standards of measure

On Sun, 2005-08-28 at 14:45 -0400, Ken Warren wrote:

> Since I have almost no time to spend on Wikipedia at the moment, and since I > don't consider *all* of his contributions valueless

I did spend some effort finding the value for this measurement, yes. I still waiting for an email with an extra verification, but I do think my numbers for the Bologna foot are pretty good. (Wikipedia, in its current state, is of course useless as a reference for any of this.) Also, doing the pendulum equation, using a G for 45 degrees latitude (Lyon is pretty close) I get 2.05 m.

And yes, my conclusion is that it is hopeless. Sorry. (Not only for this article, but for all articles on my growing list). The current Wikipedia mechanism fails miserably for this type of situation. As I was trying to show with my strange question to you wrt Mouton, the only possible solution is to revert completely (yes, I do find the space/time statement useless. Mouton was the first to relate a measure of length to a measure of time, but that is something different. But lets not argue about that).

This particular user, including his anons, have done almost 1000 contributions in a month. If we should take them seriously, and assuming half of these are contributions (what a PC word) for articles, and say that it takes 1 hour to verify each (I think it is more), we are talking three to four people full time to do so. I do not have the time nor desire to be one of them.

I do think Jimbo mentioned in August some changes in policy on stuff like this, but is it is now, Wikipedia is far too fragile.

Egil

- From:  Egil Kvaleberg To:  Ken Warren Date:  Tue, August 30, 2005 1:56 pm Subject:   RE: Rktect and standards of measure

On Sun, 2005-08-28 at 14:45 -0400, Ken Warren wrote: > Just so you're aware, I still consider Steve Whittet's contributions to be > pseudoscience where they get into conclusions not accepted by mainstream > experts. However, that doesn't mean that there's no place for any of his > material.

Problem is, when the signal to noise ratio gets low enough, you simply do not know which 1 and 0 in the data channel that may happen to be correct, and which are not, and the entire signal looses its value (sorry if the above is incomprehensible, I just used an analogy from an area with which I am familiar).

> Since I have almost no time to spend on Wikipedia at the moment, and since I > don't consider *all* of his contributions valueless,

It is of course laudable if someone wants to sort out what is of value. But as I hope I expressed in the RfAr, I think Wikipedia would benefit much more if you spent your valuable Wiki time adding content yourself, in stead of filtering and repairing rktect. (IMHO and all that)

As I said in the RfAr I firmly believe a good, long pause from this is needed. Perhaps for all parties - I must admit I almost fell of my chair when I saw this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Livio_Catullo_Stecchini&diff=prev&oldid=22111178

I can only congratulate you with your achievement, here is suddenly a man that can talk meaningful sentences and participate in an intelligent discussion! (I guess I would probably disagree with some of the things he said, but that is another matter)

I'm probably very bad at understanding other people, but ugly me could also see the above as a proof that he is totally trolling all the time (except for this one mishap).

> Where you alter his figures, as you might choose to do at > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Mouton, you should make sure to include > cites.

On that one, I have done my citing good enough, I think.

But also bear in mind that what 'rktect' is doing can easily be understood as a 'denial of service' attack. If rktect can freely dump a hundred sentences into an article, and I would be required to research every one of them to delete them, then the 'troll' wins.

There is a mechanism called 'trust', which is in fact something I believe a society like Wikipedia is depending on to a very high degree, and makes the society work (Wikipedia is an interesting social experiment, that is part of my fascination. And frustration at times). Even though the "Wikipedia:" pages hardly mentions it.

Every sentence in Wikipedia is not based on cites or referrences. It is based on trust to the people who write them. Trust is built up slowly, it is a very valuable commodity, but gets destroyed if misused.

Needles to say, my trust in rktect is zero, because as I see it, he is mainly out to troll me and waste my time.

Egil