User talk:Jokestress/2005

Main talk page for Jokestress is User talk:Jokestress

De-stub Daubert Standard
I hesitate to do it on my own because the great amount of good work you've done on the Daubert Standard article entitles you to great deference. The article is meaty enough, it seems to me, that it no longer qualifies as a stub. It's an excellent contribution to Wiki and stands on its own as a worthy example of a well-written, full fledged article on a very specialized topic/legal test. I'm confident no one can, with a straight face, argue it deserves stub status. Please consider excising the stub markup. Flawiki 05:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

De-stubbed as requested! Thanks for the kind words, though I'd like to point out that the article as it stands includes contributions from Wikipedians Toytoy and Postdlf, who worked separately on Daubert Motion before it was merged with Daubert Standard. Jokestress 05:18, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wired article
Thanks! Too bad Daniel couldn't figure out that I'm a guy.... - UtherSRG 16:45, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Good work
I just wanted to commend you for the good work I've seen you doing since you got here just a short time ago. It is not going unnoticed. Keep it up! &rarr;Raul654 07:27, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the birthday wishes. Evil Monkey&#8756;Hello 05:41, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

Mark Felt
Salve, Jokestress! I went and nominated W. Mark Felt as a FAC. I'd appreciate your vote at Featured article candidates/W. Mark Felt/archive1. PedanticallySpeaking 14:52, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC) P.S.:  I was reading your handle all this time as two words "Joke Stress". I didn't think of it as being a feminine of "Jokester" until I saw your picture. Glad to know you.

Interested in an L.A.-area Wiki meetup?
It appears as though L.A. has never had a Wiki meetup. Would you be interested in attending such an event? If so, checkout User:Eric Shalov/Wikimeetup

- Eric 16:26, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's official! The first-ever L.A. Wiki Meetup will be occuring on July 25th, 2005. Are you coming? Would you like to help host? More details on the Meetup page. Be sure to check back regularly for updates! - Eric 30 June 2005 10:40 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback!
You make a good point. I didn't think of that yet. I have now made two new external links to the moviepages on About Gay Movies. Scimilar to the links to the Internet Movie Database. Is that what you had in mind? AboutGayMovies 7 July 2005 23:45 (CET)
 * Yep! See your talk page for more info. Jokestress 7 July 2005 21:46 (UTC)

Helen Gandy
Jokestress, Since you worked on the Mark Felt article, I wonder if I could get your support on my latest FAC, Helen Gandy. PedanticallySpeaking 21:00, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Race and intelligence
Hello. I just wanted to comment about something you just posted on Talk:Race and intelligence. I'm really happy that you're such a bold editor and are so interested in improving Wikipedia, but you're stirring up a bit of a hornet's nest here, and I'd like to see if we can get things calmed down. You wrote:


 * I found a "mess" when I arrived. I am letting about 50 things stand in the intro while I go through point by point. I find many of these belabored objections above and below (like this 1995 quibble- check the original APA release date) to be "irrelevant," in the way other POV objections are deemed "irrelevant" by the editors who got this article to its present state. I am going to come here every day for the next eleven months until this thing is NPOV. Jokestress 21:16, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

This comment comes across very badly, and in these tense circumstances could be read as "I'm going to edit this article the way I want it to be, and to hell with what anyone else thinks." When you come into an article this highly developed and start telling people who have a lot of background in the field, and who have worked very hard on an article for a long time -- even if you disagree with the work they have done -- that they're wrong and practicing bad science, you're stepping on a lot of toes, and people are liable to take it personally.

