User talk:IsocratesII

Unfair block
User:Bbb23 I am not the same user as that which you have previously blocked. The device used is shared with many users on the same research project. Please consider the edits I have made and you will see that they are all acceptable. Best regards IsocratesII.

As it says, Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 04:27, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I only did that so that the latest request (now below) would go to the top of the page.

User:50.37.96.201 User:Bbb23 Thank you for your comment User:50.37.96.201 You are correct: we are not the same person. There is currently a research project into this Moody family involving over 20 historians, some of whom work on the same systems. Several weeks or so ago, a researcher suggested that the Wiki pages for these individuals be updated where reliable online sources could be found. One individual jumped on this suggestion and went about it with absolutely no knowledge of how this website works - the User whom you have found to be a 'sockpuppet' and whom you, understandably, have blocked. As I have said, I personally replaced several of the unreliable sources he cited with reliable sources. However, by blocking the editing by this system, you have prevented me from doing this. I possess knowledge of Wikipedia and will find reliable sources before making all edits or contributions. You will find the edits I made to be entirely different from those of the 'socking' user and to be beneficial contributions to your project: indeed, some of these have been restored to your site. What I would ask you is this, as you both are clearly experienced editors: there is much more reliably sourced information that I have to add - how should I go about doing it? Three options present themselves: 1, you conditionally unblock this system, see what I have to add, and, if this is not to your satisfaction, block again. As I have said, I am not a sock: I am trying to do properly what the sock user performed ineptly on the same system. We are not the same person: judge from the edits. 2, I could post on this talk page the code that I would like to upload to enable you to assess it: then, if it were to your satisfaction, you could upload it yourselves. 3, I could email you the code. I look forward to your response.(IsocratesII (talk) 07:55, 26 November 2016 (UTC)).


 * It is impossible to identify the actual individual making edits, so blocks for socking are based on what can be determined, whether the edits from two accounts are using the same system (there is a little more to it than that, but that is the basic concept), and the determination has been made by 'checkuser' that the technical aspects of your posting are indistinguishable from those of the sock Hamlet94. None of the solutions you suggest represents a viable way forward.  You should not use your Talk page to place content that is to be incorporated into articles - blocked users do not retain access to their Talk pages so they can continue editing by proxy, and that is likely to result in the block being extended to your Talk page, while another editor acting as proxy for a blocked editor would make themselves vulnerable to bloking.  No admin is likely to remove a block in the face of a positive determination that the same system is being used, and "I am not the same as the other person editing on my computer" proves unconvincing when the original sock got in trouble to begin with for pretending to be different people.  There is really just one way to proceed: make your case to the email address Ritchie333 provided above that you are not the same as the previously-blocked sock, but you may just have to come to terms with the possibility that the socking behavior from your system has permanently poisoned the well, and that any further contributions on the subjects in which you are interested will need to be made by someone else in your group of historians.
 * Let me add some advice for your whole group, seeing as it is a family history project that provides the motivation and this is what tripped up the socking editor - Wikipedia is not a repository for genealogy and may not be the best medium for the presentation of genealogical research results. In general, a relationship, particularly one that is not immediately proximate to the subject of the article (parents, grandparents, siblings, children - it you are using a 'great-' it is probably too distant), should only be mentioned in a Wikipedia article if you have found a recent secondary source that has deemed that relationship worth highlighting, and even then if it would be not give undue weight to what is, in effect, a trivial curiosity.  People are related to other people, and if you look closely enough, genealogical connections will be found among notable people, but that does not mean they are of enough general interest to be included in a Wikipedia article.  Avoid web genealogy pages and 19th century genealogy books as sources, avoid primary records, the use of which would represent original research, and avoid genealogical synthesis - finding one source that says A descends from B and another that B descends from C does not justify combining the two in a synthesis that states in A's biography that she descends from C - someone writing about A has to have taken note of her descent from C.  50.37.127.247 (talk) 21:52, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

User: 50.37.127.247 - What is being undertaken is an original study by masters and PhD scholars at the University of Cambridge, the University of London, and Harvard University regarding the perspectives of the Colonial British ruling class in the Imperial period, not a 'family history project', although the family of Moody are being consulted. The relationship with other notable members of the family is usually important in modern historical studies: always important in modern studies of a biographical nature: and especially important in the biographical study of such individuals as the subjects concerned here. Relationships of lineal descent between notable individuals are not a 'trivial curiosity' - nor thought to be so by Wikipedia, whose articles usually include such information and which provides a genealogy template so that it might be neatly summarized at the close of the article. On the Wikipedia articles, genealogy pages have not been cited by this user except where they provide digitized copies of reliable sources: 19th century published genealogy books are a vital and, among historians, a universally used source of information for academic studies: such books are also acceptable to Wikipedia and used abundantly on Wikipedia by diverse editors of articles regarding historical individuals. I do not accept your contention that such genealogical information, where reliably sourced, is unworthy of inclusion, provided that information regarding any non-notable individuals which occur between notables is not included, nor do I believe that it is representative of the rules of Wikipedia, which deem it worthy of inclusion, nor the practice of Wikipedia, which represents the rules. I acknowledge what you have said to be your personal opinion, but you should not present it as though it were representative of the rules of Wikipedia, nor the general sentiment of Wikipedians, because it isn't. What this user has uploaded is beneficial to the Wikipedia project and to the proliferating interest in the topic: Wikipedia and the public should not be declined this information simply because you object to it.

- I wonder what other users think of this: User:Alansohn User:Stevecudmore User:Ritchie333 User:Marco_polo User:Miesianiacal. (IsocratesII (talk) 07:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC)).


