User talk:Anastrophe/Archive An odd discussion

The following is merely a record of a bit of past ugliness here on WP.

an editor decides to go all medieval on me
Ed: this is the editor's half of the exchange. i've reordered so it reads chronologically top to bottom. to review his talk page as it was before he blanked it - which contains my responses - please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Escientist&oldid=181564865

update, January 16, 2007. more jaw-dropping paranoia for perusal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cheeser1&oldid=184735910

Reply to your cryptic comment: I am a world-class expert in the subject matter that you apparently just deleted from Wikipedia.

I was generously trying to be helpful (with no credit or compensation). I am the owner / editor of two of the worldwide web's most popular web sites on this subject. I'm a second-generation energy research scientist with three decades of leading-edge experience - Recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy as the world's foremost author and lecturer on these topics.

Wikipedia should be very grateful and helpful to get me to share my knowledge for free. CEO's of the Fortune 100 pay dearly for my consulting services. (Peacock feathers high in the air)

Some of my website-and-book readers have pointed out that the information I present is much more informative, up-to-date, and complete than some of the critical omissions and errors on Wikipedia.

You used a cryptic, non-detailed canned reply that I should: cite it or delete it. You obviously did NOT read most of what I posted, which was loaded with internal Wikipedia references and external citation/hyperlinks.

Every last thing I had spent hours entering was block deleted, without prior notification, discussion, or evaluation of the merit of this up-to-date unbaised freely-provided information.

You have no apparent regard about insulting me or wasting MY time, so let me reply in like kind.

I have no motivation or time to waste arguing with an apparently-uninformed self-appointed editorial pedigog, who knows less than I do about this important subject matter. What gives you the right to prevent the world from viewing the "best" material available? (In a world of Johnny-Come-Lately inexperienced first-time experimenters.)

I noticed you ALLOW foolish statements to remain, with nothing more than to a blog entry by an uninformed subject matter novice. Presumably, you can be satisfied with a citation to an unreliable, uneducated source with no peer review, but not work of the industry's leading expert in the field. (I have no reason for a false sense of humility.)

Please do NOT block delete ANY of my valuable contributions without interacting with me.

Who else can I escalate this to in Wikipedia to get the matter resolved immediately? Please forward this unedited, in context to someone with authority to referee.

If you would prefer me to use some other vehicle to communicate with you, please tell me how. I hope this is sufficient discuss before I post additional information. I hope you will be less cryptic and more specific with you future CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, which I will deeply appreciate. I do NOT enjoy arguing with an uninformed arrogant editor.

If you are the best singer in the opera, you have the right to be a prima donna.(Chuckle) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Escientist (talk • contribs) 04:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

In reviewing the fine detail of "Energy development" it is obvious that 98% of the Pro and Con bullet points have NO EXTERNAL CITATIONS at all. Perhaps a quarter of them were entered by uninformed people who are obviously clueless about the unverifiable (false) energy science that they casually refer to.

I DEMAND TO KNOW WHY YOU DO NOT APPLY THE EXACT SAME CITATION REQUIREMENT CRITERIA AND '''DELETE ALL OF THEM ? ? ?'''

How is it that Wikipedia ENCOURAGES non-subject-matter experts to post unthruths and incomplete misleading material, but boldly deletes input from a recognized subject matter expert, without any type of peer review by people who are verifiably famaliar with the material ?

Your inconsistent illogic is dazzling beyond belief!

With irrational thinking like that, how did Wikipedia ever become popular?

Escientist (talk) 07:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Spectacular! Once again you did the same arrogant thing. You demanded that I cite my references and delete my work. Instead of taking the time to be specific or helful to a generous subject matter expert (who is not a Wikipedia guru), you keep doing things you know will drive people like me away, presumably so non-subject-matter new comers can feel a false sense of self worth.

I provided excellent reliable citations - Have you ever seen a Financial Times? And yet once again you did an indiscriminate block REDO, without reading what I laborously donated to the world for free.

MISCOMMUNICATING WITH ANASTROPHE IS A CASTATROPHE!

