User talk:Jonathanstray

Hi. Somebody has put 'fact tags' through your cognitive therapy addition on NLP. I wondered if your citatiton of Aaron Beck was in fact a reference for all the statements in your paragraph. If so, the fact tags could be removed. If not, perhaps you know of a handy ref.? Thanks. Fainites barley 00:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I checked the Aaron Beck cited reference and it does not mention NLP. It would be interesting to contrast the application of NLP to psychotherapy with other psychotherapies (eg. Cognitive therapies, Solution focussed brief therapy, etc.). Action potential t c 07:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

The citation is only for the single sentence it appears at the end of; further discussion moved to NLP talk page --Jonathan Stray 15:54, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Clarification
Hiya, you seem to be using two accounts. That's fine, and policy allows it within reason.

But it'd help if you're willing, to clarify the relationship between the two accounts "Jonathanstray" and "Iterator12n", so's others like me don't get confused! :) Also dropping a note on your user or talk page, for the sake of good form'll also mean other editors who notice it, don't get confused and assume anything untoward :)

Thanks muchly !! :)

FT2 (Talk 02:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

PS - the rather stern and formal warning in the black box on the NLP talk page isn't for you :) FT2 (Talk 02:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * this edit, which you'll see does look at first glance like you're talking about "Iterator12n" when you say "That was me (sorry, forgot to login.)"


 * After checking carefully, it's clear you're both referring to an anon account, which is what led me astray! My apologies! :) FT2 (Talk 03:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks :)
 * If you spend time on NLP (which is probably no bad thing, the article has been disputed in the past and new editors on it are a Good Thing for broader perspective)... just be aware you are probably going to see some pretty horrible things, people slanting one way or another, claims of abuse both ways, and so on. This is an article that's still somewhat in a bit of a war zone, so .... you'll get a lot of experience of what can go wrong, and how Wikipedia handles it (or tries to). :) FT2 (Talk 03:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * As long as you observe and note the problem, and don't by chance become part of it... that's fine :)


 * On a serious note, even on rational skepticism, NPOV is still more than capable of delivering the goods. But it requires editors to wish for that... the problem tends to be "how do you rein in bad acting", rather than "how do policies cope". The policies cope fine... the bad actors tend to be a problem. FT2 (Talk 03:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Re Epistomolgy book
Dead chuffed to think I may be part of your social experiment! Regarding your comment to FT2 I wanted to understand how finding consensus might work in really contentious rational skepticism style cases, you may be interested in the attachment punch up at ArbCom and the talkpages on Attachment therapy, Attachment disorder, Reactive attachment disorder Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Advocates for Children in Therapy and so on as an example of arguments about consensus, evidence base and so on in relation to popular therapy that may or may not be pseudoscience/validated etc, and issues about the use of the internet to create a popular base for non-mainstream therapies. (I'm not for a moment suggesting you should get involved. It's an unholy mess. But it may provide some interesting research for your theme.) Fainites barley 11:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of sections in food irradiation mediation page.
The delition was an honest mistake from my end. I tried to do some light secretarial work in structuring the page and have ommitted a part in a copy pase operation. Sorry for the mess I caused and thanks for your help. Arved Deecke 21:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal for Food Irradiation
Hi Jonathanstray, Thank you for your contributions to the food irradiation discussion. As you know, as a part of the mediation process we are allowed to express our assessment of the mediator's performance. As of now, I am considering requesting an end to mediation cabal, and strongly inclined to pursue a formal mediation process. There are several reasons I am not satisfied with the current informal mediation attempts, including:


 * Failure to streamline the discussion, and address barrage of incendiary, improper, and leading comments.


 * Failure to maintain neutrality regarding the definition of minority and majority viewpoints. Where was the discussion on this before you decided that "food irradiation is safe" as the majority viewpoint? Does the European Union's decision to ban further irradiation of foods based on their review of the studies and health risks constitute one of the "minority" opinions? And if you feel that governmental institutions constitute the majority viewpoint, then what would you consider the majority opinion on the Iraq war? Do a select few non-elected governmental authorities dictate what is majority, even if their decision opposes that of the mainstream population? Does the scientific community dictate what is mainstream? Is there a neutral, independent survey of the entire scientific community regarding their opinions on food irradiation? Is it the majority of the population (who according to polls is concerned about the health risks of irradiated food) that determines the mainstream viewpoint?