 * Genealogy, like everything else on Wikipedia, must be presented with appropriate weight. People are related to other people.  The importance of these relationships can range from being critical to understanding a subject's interactions and motivations, to simply placing the subject into a generalized social milieu, to being a trivial and completely irrelevant equivalent to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  That distant relationships are noteworthy should not be assumed even if reliably sourced - a passing reference made in a 500-page book may not rise to that level, any more than a passing reference by the same reliable author that the subject had a turbot at their Easter feast - not all facts, however reliably sourced, merit inclusion in a concise biography.  As to 19th century genealogies, this represents a period before the field of genealogy (at least in the English-speaking world) regularly employed modern scholarly standards.  As a result, something like Burke's Landed Gentry from the period is usually reliable for the generations immediately preceding the time of publication (say 200 years), but beyond that the reliability rather rapidly decreases because they reproduced whatever the family told them, and it could have been reliable or it could have been outrageous self-aggrandizing invention.  Many works from the period convey patently absurd genealogical fantasies.  Extreme caution must be used when citing 19th century genealogies, and they are best avoided if the family has received more recent, more scholarly attention based on the documentary record, which is what modern academic historians actually use whenever possible rather than relying on 19th century works.
 * Your last sentence sounds like an all-too-common refrain here, talking about the public's right to know some obscure fact that others are trying to deny them. It makes it sound like you are here on a mission, which is not the way to approach editing. However, as you won't be editing until/unless you convince the arbcom you are not a sock, I see no benefit in this exchange continuing. 50.37.120.249 (talk) 18:34, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

I think that a) Thomas Moody (1779–1849) is a legitimate topic for Wikipedia, b) the links to the slave trade may cause offence to some people but Wikipedia is not censored, c) administrators should not revert edits unless they are obviously making the encyclopedia worse, d) technical checks on IPs and user agent are poor indicators of sockpuppetry (for example, my partner and stepson are also on the internet elsewhere as I'm typing this, using the same IP and we all like using Google Chrome on Mac OS X), e) our sockpuppetry policy is severely flawed and should only be applied when there is obvious evidence the sockpuppet is also being disruptive (of which there is none here) and hence you have been unfairly banned, and f) I was informed on User talk:Ritchie333 that somebody would be looking at your block, but clearly nobody has, which I find disappointing. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  20:05, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

User:Ritchie333 Thank you for your contribution and for your support of my unblock request. I would like to emphasize the fact, which you point out, that not one disruptive edit nor citation of unreliable sources has been made by me and, to the admin, I would like to point out that two users aware of the prior dispute User:Ritchie333 and the User: 50.37.127.247 (the latter in this edit - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:IsocratesII&oldid=7514614) have noted this and how the nature of my contributions has nothing in common with that of those of the socking user. Blocks serve to prevent abuse: I have not abused and am not abusing, and so the block on this account serves no purpose. As I say, if I were unblocked, it would be seen that no disruptive edits nor citation of unreliable sources would be made by this account.

To User:Ritchie333, the information about the slave trade included on the article is a record of historical fact that proffers no affective judgement on the moral propriety of the attitudes recorded. It would have a place in a history book and it has a place here. If historiography were to exclude information about historical events which manifested attitudes that those situated within the epistemological paradigm of the present might find offensive, historiography would not exist. Indeed, I would argue that the omission of historical material regarding the slave trade - the effacement, as it were, of the reality of the historical existence of the same - is far more likely to cause offence that the inclusion of material regarding it. So there is no disagreement between us here.

User: 50.37.127.247 Thank you for your response. I am an academic historian: you do not need to tell me about the practice of my profession. I accept that genealogy may not have a place in some articles: the point I am making is that it does have a place in these articles because it provides both an insight into the character of the subjects, which, in turn, was both determined by and characteristic of the wider social milieu within which they existed. It is included in past research into these subjects, past research into comparable subjects, and in the research which we presently undertake. Individuals engaged in this research have access to the documentary record, but we cannot cite this here because it is not in the public domain. If the descent has been noted consistently throughout the primary sources, the diaries, records, etc., kept by the individuals concerned, which it has, then this is symptomatic of the pervasiveness of the influence of genealogy on the epistemology of the individual concerned - and that of genealogy in general on contemporaneous individuals of the same social milieu. Further, two sentences in an article cannot be described as an inappropriate weight, to paraphrase your opening remark. Regarding the reliable sources, the 150 years of anteriority or so contained in such volumes as those of Burke is all that is required to join the genealogies concerned to the indisputably valid royal genealogies of the period, which are universally known: material thus cited, then, should not be unacceptable to you. I am on a mission - to observe the rules and the general practice, by adherence to both of which the inclusion of the material is not only acceptable but desirable.(IsocratesII (talk) 10:52, 28 November 2016 (UTC)).


 * Several flaws in these arguments (weight, synth, NOR, and a huge red herring), but until/unless you get yourself reinstated it is a pointless time-suck for me to keep pointing them out (and probably a pointless time-suck even then). 50.37.124.6 (talk) 22:54, 28 November 2016 (UTC)


 * There are multiple logical flaws in your argument but there is no reason to point these out because the potential for its validity is precluded by its status as affective opinion that is contrary to the rules of Wikipedia and to the practice of all other editors, in accordance with both of which the inclusion of the material is warranted. As an editor, your opinion is valid, but, as the consensus and the stated rules are opposed to you, it cannot be implemented. So if it is a pointless time-suck for you, just leave it.(IsocratesII (talk) 13:33, 29 November 2016 (UTC)).