I now must demand that you tell me specifically why you block deleted this well-cited content:


 * Even with the most-optimistic energy return on investment claims, in order to use 100% solar energy to grow corn and produce ethanol (fueling machinery with ethanol, distilling with heat from burning crop residues, using NO fossil fuels at all), the consumption of ethanol to replace only the current U.S. petroleum use would require three quarters of all the cultivated land on the face of the Earth.


 * The American $0.51 USD per U.S. gallon subsidy for producing ethanol from corn, has diverted land from food, reduced corn expoerts, and it caused the price of food-staple corn-based food products to triple in Mexico in January 2007. United nations officials called the U.S. ethanol-from-food subsidy a "Crime against Humanity". The Financial Times has been especially critical of the counterproductive $7-billion-USD subsidy, 700%-increase in U.S. national biolfuel production biofuel strategy.


 * There is a long list of reasons why even non-food-based cellulosic ethanol cannot solve our energy crisis or global warming problems.

Some of the rest of what I edited was corrections to previously-overlooked typographical and gramatical errors. Must I cite my references for these also? How absurd!

I formally asked you to help me escalate this issue to someone, or a committee, who can rule on these matters. YOU REFUSED MY REQUEST.

You said it is your job to do these things - WHAT IS YOUR JOB? What gives you the authority to indiscriminately delete high-quality, verifiable, expert-source content?

Does it somehow make you feel proud or happy to elicit the response I feel compelled to send to you? When you imply that I am "any jackass on the net" does that please whatever, or whoever motivates you?

Here are the four tildes that you requested:

Escientist (talk) 06:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to provide some specific answers to my request for you to help me understand your deletion of my generous technical content. I think I'm beginning to see where you are coming from now, and a little bit about who you are and why you have deleted what I believe to be good information, which at least some Wikipedia readers appreciate. I've received positive responses from several (that you have yet to see).

I'm a second-generation energy research scientist, with three decades of related experience. U.S. Department of Energy uses me as an expert author and lecturer in the energy field. I've been involved since the original 1978 U.S. Solar Energy Tax Credits were in place. You choose to hide your identity from me, so I will not send you my lengthy resume, yet.

I've been hoping to donate some of my knowledge to Wikipedia for the betterment of mankind. I believe that energy is one of the most important issues we face today, since it is closely linked to so many of the other problems of humanity today. Others who've read my opinionated books (edited by others) agree.

I'm obviously not any good with Wikipedia yet, but I'm trying to learn (slowly). You are seeing my writing without the professional editors who normally surround me.

As a long-term professional scientist, I've always been trained to invite and appreciate CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. As a frequent public speaker (in front of peer-level scientists, and Fortune 100 CEO's), I use uppercase in my notes to remind me to change inflection, NOT for shouting. I'm sorry that you misunderstood my intent. I've learned a lot from the constructive feedback of others over the years. I've written popular scientific books, but as I say (and my ID implies), I'm a geeky scientist, NOT a politician. When I started out, my private secretary took dictation, and did grammatically-correct clean typing for me. I’ve always concentrated on scientific content, not on writing style.

You and I got off on the wrong foot when you block deleted my hours of labor, with no specific feedback about “why”, other than a cryptic one-line generic Wikipedia template. I am not used to being treated with such discourtesy and blind disrespect. As I said, I solicit and appreciation constructive feedback that leaves me with the feeling that I have been helped. Your first interaction with me was certainly not that.

Sometimes I'm perceptive, and sometimes I misunderstand others. Let me see if I can guess who (or what) you are and why you originally felt motivated to take the time to insult me by deleting my work with no specific explanation, while leaving admittedly-far-worse things in place in the same Wikipedia article. I agree that YOU cannot clean up all of Wikipedia, but if you concentrate on my content contributions to one specific article, then why not apply your criteria to the one article you are working on so hard ? ? ? Why single out my potentially beneficial effort.

You wrote that you are not obligated to help me in any way. Your actions have been nothing but destructive criticism, which brought out my negative response to you.

Your initial unprofessional lack of helpfulness certainly contradicts the Wikipedia Welcome credo that INVITES input from subject matter experts (like me).