I think you have some interesting points and could potentially make a good contribution to this article in a non-disruptive way, with a slight change of tack. Please pay particular attention to Civility and try more to work toward consensus before making major edits. Remember to assume good faith always. Cheers --malathion talk 21:47, 17 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi, and welcome to the R&I page. I think I am basically echoing malathion's sentiment here, but let me say it anyway: You are obviously a well-spoken and -reasoned individual, and the attention you lavish on the R&I article is welcome. It is improving all the time, and I am confident that your contributions will benefit further. I have been on a much-needed holiday away from cyberspace for the last two weeks or so, and am only slowly getting through all the edits to the page; some of yours I liked very much. Please keep up your good work.
 * This being said, I was also quite put off by some of your contributions. For example, I cannot understand how you can view your comments on the WSJ article as anything but heavily skewed:
 * Though intended to outline "conclusions regarded as mainstream among researchers on intelligence," about half of the intelligence researchers asked to sign the statement prior to its publication as an op-ed piece refused to sign, citing numerous differences of opinion.
 * The tenor in Gottfredson's article (I mean the one with the background and history of the WSJ statement) is clearly the exact opposite of what your description implies, so you are misrepresenting or supressing data (namely, the number of non-signees and the condition under which the statement was signed) to make it match your own POV. That's terribly bad style, in any context, including WP editing. For illustration, here is the Bizarro version of your comment:
 * Several intelligence researchers asked to sign the statement refused to do so, out of fear of being physically attacked.
 * Like your comment, this is a true statement that can be infered from Gottfredson's article. But it would be a scandalously skewed representation of the truth, used to push a particular POV. I have learned to trust many of the other editors at R&I to not do such things, and would prefer to be able to put you on my own list of "trusted editors" as well. Best, Arbor 20:25, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
 * (Added after looking at your user page): I understand that you are a fellow skeptic. Great. One of the pending tasks I have for the R&I-related pages is to give an overview of the "Skeptic viewpoint" on R&I research. This would cover the chapter in Shermer, the skepdic-entry, the special issue of Skeptic (from somewhen in the 90s, I don't have it anymore, alas!), and the Miele–Jensen book. (I belong to the Swedish "chapter", so I have been busy collecting viewpoints in the "local" publications.) I can see that we are finally getting the Race and intelligence controversy page I have been lobbying for for weeks, so that would be a good outlet for such an overwiew. Can you point me to any publications that would fall under the "Skeptic" umbrella that I have missed? Arbor 20:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Another Wikipedia Parody
A person just posted a link at the GNAA article about another Wikipedia parody: Encyclopædia Dramatica. I figure we should have a listing of these, but not sure where. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 05:49, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

L.A. Meetup Reminder
Don't forget! L.A's first Wiki meetup is TONIGHT at 7:30 at Philippe's in Downtown. Check out the meetup page for details. See you there! (If you can't make it, come to the next one! - Eric 21:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

humor
Jokestress, I'm not making jabs at you. When I say "seriously," I mean that you/anyone might not believe me because it's acutally very unbelievable that a professor would be caught making such inconsistent statements. --Rikurzhen 06:13, July 27, 2005 (UTC)


 * No problem. ;) --Rikurzhen 06:29, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

WSJ
However, I do strongly disagree with your interpretations. I'm still hoping you'll respond to my point-by-point breakdown of the statement. --Rikurzhen 06:22, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Linda Gottfredson
Hi Jokestress, I wanted to say nice work on a clear and balanced article. Best, Nectarflowed T 07:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi. Due to some merging and splitting, your lengthy Gottfredson footnote currently finds itself with a referer. Frankly, I am not quite sure where you think it is best (I would suspect the first appearance on Race and intelligence controversy), so I have left it alone on the Race and intelligence page (though nothing points to it). I only want to make sure that you don't misconstrue its currently fatherless situation as malicious editing. (Remember that I really think the footnote is misguided, so personally I would love to see it gone. But I wouldn't want you to think that I would misuse a major clean-up process to let it disappear.) I encourage you to (1) either keep a close eye on the poor note lest it disappears by somebody else's well-meaning cleanup zeal, or (2) find a good "home" for it, like the first appearance of the "mainstream" claim on Race and intelligence controversy. Another possibility would be on the Race and intelligence (References) page. I hope to be able to convince you to eventually remove it using the orbital mind control lasers I have just installed. Arbor 11:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Tom Brinkman
Hey, Jokestress I wonder if you would look at my newest FAC, Tom Brinkman. The voting page is at Featured article candidates/Tom Brinkman/archive1. PedanticallySpeaking 14:54, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

