User talk:Fishnut

Permaculture facts and fictions
Following the 1970's trend towards self sufficiency and alternate lifestyles, permaculture tries to meld aspects of both using what it claims to be cultural systems of food production used by various peoples around the Earth. Unfortunately they neglect to mention that, in traditional cultures, exotic (i.e. introduced species) were not included. Unfortunately for the environment, the use of invasive weeds and noxious animals are not only included with permaculture, but the virtues of these pests are expounded by "experts" in the permaculture field as desirable. Permaculture is an unproven concept at best, while the intentions of many of those in the field may be noble, the fact remains that many make claims such as "there is no such thing as a weed", "willow trees are good for stream bank stabilisation" and similar gems are pure hype at best and socially and environmentally irresponsible at worst. The designs for aquaculture systems within permaculture are laughable for anyone with any serious understanding of the fundamentals of aquaculture, while some of these designs may work well in asian countries with asian species of fish (with the capacity to breath air directly.. i.e. Gourami's), they will not work with most species of fish. The terminology used by permaculturists include wonderful exaggerations such as, calling a few fruit trees a "food forest" and a few square metres at the bottom of the garden a "wilderness". Try typing "Permaculture" into any job search engine and carefully check the results, it appears that the only jobs in permaculture are in the fields of teaching the subject or the running of short and usually expensive courses. Your money would be better spent on a few good organic or bio-dynamic gardening books. For those with dreams of self sufficiency, a few last words, your council will not accept free range eggs in lieu of rates and I have yet to see a tree that will provide an annual crop of steel belted radials each year, unless you have an external source of income or you see permaculture as a retirement option for your superanuation funds, think twice before committing yourself. One of the most disingenious things about permaculture is the use of the word "ecology", the pertmaculture concept and those who preach it claim that they are working for the betterment of mankind and ecology, while always asking for money before giving any "advice", according to one permaculture teacher in Australia, endangered species are endangered because they didn't adapt to the changing world and so desreve to go extinct. Similar gems of "wisdom" can be readily found within what Permaculturists refer to as "the bible", the original book by founder Bill Mollison, where he advocates the use of declared noxious weeds and introduced pest fish as part of a permaculture system, the introduction of which are illegal in most, if not all, Australian States and Territories. Claims of permaculture being based on ecology should be viewed with extreme skepticism, the simplistic interpretations of "observation" can and are manipulated by the proponents to suit whatever idea they want to push at the time and falls far short of any serious scientific principals. Discussion is welcome, provided that it is based on scientific or economicially backable facts, otherwise please do not waste my time. Cheers Fishnut

Changes to Permaculture
Dear Fishnut, some recent changes made to the permaculture page don't meet a few guidelines of Wikipedia, as far as I understand them. Introducing what looks like point-of-view remarks (without citation) and disparaging a living person (without evidence). If the information can be verified (links to sources) and the tone become neutral, then that is fine, but otherwise these look like POV, no-cite, negative remarks and violate the following guidelines: I myself am not a big rule-monger, but the lack of neutral tone without any explanation is not helpful to understand if these changes to the article are accurate or not. Since there have only been "reverts" to the introduced changes and repeating of the changes, I am putting this notice here and on the Talk page for Permaculture, seeking a solution. If we cannot make progress on this, then I intend to file a 3RR violation with the admins.
 * CITE
 * Biographies_of_living_persons
 * NPOV

User:Fishnut reported by User:jeffmcneill (Result: )
. : Time reported: 02:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Three-revert rule violation on


 * Previous version reverted to: VersionTime


 * Fishnut does not revert, but repeats very similar edits which remove an individuals' name attributed to Permaculture, injects disparaging remarks regarding that person (a living person David_Holmgren, and then injects disparaging remarks regarding Permaculture itself (the topic of the article) without any evidence or citation.


 * Here is an example set of five edits over 18 minutes which was subsequently reverted by me:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Permaculture&diff=190766828&oldid=190756870


 * Fishnut has just edited twice and reintroduced two of those edits:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Permaculture&diff=190778003&oldid=190774307


 * Previously, Fishnut had introduced 6 edits done over two days of a similar nature, which was reverted by User:Skyeriquelme (who it should be noted had only this single revert as a contribution):
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Permaculture&diff=190521441&oldid=190009457 --Jeffmcneill talk contribs 02:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Dear Mr. McNeill, my changes to the permaculture page may have broken some rules, for which I apologize, I am new to this site and should have familiarized myself with the editing rules before making any changes. However, I would like to point out that flagrant self promotion is also against the rules. The promotion of short courses offered by the author of the permaculture page also breaks Wikipedia rules and I hope that you will also object to those breaches of the rules?. What I was attempting to do was bring attention to the veracity or otherwise of the claims made by the author of the permaculture page. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.


 * Dear Fishnut, I agree that promotion is also not condoned at Wikipedia. My understanding is that resource links need to be to verifiable resources that help provide information about the topic. The policy of Conflict_of_interest may help give guidance as well. If someone can gain financially from links and those links do not materially provide vital and verifiable information, then they do not have a place in Wikipedia articles, as far as I can tell. I want to encourage your participation, especially in the area of critiquing (there is a section in the article for this), and generally making things better. If you can participate in the Permaculture "talk page" (which is a tab at the top dedicated to conversation about the edits on the page) for anything controversial (or which people are reverting), and also to indicate in the edit summary box (just above the Save Page button) the reasons for the edits, that will help a lot. Also citing sources and maintaining a neutral point of view is very helpful, so that we all focus on the factual content to get it right. --Jeffmcneill talk contribs 03:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

G'day Jeff, thanks for that, I've been trying to figure out how to confirm the claim that Crystal Waters won an award (World Habitat Award) in 1996 when I check the link the awards for that year do not coincide with the claims????. I'm still trying to figure out the system here, but hope to contribute, in a more neutral way, in the near future. Thanks again Fishnut