User talk:Jaromsmith

Welcome
Welcome!

Hello,  and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;. Four tildes (&#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump. Happy editing! --NymphadoraTonks 20:50, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
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Irreducible complexity
My very first edit and it gets shot down in flames!

I was cruising around the Wikipedia, and I landed on the irreducible complexity page. Under the "Forerunners" section, there is the following text:


 * While he did not originate the term, the first person to identify irreducible complexity as a potential weakness of the theory of evolution was Charles Darwin. In The Origin of Species, he wrote, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."

I thought it would be a good idea to add the word himself after Charles Darwin, to put emphasis on the fact that the same guy who invented the theory identified the way in which the theory could be disproved. To me it seems significant that it was the same guy. I checked the page about two days later the change had been reverted. I wrote the author of the change to find out why, and here was his reply:


 * Welcome to Wikipedia.


 * I stand by my reversion on the grounds that by adding emphasis to the name you may be commiting the logical fallacy known as Appeal to authority. That an authoritative person made a statement doesn't make the statement inherently more true.
 * Also, Charles Darwin is not even an authority on Evolution, or at least not on the currect Theory.
 * In the end, I see no need for the word 'himself', making the addition unnecessary and perhaps unencyclopedic. -- Ec5618 11:29, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I understand what this author is saying and yet I still feel that "himself" should be added. I don't see it as making the statement more true, I see it as adding more weight to the statement... which, now that I think about it, may be an appeal to authority. :-)

I will try to wrap my brain around this until I convince myself that I have committed an error. I'm still not convinced, but I'm getting there...


 * On 'the Wiki way', by posting on my Talk page, you would be adding to my reputation, and yours, and you would be creating a permanently archived conversation to which you could refer others if you would so desire. More importantly, you could refer to other articles by wikilinking and you would be able to include several editors in the same discussion.


 * Most editors do in fact return to Wikipedia quite regularly (once a week, or much much more). As I'm sure you'll have noticed by now, when someone other than yourself edits your Talk page, every page you load will display a flamboyant message to that effect. So by posting on the Talk page, you will reach most editors, and any editors that might ignore a Talk page message will probably ignore an email just as easily. On top of which, allowing email responses is a per-user setting. Many other editors will not be able to receive your mail. -- Ec5618 16:04, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Newcomer award


Hi! I noticed your contributions on Linguistics and the Book of Mormon and I like what I saw. What especially impressed me was what you added to the References section. We need more people like you who write clearly and cite their sources carefully. Good luck around here and feel free to ask me for help if you've got any questions. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:52, 12 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I tried to condense my thinking on the Linguistics and the Book of Mormon page.  I'm glad someone appreciates it.  I think that what I wrote should be included in the article, but I think I kinda screwed up the flow.  It only makes sense to talk about "translation" problems if you accept that a) there were ever any plates, and b) that the plates were "translated" by normal means.  I would argue against both of those assertions, although clearly that is not NPOV.  I would like to rewrite that section to say something to the effect that "some say the plates never existed (and talk about that for a bit)... others say they were never translated (and talk about that for a bit)... but if you accept that the plates did exist and that they were translated, here are some problems with the translation..."  It seems silly to talk about a translation of plates which arguably never existed in the first place and/or were not ever "translated" according to the common meaning of the word.  I fully expect some true-believing Mormon to come by later and wipe out everything I wrote, anyway.

Book of Mormon
I hope I'm doing this right. Thanks for your newcomer award. If I modify your comments on my talk page, will the system be smart enough to notify you that I have modified them so that we can have a discussion? I know you'll get a notification here if I write something...

Anyway, I tried to condense my thinking on the Linguistics and the Book of Mormon page. I'm glad someone appreciates it. I think that what I wrote should be included in the article, but I think I kinda screwed up the flow. It only makes sense to talk about "translation" problems if you accept that a) there were ever any plates, and b) that the plates were "translated" by normal means. I would argue against both of those assertions, although clearly that is not NPOV. I would like to rewrite that section to say something to the effect that "some say the plates never existed (and talk about that for a bit)... others say they were never translated (and talk about that for a bit)... but if you accept that the plates did exist and that they were translated, here are some problems with the translation..." It seems silly to talk about a translation of plates which arguably never existed in the first place and/or were not ever "translated" according to the common meaning of the word.

I will put some of these comments on my talk page too in case anyone comes by and sees what you wrote... or in case we have this discussion over there.

I took out some other guy's dorked-up HTML tags in his sig. I hope he forgives me. It was screwing up the rest of the page...

Jarom Smith 02:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * This talk page system is currently very clunky. If we want the record to show a coherent conversation and still be alerted everytime a new message is written we have to manually maintain the conversation in two places. I agree with you about the plates. A lot of Mormon pages currently implicitly assume that the BoM represents an ancient text - this could do with fixing. The Linguistics and the Book of Mormon part should, of course, specifically deal with the linguistic issue and not get bogged down in other aspects of the authenticity of the text beyond establishing the necessary context.


 * A script tidying up html was temporarily turned off - this revealed that many people had been sloppy in formatting their signatures :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)