phylogeny
hi Andrea -- the nodal information, taxonomy and dates in the graph are drawn from Wikipedia articles (i.e. the articles on the (sub)species mentioned). the percentage is based on the previous graph it was replacing. the 2% number is widely quoted, e.g. in books by Cavalli-Sforza, but probably any Biology textbook. Is there anything in particular that you dispute? Especially the things based on WP articles may be questionable of course. dab (&#5839;) 06:28, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * alright, sorry, in this case my reply was beside the point. The separation of three branches of human population (imperfectly labelled "Africans, Europeans, Asians") is a result of mitochondrial research of the last decade. the "blown up" version of that part of the graph is on Image:Map-of-human-migrations.jpg (and the links in the image description page). The representation in this image is geographical, and most of the migration was done by the "Asians" (while most of the variety is subsumed under "Africans", only shown as two stubby arrows in that image, because they never migrated out of Africa). The decision to show exactly three branches of 'races' may be pov, since finer granularity would be possible. Image:Rosenberg_6clusters_human_popluations.png has six groups (Americans, Oceanians and Asians are all subsumed under "Asian" in my graph, since they are more closely related than the rest). I wonder about the absence of Australians in that image, and I don't know whether they would qualify as "Africans" or as "Asians" in the grouping of three, or as a seventh branch in the Rosenberg clusters. Since they branched off some 70,000 years ago, I suppose they would qualify as "Africans" genetically. dab (&#5839;) 07:12, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Main page of Race and intelligence
Jokestress, could you please re-read the thread that you just commented on, about the Pioneer fund etc. I hope you agree that I have given Ultramarine several different ways of getting his viewpoint on the main page, none of which he seemed to accept. I hope you feel my pain in seeing what was supposed a helpful cleanup turn into so much vitriol. I am not a big fan of Ultramarine's tone, but your comments so far have always been benevolent. It pains me to see my contribution described as a conspiracy to remove material from the main page. To wit, please see my edits from 13:12, 13:50, 14:09, 14:30, 14:58, all of which are different, concrete suggestions to put that material on the main page. As you might imagine, it is quite painful to invest a lot of work in menial editing jobs, just to be attacked by first Ultramarine and then even you. I urge you to re-read the thread and possible rethink your assessment of my motivation. Arbor 17:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your kind words. Could you also please read my reply to you on the thread in question, about renaming Race and intelligence controversy? I fear we are about to do something that you don't agree with (frankly, I don't understand and I don't care, but I have a nagging feeling that a name change would alienate you further, and I don't want that. If these pages are biased then we very much need to keep you as a contributor). But if you agree with Ultramarine then we will just rename the page. Arbor 06:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the kind words. Ultramarine 20:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

some topics we haven't covered
good work filling in all those related articles. there still a few topics that i'm aware of that haven't made it into an article. i thought you might be interested in them:

for Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation), we haven't covered all of what Jensen calls "AD HOC THEORIES OF THE WHITE-BLACK IQ DIFFERENCE" reprint here. i have a copy of the book if we need to verify some detail

the IQ article doesn't have any real discussion of malleability, which is logically distinct from heritability. this, of course, is also of interest to the race and intelligence article. some paticular studies that might even need their own article:
 * Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study
 * Abecedarian Early Intervention Project - the most successful
 * Milwaukee Project (?)
 * of course Head Start

ttyl --Rikurzhen 18:00, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

i can appreciate busy; it's becomming a way of life. would it be a help if we started a yahoo group or something like that to make paper requests and store PDFs? --Rikurzhen 19:22, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Raymond Cattell
Jokestress,

I am in email contact as of today with Raymond Cattell's daughter Devon. I asked her for permission to use a photo of her dad and she said she would have to check with her sibling and get back to me. I think if we tone down the ISARPOV edits, at least temporarily, we might stand a better chance of receiving that photo permission. hitssquad 00:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Back Again
Jokestress, I never thanked you for supporting my Tom Brinkman FAC nomination. I'm grateful and pleased to note it was successful. I've got another FAC now, the next congresswoman from Ohio, Jean Schmidt. The FAC page is here. I hope to get it featured by September 6, the day she will be sworn in. I'd appreciate your support. PedanticallySpeaking 17:14, August 23, 2005 (UTC) (P.S.  If you are worried about the "fair use" of her picture, when she's sworn, we'll be able to replace it with a nice U.S. government public domain photo.)