This makes me guess that you must be a young editor trying to build up your own self-esteem by exercising self-appointed editorial power over others (who may understand the specialize technical content much better than you do).

You don't take the time to use the shift key to make your writing sentence-like (which is a behavior common to the young generation of email hackers).

I submit this not as a personal attack, but rather as an external point of view of the image that your actions and words are projecting to others (who may indeed have something to contribute, but need Wikipedia style editorial assistance - NOT block deletes).

Do I have this right? You are a self-proclaimed self-appointed volunteer Wikipedia editor who thinks that Wikipedia is full of "crap", and that most of the contributors are "jackasses." (YOUR own words, not mine.)

You obviously have applied your incorrect profane stereotype to me, and thereby elicited a strong negative response, which is unproductive and unhealthy for both of us, and for the potential consumers of contributed Wikipedia information. Peer review constructive conversations are indeed extremely valuable - Cryptic indiscriminate block deletes are not.

So far, you have not replied to the points I've tried to post, just attacked my style. There has yet to be any evidence that you are my technology peer. Clearly, you know Wikipedia much better than I do, BUT, you have not offered any comments about the validity of the points I made. - No "thank you" for my hours of generous effort - No list of clean up specifics (with some minor exceptions in your last message to me).

Do you think biofuels from food should be subsidized? Do you understand the issue at all? Isn’t that the objective of this article anyway? I have tried to add unbiased Pros and Cons about topics like hydroelectricity, but you deleted them when some are superior to what you let stand in the exact same paragraph. How frustrating for me. I don’t need this kind of stress from a self-appointed uncompensated, negative, unhelpful editor.

If an article was specifically designed to enumerate Pros and Cons, should they be? Many Pros and Cons of alternative forms of energy are STILL missing in this article. Where is the invitation to gather more and better input from people who know?

All of my professional career, my best work has been peer reviewed. FRIENDLY professional editors that I respect have helped me with many issues of style, while I concentrate only on issues content. It is indeed irritating to have unusual Wikipedia data tags and style issues imposed on me, but I’m willing to spend a little time trying.

I agree that using profane words like those in your last reply to me should be dealt with harshly, but I certainly did NOT use those in the false stereotype you imposed on me.

There is something curious about your youthful motivation to be a free Wikipedia editor and invest so very much time learning Wikipedia regulations and doing cryptic block deletes of non-profane technical content, which it appears you do not have a background to appreciate. What makes you invest so much uncompensated time. What is YOUR powerful hidden agenda? In politics, the strongest critics of certain behaviors are doing something worse themselves.

MY motivation is that I am humanitarian energy expert environmentalist. I want to help people see the rationale behind living in harmony with nature. I love the God who created the universe and entrusted it to our care. He has given me special intellectual gifts, insight, and experience in the field of future energy development. I have made all the money I need, and no longer need to earn another penny for the rest of my life. I feel compelled to give back to mankind some of the abundant energy knowledge that made me a success. I’ve designed and donated low-income zero energy affordable housing to worthy people less fortunate than I have been.

I have frequently encountered strong opposition from business-as-usual change-resistant Individuals who benefit from the obsolete status quo. Are you in the fossil fuel business? Are you paid to attack people who offer proof of superior alternatives? What motivates to spend so much time being destructive? What positive contribution are YOU making to anything? You are indeed an enigma. You give a little insight into you hidden agenda, but it is still difficult to understand WHY you choose to deviate so much from the invitational spirit that created the original Energy Development article, and apply your interpretation of very strong exclusion criteria only to me.

With no help from you, I will try to learn how to escalate your destructive editorial behavior to a superior Wikipedia authority, to help you mellow out, grow up, become more professional, and lead in a positive constructive way, listen to content experts, or at least GET OUT OF MY WAY. – No personal attack intended – I mean this in the most constructively critical way possible (from my perceived stereotype of you).

I really love the idea and success of Wikipedia. It is really sad that a content expert has to waste time, emotions and effort fighting with an unhelpful (young?) editor over inconsistently-applied issues of style.