 * Failure to address conflict of interest of certain parties involved in the discussion.


 * Casual dismissal of points on plagiarism, which are fundamental to our debate on how we choose to paraphrase text and reference studies.


 * Arbitrary, capricious, and non-scientific based support of using the research abstracts as primary sources of info. If we are doing an in-depth review of the entire studies, why insist on looking at just the abstracts?


 * And finally, I am quite concerned about your newness to Wikipedia, as you happened to join Wikipedia on the day that we started discussion of mediation cabal. I'm sure you can understand why this would raise some flags.

Please address these issues, and then I will decide whether or not to end mediation cabal and pursue formal mediation for this discussion instead. Thank you. MonstretM 14:42, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Jonathan, thanks for your help and your time afforded to the mediation. I just wanted to let you know that I felt you did a terrific job. The process probably failed due to distorted expectations on either side. Any case I would much enjoy working with you again. I asked the mediation committee to review the work done and let me know if they see merit to take this to formal mediation or whether this is best dealt with by arbitration. I will let you know of any feed back that they may have at this point. RayosMcQueen 01:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I would also like to add my thanks, Jonathanstray. You have been a patient and neutral mediator. I hope your future cases are more successful. - MrArt 10:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Mediation cabal. Should we not close the case?
Maybe we should close the case and take some notes on what was going on. It seems that MonstretM has not initiated formal mediation and I am still ambivalent if not to pursue arbitration directly. RayosMcQueen 14:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and closed the case. You may want to look into any additional steps that may be required according to mediation cabal process that I might be unaware of. Thanks again for helping. RayosMcQueen 17:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you -- I was away in the mountains for and extended weekend and could not get to this --Jonathan Stray 19:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration of food irradiation
You may be interested to know that we have filed request for arbitration on the Food Irradiation dispute. I would like to point out that the Arbitration Committee focuses on behavioural issues and not on content issues. It would therefore be relevant that, if you perceived behavioural issues that interfered with your attempt at mediation that you mention those in a statement of the case. RayosMcQueen 17:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Evidence for Arbitration of Food Irradiation
Hello. I volunteered to be the Mediation Cabal mediator for Food Irradiation on 17 July. From reading the talk page before I became involved, and from what happened during the course of the mediation attempt, I believe RayosMcQueen's chronology of the dispute given in his statement to be generally correct, with the caveat that I have not personally verified that MonstretM was editing from the domain foodandwaterwatch.org. Nor have I verified that Arveed Deecke works for a food irradiation company as claimed by MonstretM [].

I will expand upon the aborted mediation attempt in somewhat more detail.

I began mediation, took an initial statement from all parties, and then compiled a list of outstanding contentious issues with initial remarks on each one []. The parties began commenting on them.

MonstretM's first response to this [] was reasonable in many sections. However, in that response
 * he made the statement
 * this discussion will not progress unless the other parties agree to stop their repeated false accusations and misrepresentations of the facts and issues at hand.


 * he took the following statement by RayosMcQueen
 * When I was looking for those studies on the internet it was mainly organizations like Public Citizen or Food and Water Watch that have long held a stance against food irradiation that cited them often making claims towards their content that were identical or similar to those of MonstretM. In my opinion the claim made was usually distorted significantly from the authors conclusions suposedly for reasons of ideology and a discussion of these studies would certainly help to establish this as fact. At the same time no one ever seems to have digitized and published most of these studies which to me suggests an interest in maintaining in keeping the actual content of these studies hard to come by. Mainstream science seems to have abandoned those studies or integrated them into the wealth of food irradiation research.
 * and responded
 * I take issue with RayosMcQueen's statements, such as "distorted significantly from the authors conclusions suposedly for reasons of ideology" and "which to me suggests an interest in maintaining in keeping the actual content of these studies hard to come by" and "Mainstream science seems to have abandoned those studies or integrated them into the wealth of food irradiation research" as they are completely leading, unverifiable, and most of all false.