Thanks for your vote
Thanks very much for your vote of support on my Jean Schmidt article. I'm pleased to say it is today's featured article of the day. PedanticallySpeaking 16:55, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Race
Thanks for your comments. I, er, agree... mitchellanderson

Barnstar
This barnstar is a recognition of your many contributions to Wikipedia, especially to Race and intelligence and related articles. -Willmcw 10:17, September 7, 2005 (UTC)


 * Hello Jokestress, If I were you I would be wary of an award from user Willmcw, he and his friends seemingly do nothing but POV push, they certainly don't make sense and aren't coherent. zen master T 19:58, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Assume good faith is a wise initial policy when there is an absence of information, however, when there is historical evidence of user(s)' untoward behavior then following it becomes unwise. It has been my experience that the citing of "assume good faith" is almost exclusively used to shut the other person up in a debate and/or to lessen the chance they will realize the vastness of the charades. People should be encouraged to think (outside the box) as opposed to assume anyway. A few months is a rather long time... zen master T 00:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

At it again
Congrats on the barnstar! I'm back at it again with my Bruce Johnson article, nominated as a FAC. He's Ohio's lieutenant governor and already at Featured article candidates/Bruce Johnson are votes opposing. I know I am a pest, but I find when I don't go out and ask folks such as yourself for their votes, my FAC's invariably are defeated. So I'd be grateful if you'd put your two cents worth in. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 18:09, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales to Attend San Diego Meetup on October 18 2005
Hello, Jimbo Wales will be in San Diego to attend OOPSLA and has agreed to come by and visit with the San Diego wikipedians. If you are interested, you will find more info on my talk page. Johntex\talk 00:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Ask and You Shall Receive
Salve, Jokestress! Hope this message finds you well. I didn't thank you for your kind words in your last message. I've been a bit snarky lately and I've ignored most people. That's my problem, not yours and I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner. Your note suggested I lay off the Buckeye politicians. I'm working on James Aubrey, head of CBS in the 60's, which I hope to soon put up as a FAC. I need a fresh set of eyes to run through my prose and would be most grateful if you could do it. I'm so familiar with it I fear I'm not seeing problems or areas that need work. Again, thank you for your kindnesses. PedanticallySpeaking 14:20, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Race and intelligence
Maybe you'd like to take a look at. I think my points around it are well enough made on the talk page; but I'd hate to let the hereditarian reductionists POV-ize the article even more than it already is. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:23, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Hey Jokestress, I wanted to make sure you saw the "interdisciplinary field" description is being discussed again, if you want to weigh in. --Nectar T 09:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Hoodia
Just a quick thanks to the excellent additions you've made to Hoodia. Very nice work! :) --NightMonkey 04:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Robert Perloff
Some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Robert Perloff may not be sufficiently well-known to merit articles of their own. The Wikipedia community welcomes newcomers, and encourages them to become Wikipedians. By starting an account or logging in, each user is entitled to a user page in which they can describe themselves, and this article's content may be incorporated into that page. However, to merit inclusion in the encyclopedia proper, a subject must be notable. We encourage you to write or improve articles on notable subjects.

NOTE: I moved the above text from the aforementioned article because someone had inappropriately posted it in the article itself. I have not yet investigated this information myself. There is currently a nomination for the article's deletion that you may want to participate in. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note about my tie-dyed shirt. I'm afraid I've responded by providing only mealy-mouthed support for the Perloff article. I apologize for my tepid "weak keep" vote, but I have an ongoing concern about where to draw the line of notability in different fields, and I just got through voting to delete some articles that I suspect have substantially more presence in our Web-oriented culture than Perloff does. I fell back on the argument that academics are more inherently notable than pop-culture phenomena, especially since they provide the published information that Wikipedia values (over the frequently unsourced, unreferenced essays that many of our enthusiatic editors write from their own "knowledge"). Fortunately, I think you've achieved a landslide of support anyway. By the way, your redlink to Robert Perloff may have been from Joyride To Infinity, the only article that links to Perloff, and that article is AFD-bait as being essentially a table of contents and list of authors, rather than an encyclopedia article. If you're interested, you might want to provide it with some meat. (I'm not going to nominate it for AFD or even add a cleanup tag; I've done enough damage for one day.) ~ Jeff "Benedict Arnold" Q (talk) 10:59, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I go back and forth on deletionism and inclusionism. I favor the former when I think about how our threshholds for notability can be used to promote concerted and web-savvy vanity editors, even when it might trim otherwise useful articles. I favor the latter because of my dream that Wikipedia will evolve into Gordon R. Dickson's Final Encyclopedia. I'm afraid I often come down squarely on both sides of any issue. Oh, well. Have a safe flight! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:18, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