Escientist (talk) 15:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Your dispute with User:W.marsh
If you consider that the user is abusing his admin privileges, your initial avenue is WP:RFC/U. If he actually did block you and you wanted to be unblocked, you'd want to post on your talk page.

That said, my personal advice would be to let the matter (that is, his threatening of a block, not necessarily the underlying tagging issue) drop. Just my opinion, obviously. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

attacks by user escientist
i am publishing this here because User:Escientist will not allow discourse from me on his talk page. I am being relentlessly attacked by this individual, and he's pretty much getting a 'pass' for reasons that elude me. i've been editing on wikipedia since october 2005, i have an exemplary record of unbiased, high quality edits, and few disputes (i will not pretend there have not been a small number of disputes with other editors, but none have ever included personal attacks approaching what i've been subjected to by escientist). (rather than publishing the whole text, it's simpler just to post a ref back to the page as it appeared then...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Escientist&oldid=185041486

____________________________________________________________

escientist's commentary
the following material is from another user's talk page. the user has declined to further mediate, and i certainly cannot blame him in the slightest.

and again, a link, rather than just reproducing wholesale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cheeser1&oldid=185040469

more
and i'm reproducing the following from the wikiquette page, as it gives the most terse summary of this dispute possible. as you can see by the comments, things are hardly as escientist represents them in his attacks - that he's the one being attacked, and that i'm the one being admonished for issues.

yeah, i need to let this go. it's terribly confounding to be on the receiving end of egregious personal attacks though, and 'letting go' is easier said than done when one has been wronged.

patience gone
user user:Escientist relentlessly impugns my character, rather than addressing the specific editorial and policy issues i've pointed out are the basis of my edits and reversions of his contributions. i've tried to AGF, i've tried being polite (and i believe i have yet to be impolite, though i may be terse due to the attacks), but the attacks continue to escalate. some examples: and the following, though awfully long, gives the earliest examples of these attacks, which began almost immediately after user Escientist opened his account. apparently, if you revert unsourced commentary, you are being paid be exxon to revert him. Anastrophe (talk) 20:12, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Future_energy_development sections 31 and 32
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wtshymanski section 22
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Energy_development sections 34 and 35
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Escientist&oldid=181564865


 * I have left the appropriate warnings on the user's talk page. Please keep us updated, if these problems continue. --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:31, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Additionally, I'd like to address a couple of points here. I'm personally rather offended by Escientist's behavior - it's one thing to be a subject expert, which is useful but can also be a tricky position to be in due to WP:COI.  It's quite another to present original research and then be so high-and-mighty about one's knowledge.  I found Escientist's comments toward you to be very belittling and attacking, in the form of "I know what I'm talking about and you obviously don't, or you've got a conflict of interest", and that sort of attitude is very unhelpful.


 * Anastrophe, I think you did a good job in the article talk page(s) in trying to reason with Escientist, but I also believe you may have gone a little overboard or too far out of your way to continue the discussions with him in the User Talk space. People like this thrive on the attention - when they believe they know everything and everyone who disagrees with them is some form of enemy, there's really almost no reasoning with them.  Allowing yourself to get mad and continue arguing with him, civil as you've been about it, will only make things worse.  At this point, I think you should agree to disagree with him, continue working toward consensus in the article namespace, and work with us here on breaches of civility policy and other user conduct policies.  (It is not completely against the rules to talk negatively about other users, even if what the person says is untrue.  Don't go too far out of your way to defend yourself - if you're unbiased and someone's accusing you of being biased, the truth will show in the quality of your edits.)


 * If Escientist does do something more egregious, such as call you out for COI in the article talk itself, you can feel free to report the incident at the Admin Noticeboard/Incidents or file a Request for Comment against him. Also check out other forms of dispute resolution.


 * If Escientist wishes to participate in this discussion, I'll be happy to provide guidance to him as well. &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 20:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. If these problems continue without improvement, this is definitely something that needs to be bumped up the ladder. --Cheeser1 (talk) 21:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * i appreciate the comments. for my part, i think i'm going to take a mini-wikibreak, per the title i gave this section. as it stands, i have work to do that my wiki-addiction is interfering with, so it's for the best anyway. Anastrophe (talk) 21:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)