 * he also wrote
 * I will not agree to the fundamentally flawed review procedure suggested by RayosMcQueen. He states that "I am thinking that the Wikipedia user is best served if presented with the conclusions of relevant reviews, rather than being side tracked by controversies he / she may or may not be able to relate to." This kind of statement is revealing as it exhibits a desired strategy that only serves private interests who would like important information not to be made available to the public.

It is my opinion that MonstretM was at the very least being uncivil here, in his first substantial comment in the mediation discussion; that he was clearly not assuming good faith on the part of the other editors; and that he might even be construed to be engaging in personal attacks. In particular, please note the difference between RayosMcQueen's "which to me suggests an interest in maintaining in keeping the actual content of these studies hard to come by" which presumably ascribes this interest to "organizations like Public Citizen or Food and Water Watch", and MonstretM's response "this kind of statement is revealing as it exhibits a desired strategy that only serves private interests who would like important information not to be made available to the public" which is specifically directed towards RayosMcQueen.

Mediation discussion continued. It became clear that RayosMcQueen, Arveed Dreecke, and myself were commenting much more frequently than the other involved editors. The structure of the debate, with a huge list of outstanding points, could also be seen to conflict with an earlier "one thing at a time" groundrule that I had proposed for mediation. Both of these are valid concerns. MonstretM commented on these by saying


 * What happened to the "one thing at a time" ground rule? Obviously, some people are so invested in this issue that they make a career out of endorsing food irradiation at work and tactically spamming the food irradiation discussion all day long, therefore skewing the issues by sheer verbiage. I would like a mediator who is capable of keeping this discussion focused and structured, and who can keep the irrelevant, editorializing, and leading comments in check. []

This strikes me as a personal attack on "some people."

Conversely, his request for a competent mediator is completely reasonable. However, I feel that I made a good faith attempt to address his concerns. In particular, he subsequently wrote a personal message in which he rasied several points of process [] and declared that he was considering ending mediation. I responded to this promptly, and in turn he responded to my response []. To make a long story short, he appeared to accept my responses on the issues of citing abstracts, possible conflicts of interest, and newness to wikipedia, but still felt that


 * I take issue with your misuse of the term "mainstream consensus," as the only mainstream viewpoint seems to be that "the long-term health risks of irradiated foods are unknown at this time." And I question your application of the term "advocate" to imply that I have not been editing with NPOV. From the start I have advocated only for neutrality, and no where have I made comments that would indicate otherwise. The other parties involved, on the other hand, have made several blatantly non-NPOV statements that indicate their agenda. You have consistently ignored those statements. That, combined with the fact that you have brought your own biases into this discussion, as well as the fact that the current mediation has failed to focus the discussion, leads me conclude that mediation cabal is a waste of time. Please refrain from further mediation of this discussion. I will be pursuing official mediation on this topic.

Leaving aside for just one moment the questions of neutrality on all sides, this puzzled me, as
 * I had previously specifically provided a section on the mediation page titled, If so, is the "mainstream" consensus that irradiated food are "safe"? section to discuss what the evidence in fact was as to the "mainstream" opinion
 * I had previously asked the question, "MonstretM, you are also right in that we are getting a little unfocused at this point. Is there some topic in particular that you feel we should be considering right now? Do you have any other process suggestions? What do YOU feel we should be talking about?" []
 * I had finally even made MonstretM's mediation concerns the top priority by editing the "Current Business" section to read, "There seems to be a dispute as to the general principles of the editorial and mediation process. It might be more productive to resolve this dispute, currently playing itself out at the end of the Mediation Process section, before continuing on the Outstanding Issues." []

I present this evidence on mediation process not because I am trying to show everyone how good a mediator I am, but because I wish to demonstrate why I believe that MonstretM fundamentally did not have respect for the mediation process itself. Indeed, he never deeply entered the central discussion over evidence proper during mediation, preferring instead to protest over the language used in discussion (the language used in discussion, not the article itself) and the alleged unfairness of the mediation process. Now of course I am not a perfect mediator, but I did make several attempts to address his concerns. Similarly there is no such thing as a perfect editor. RayosMcQueen's desire to drop the controversial studies entirely [] struck me as premature, and Arveed Dreecke's alleged conflict of interest is a potential issue that eventually needs to be addressed []. However, these two editors showed a willingness to work with me to understand Wikipedia's NPOV policy and refine the mediation process generally, as exemplified by this response of RayosMcQueen [] and this response of Arveed Dreecke [].