PIR
I noticed that you started a page on Public Information Research and also added links to the article page elsewhere. Do you know the site address for it? I think that it should be added as an external link to both Public Information Research and Daniel Brandt (since he runs it). Thanks. Also, do you know where we can find info about how Google Watch started, and also info on the law suits between Google and Brandt. I can remember seeing them, and I know that the info in the two articles is wrong, but I haven't been able to source them. From memory, there were in the order of 5 court cases between Google and Daniel Brandt over trade mark infringements and libel, and if my memory is correct, Daniel Brandt won all of them. As far as I was concerned, that was his chief claim to notoriety - that he is the guy that took on Google and won. Seems strange to have an article about him that doesn't include that. Do you know where we could find the info? I guessed that using Google probably won't work, since Google wouldn't want people to be able to know that sort of stuff. But where is it? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay :(. I wish that Daniel Brandt would tell us this info.  He's been unbanned now so maybe he can contribute.  He hides way too much info and its hard to know stuff.  But then again, I guess he doesn't want us to know.  Probably thinks we are all undercover CIA agents. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 17:26, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletionists
Oh no, I am not a deletionist by far. And I guess on one hand, I can see the value in having articles on all of his sites. So we've got PIR, Namebase, Scroogle, Google Watch, Yahoo Watch, Wikipedia Watch, CIA on Campus (which apparently got support from college student dorms etc), and anything else he's done. And then I guess we can add in his court case, Google Watch Watch which was a 1 page article made to criticise him, Brandt-watch which was the site made to pretend to "watch" him whilst in reality it was a denial of service (hack), and then of course we can have Brandt's hoaxer, from the guy pretending to be a lawyer who gave him false details so as to entrap him. And, in some ways, we could do all of that. If I was writing a page about him, I'd include all of that. If I was writing a book about him, I'd include all of that. In fact, I'd also probably include an article on whatever the name of his underground printing press was, a page just for detailing his most famous conspiracy theories, a page for talking about his interactions and legal battles with Google, a page for Scroogle news (which no longer runs) that used to be a news page for conspiracy theory news put out once per week (just a news feed site really) and so forth. Woah, we've got a fair bit there.

But there's only 2 pages that have got a lot of news coverage - Google Watch and Scroogle, and more recently Wikipedia Watch. None of the others did. And since Google Watch and Scroogle are essentially the same site (nowadays at least) they may as well be mixed up in one article. As for Wikipedia Watch, well, there's an argument for merging that too, but then again - if he had never been an editor on Wikipedia, would he have written it? I doubt it. I mean his ideas about Wikipedia being used for scraping are just as valid in talking about Slashdot, but he didn't make a Slashdot Watch page, did he? In terms of writing about it from the point of view of Google Watch, Wikipedia Watch is different. He also raises new claims. As well as linking Wikipedia with Google (which I guess is also valid more than it is with Slashdot since Wikipedians using google to research articles, plus people use google to look up articles and find wikipedia - plus wikipedia has mirrors), there is a new argument. And so I think that that has to be separate from the rest.

So then we can have Google stuff, PIR/Namebase/CIA on Campus (conspiracy theories), Wikipedia Watch.

Now, is Namebase useful? Well, for me, I looked at it and its horribly badly indexed, pretty much unusable. If he turned it in to a Wiki then maybe its useful. It just documents conspiracy theories, and proves the merits of all of them. That's what its about, as far as I can tell. CIA on Campus seems to just be "conspiracy theories for kids" LOL. And really, none of them got any media attention.

So then we can include them in his main page, but just as links at the bottom.

And then there's his court case. You say its notable, but I disagree. My Dad went through the exact same thing as Brandt. He was enlisted, he refused to go, and he was tried in the Supreme Court here in Australia as well. And my Dad was one of few who were found not guilty. He spent 3 weeks in jail over it too. My Dad refused to go on the basis that he is a quaker, and was a conscientious objector. He was facing I think it was 7 years jail if found guilty. He had to prove that he was an activist against war, that his entire life anti-war had been his religion, and that the quaker religion has, as part of its religious beliefs, an abhorrence to war. So he got off on the basis that forcing him to go would be against his religion, which, luckily for him, was a version of christianity. Very few others got off.

So was my Dad's court case notable? No. There were I think 3,000 court cases tried in Australia over the same issue in 3 years. He was one of about 20 that got off. Ooh, one of 20 makes him notable, right? Well, no actually. His name was never released to the media. It did not have a single newspaper report about it. The overall summary of all of the "Draft dodger" cases did make the media - but individual's names were never released. Oh sure, you could look them up, but they weren't generally disseminated.

Now, obviously USA had slightly different rules than Australia. But I can bet that he wasn't the only one who got off. I can bet that it never made the newspapers. And I can bet that it wasn't used as a basis for a single case afterwards.

Sylvester Stallone's case, on the other hand, was notable. If I recall, he got off on the basis of being a schoolteacher at the time, and he was teaching in an all-girls school. That's notable because it was a big criticism of him, that he made movies about Vietnam yet he never actually served. Whilst I don't know all of the details of that, that is notable. Its notable because it was discussed a lot in the news, and because it was a big factor in his career, and was seen as hypocritical. But most importantly, its notable because Sylvester Stallone is incredibly notable.

But we don't mention Sylvester Stallone's case. Its not mentioned as part of his biography, let alone having a separate article for it. So why are we not doing that? I can't see any reason why Brandt's case was more notable than Stallone's. It doesn't shed any light about his biography or who he was at all. Its basically an invasion of privacy.

I mean, say that we had a page about my Dad. He's not remotely notable, but just say that for some bizarre reason they made a page about him, lowering their standards hugely. Let's see. He's a minor league protestor who is a member of Amnesty International, was one of millions who wrote to the South African government to get Nelson Mandella freed, went to 20 or so anti-nuclear weapons protests and anti-uranium protests, and was never arrested, has never spoken publicly, never been on television and never had an article about him in any newspaper or on the radio or even on the internet. Oh but he has given a few speeches at conferences attended by as many as 100 people, he's taught a few courses (even for adults), and he's published a few academic novels, with a total sales of less than 200 combined. Oh and he's been published many times in various medical and science magazines, some having an international audience, such as New Internationalist and Psychology Today and Good Medicine and the like. He's had his little abstracts put in them lots of times. And indeed, if I do a google search on his name, it has 2 matches that are actually him. Wow. 2 matches. There's none for me.

But if for some bizarre reason we wrote a page on my Dad, then would we also make a page for his supreme court case? It has exactly the same significance as Brandt's. Or, wait, should we just have an article on his supreme court case and not on him?

I mean, we don't have an article on the last 2 Australian high court cases, about Rene Rivkin (who committed suicide as a result of being found guilty) or about Steve Vizard. Whilst its mentioned briefly in their articles, its just not mentioned. And I don't think that we should. They weren't ground breaking cases. Okay, Rivkin thought that it was the greatest injustice in the planet, that he was found guilty of insider trader when he was the most well respected stock broker in the world. It destroyed him, and he killed himself while in jail because of it, and everyone felt terrible. But was the case significant? Not really. Its not going to be used as the basis of anything. Maybe you can say that that's why Steve Vizard was found not guilty - just because everyone was so upset with what happened to Rivkin. I dunno.

But then what about more important cases, like mass murderer trials? There's no case for R v Trinh & McLean (not by any other name either). Mass murderers, whose only mention is that they killed 2 prostitutes, and that's it. And indeed they probably aren't all that notable really. I'm debating whether or not their case is notable enough. Probably useful if this was a law library, but otherwise not.

I mean I dunno. I think that the case should be mentioned briefly in his bio - maybe - but that's it.

My Dad never puts in his resume when he applies for jobs that he was a draft dodger though. He never puts in "And my crowning achievement was in successfully avoiding conscription, for which I spent 3 weeks in jail". Nor would he want anyone to know. And, other than making him look bad, nobody would want to know. Its not useful in describing him.