In short, I do not believe that MonstretM was truly working with us to craft a solid article -- an article which would have in all likelihood included his viewpoint as a minority POV. Rather, I feel that I have reason to assume a lack of good faith on his part. In one respect, he and I do agree: I do not believe that even formal mediation will be successful in this environment. Therefore I ask the arbitration committee to review this case.

This has been rather lengthy. Thank you all for your time and energy.

Creative Commons licence
Which CC licence do you intend to release the image File:Dance Dance Immolation.jpg under? Please choose a free licence from these several CC licenses. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 04:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

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Post Modern Portfolio Theory
You are incorrect when you states that the main difference between MPT and PMPT is the shape of the distribution. This is but one of two important differences; the second being the way risk is measured (downside deviation vs. standard deviation). The risk measure is actually often more important than the distribution - for example using the normal distributon, when the goal (Minimum Acceptable Return) is significantly different from the mean, the PMPT results will be very different from the MPT results for equivalent risk tolerances.

Editorial comment: Your claim that most of the criticisms that apply to MPT also apply to PMPT is unsupported and incorrect. If there are specific problems that you are aware of in both domains then you should enumerate them rather than make general, unspecific statements. Unfortunatley, there are too many individuals like you who are unwilling or incapable of actually reading the source material before making these simplistic comments. So, I have killed your comments. Feel free to contribute when you actually know what you're talking about! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianmarc (talk • contribs) 00:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Conditional Probability
Your attempt to simplify the introduction to the topic of Conditional Probability (which was quite reasonable to begin with) resulted in introducing wrong restrictions on the notion of conditional probability. As discussed 8 years ago (cf. Wrong), conditional probability does not necessitate temporal relationships or causality. Indeed, Bayes' Rule states P(A|B) P(B) = P(B|A) P(A). To interpret P(A|B) as B has already occurred creates logical difficulties when we get to P(B|A) in the same context. (By the way, you left the reference to Gut. Gut never said that.  There is no already in Gut's  or for that matter pretty much in anyone else's definition.)

Conditional probability is a function whose arguments are 2 (or more) events. These events are related only insofar as we assume, presume or know they occurred. If you had read Kendall's Advanced Theory of Statistics, volume 2B, Bayesian Inference you would have been clear on the concept and would have not made this mistake.

Unfortunately, the propagation of your restricted interpretation may create significant difficulty for others in reconciling not only Bayes' Rule (or Formula, or Theorem), but inferencing in general. This kind of "creating false boxes" is dangerous. Also, arbitrary edits of topics without being up to speed on the material is not part of the Wikipedia culture.

Yes, the topic of Conditional Probability needs a lot of work to make it better. (A comprehensive rewrite may be in order.) But the work should be forwarding and not repeating the mistakes of past or introducing new ones.

I would like you to revert the introduction of the topic "Conditional Probability" back to where it conforms to accepted and non misleading definitions and please make sure you reinsert the Notes.

Yuri716 (talk) 16:35, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Yuri. Thanks for pointing out that B need not occur before A. You're absolutely right. However the introduction is still a complete mess. In particular I don't think the technical definition belongs there -- it can go later, or we can just rely on one of the many definitions already there. My goal in this revision is to give an introduction to the basic concepts for a reasonably non-technical reader; if it can only be read by someone who already knows the material, it has failed as an introduction.


 * Also, why would you say this? "Also, arbitrary edits of topics without being up to speed on the material is not part of the Wikipedia culture." First of all, it IS part of the Wikipedia culture and policy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold). Second, why do you assume I don't know what I'm talking about? That seems needlessly aggressive, and also false in this case -- I teach this stuff at Columbia.


 * I've mostly reverted my new intro, with a note about temporality. If you still don't like the introduction, may I suggest editing it instead of reverting? Jonathan Stray (talk) 00:30, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Jonathan. My primary objections to your edits were the introduction of erroneous/misleading information and the deletion of relevant information.  If you mislead the reader, the material has failed as an educational instrument.  For example, temporality (and thank you for having acknowledged the misinterpretation), can create a false notion of conditional probability (although yes, much of the time the conditioning event may indeed have already occurred).  As another example, the calculation of conditional probability requires not only a sample space but also a probability measure.  You removed the coupling of the sample space and probability measure in your revision of steps that can be taken for incorporating information.  Indeed, my original argument leads to the definition of conditional probability only if you recognize we are using the same probability measure with which we began.  Another example - you are flawed on the usage of "information" in a statistical setting, both in the context of Bayesian inferencing and in the context of Fisher's information.  Your statement "information about the occurrence of A would simply be P(A)" is flawed since P(A) is not information.  Statistically it's a statistic that can be the information.  Statistically it's a parameter distribution that can be the information. In a statistical context, what "information" is there in a probability?  You made no reference to any probability distributions or statistics.  P(A) is simply a number.  "Information about the occurrence of A" is very misleading and not even close to being precise.


 * A secondary objection is the languaging of concepts. Professionals and people in the know have picked-up the standard or accepted phraseology for ideas of interest. Have you ever heard of anyone using "non-conditional probability"?  The accepted term is unconditional. For example, I have never heard a competent chess player refer to the piece on b1 as a "horsey" (even my little granddaughter calls it a knight).  Also, in your revision you used "compared with" when the unambiguous term should have been ratio (even "relative to" would have been better).


 * Another objection is a misinterpretation of the intention or spirit of various statements. The banner for this topic of conditional probability reads "This article needs additional citations for verification" and "This article may be too technical for most readers to understand".  These statements did not refer to the introduction.  The introduction had gone through cycles of modifications. Citations were added.  The "technicality" was not greater than any introductory statements in an elementary text nor in any web page definition (e.g., mathworld or mathangels).  The introduction was not a "complete mess" before you made your edits.  The sections on σ-algebra and conditioning on a random variable were and are still of issue and could be made more comprehensible to the lay reader.  A edit that unified all the sections would also help.  Your interpretation of topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold) should not be one where you have license to write anything you want.  A desirable contribution would "fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure wording is accurate".  As such, your contributions should not induce additional problems, should add cited information, should abide by conventional languaging.  So if you know what you are talking about, by all means feel emboldened to make a contribution.  If you don't know what you are talking about, simplified babble on a technical subject may be quite confounding.  I certainly would always like to feel I could rely on the accuracy of what I read.


 * In addition to stating accepted phraseology, it would have been preferable if your simple example had some substance and possibly some example of deriving important conditional probabilities. You could have written something like:
 * But the unconditional probability of having a cold (the prevalence of a cold in the reference population) may be only 5%. This means that 5% of the entire reference population has a cold, including people who are coughing and people who are not. So, we can write P(Cold) = .05 and P(Cold | Cough) = .75.  This conditional probability is usually referred to in the literature as Predictive Value Positive (PV+) of the symptom (the cough) to the disease (the cold).  We could also ask "What is the probability of having a cough given you have a cold?"  This conditional probability - P(Cough | Cold) - is referred to as the sensitivity of the symptom.  Other related conditional probabilities are Predictive Value Negative (PV-) - the conditional probability P(No Cold | No Cough) and specificity - the conditional probability P(No Cough | No Cold). ... (Some derivations/equations of the relationships between the above conditional probabiities might be helpful here or in a new section) ...


 * As a professed instructor, I would have expected that criteria such as clarity and correctness would be of importance to you. As a professed journalist, I would have expected that vetting and citing your sources would be of importance to you.  As a professed programmer, I would have expected precision in the usage of your words and unassailable logic in your presentation.  I really do believe that those are reasonable expectations.


 * I do not know what you instruct at Columbia, but I shudder at the possibility that you present statistical concepts on which you are not, just yet, clear.


 * Yuri716 (talk) 21:44, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)