Of course, if you were describing my grandfather, who is quite famous, then YES you would talk about when he was arrested. You'd put in all of his many arrests for protesting, you'd list the countries where he was not allowed to visit - which includes USA, you'd talk about all of the world leaders he met, and so forth. But that's my grandfather, who should have an article here. But would you put in details of his trials? He was tried in the Phillippines Supreme Court, but rescued by the Australian Embassy who flew him back home on the basis of him being a diplomat. Should we include transcripts of the trials? There's probably 100 of them. And I am sure that some of them were talked about too, in places like Israel and other places who banned him from ever visiting. George Bush had a particular hatred of my grandfather. But would we include all of the nasty things that Bush said about him? Include every little lie that was spread about him? Would you include that he came from a wealthy family but abandoned them in favour of being an activist and that his entire family isn't talking to him? Would you talk about the obituary he got in the Washington Post that described him as a nutcase? Or would you list all of the obituaries he got the world over that described him as a great man and a hero for justice and freedoms?

And you know, for a while, there was an article on Wikipedia about my grandfather. But someone decided he wasn't notable enough, so it was deleted. I didn't write the article of course. Perhaps they think that he didn't do enough. But he did about 1,000 times more than Brandt, was much more respected, and was in the news a lot more. Thousands of newspaper articles, on TV a lot, and so forth. Actually, I reckon he's more notable than that Seigenthaler fellow. What did he do? Yet there's no article about him.

And you know what? I don't want there to be an article on him either. Nor does my grandmother.

Very simple reason is because of privacy. If you wrote about his causes, and his achievements, which are already in Wikipedia, then that's fine. But you don't need to put his name in there. No reason for it.

Anyway, I think you get my point there. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 00:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I changed my vote to keep. Since I nominated it, I guess that means it is kept. The guy is getting no favours from me now. After what he did to me, forget it, he gets nothing from me anymore. He can have his privacy invaded for all I care. Let everyone know what he's like. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 20:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Tribeca Film Festival
Thanks for trying to get this under the correct capitalization, but please don't move an article by copy-and-paste, as this loses the essential edit history of earlier contributors. Instead use the 'move' tab at the top of the article. If this doesn't work for you because there's a complex history, please put a request at WP:RM and an adminstrator will handle it. If you recall having made any other copy-and-paste moves in the past, please tell me about them and I'll fix the edit histories. Thanks.--Pharos 14:35, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks; I've fixed The Weinstein Company and Electrology– on CRACK you apparently only changed from one redirect to another, so there was no copy-and-pasting to repair.--Pharos 16:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Apologetics.
I'm interested to know why you think the term "apologetics" lacks NPOV. The term is, last time I checked, completely neutral and simply refers to any person, organisation, or article which exists primarily (expressly or de facto) to defend a certain set of beliefs. Many people willingly and gladly call themselves apologists, and their work apologetics. I'm tempted to reapply the phrase, but I wanted to discuss it with you, first. The Jade Knight 20:18, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced. I've heard it used in other contexts, as well, and more often than not (in my experience, at any rate), an apologist uses logos to substantiate his/her claims.  I think you are mistaken on the meaning of the word:
 * Mirriam-Webster:
 * 1 : systematic argumentative discourse in defense
 * Dictionary.com:
 * 2. Formal argumentation in defense of something, such as a position or system.


 * Yes, the most common kind of apologetics appears to be Christian apologetics, but the Talk.Origins Archive focuses on defending evolutionary dogma (and it is particularly focused on arguing over issues to this end). In this case, "evolution apologetics" is a more accurate description than "pro-evolution".  And I seriously doubt anyone will get confused and think that labelling Talk.Origins as an evolution apologetics site implies that it is a site supporting evidence of God or Christianity.


 * I feel that the more accurate description is warranted. The Jade Knight 22:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Bouônjour acouo! I have changed it to "pro-evolution apologetics" to try to avoid ambiguity.  The Jade Knight 22:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

sighs
I am feeling sad right now. I was feeling happy at helping all these newbies and getting results, and I even got a big result in this case User:Zordrac/Poetlister and really got somewhere, only to find that I inherited a 2nd Wikistalker because of it (I got the first one because of helping Daniel Brandt out). The two are now working in coordination to try to get me banned. Its one thing to try to ignore/avoid people who are harassing you, quite another when they are trying to get you banned for doing so. I'd like to be able to just say "nah I don't have to deal with it" but it just makes me sad. Anyway, I thought that I'd let you know, and I hope that they don't come to your page to harass me too. If they do, you'll know who they are. Look at my subpage above and it puts it in to perspective. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 00:40, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Main talk page for Jokestress is User talk:Jokestress