User talk:Peter Damian (old)

Hi Peter. I don't know if you'll be back, but in case you are, I wish to apologize to you and to the community for the trouble that my actions have caused, and for not doing this sooner. I promise to be less short-sighted in the future on NPP. Stifle (talk) 14:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello Peter
Hi Peter - good to see you back! Just to let you know, I've undeleted your talk page because we only delete these when people do actually leave for good - They often provide important information about how users have interacted with you, and this seems especially important that they are visible with the current RfArb pending. I hope you understand why I've restored your talk page, if you do decide that you wish to leave in the future (and I sincerely hope you don't) then please give me a ping and I'll delete them for you again. Take care,  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 20:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I can hardly believe you are glad to see me back but, thank you for the welcome. And please, restore my user page and User:Hinnibilis as the other matter has been sorted out. Stifle [edit] and I have shaken hands.  Peter Damian (talk) 21:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * All restored. Welcome back, little Peter.   bishzilla     ROA R R! !    21:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC).
 * Ah, you're not that bad really ;-) I see Bish got to the userpages first, so I think you're ready to rock and roll.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 21:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Welcome back and pleased you and Sifler have shaken hands -- Snowded   TALK  22:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Bah, look on the bright side of things. All that fracas has forced people to read an article on the epistemic theory of miracles and some of the more thorough readers may even have gone as far as looking up epistemology. No small feat really! Anyways, glad to see you're back: the project is not exactly overloaded with people who can write such articles. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 01:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * PS: if you want the above "we have shaken hands" to sound more sincere, I suggest correcting the typo. It's Stifle, not Stifler. :-)
 * Thanks - done. Peter Damian (talk) 05:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * [edit] PS thanks to everybody here for the subject showed while I was gone. Much appreciated.  Peter Damian (talk) 05:40, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * And thank you for reminding me to add this.


 * Welcome! --mboverload @ 02:38, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back
Welcome back, etc. Just a note regarding the arbitration page, it's customary not to edit other people's sections but to instead make a reply in your own section. Stifle (talk) 14:14, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

My IP
Yes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.155.187.90 (talk) 21:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

A little present to encourage you
Adrastus of Cyzicus will probably always be a stub. But so what?--Santa (talk) 11:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Many thanks Santa, amazing how much you can get out of a person mentioned in a book that no longer exists. Peter Damian (talk) 18:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Nocturnalsleeper
I was reluctant to put the banner up as i've seen his other edits around, and they were pretty sound. but see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pederasty&action=history at 2:47, 3:16, and 3:23. this was after an edit war already. ofcourse its locked now. Lihaas (talk) 18:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The 2:47, 3:16, and 3:23 I thought rather charming.  Peter Damian (talk) 20:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Percy and fraud
This article from the American Library Association has a fairly good precis. "The first major modern encyclopedia dealing with lesbian and gay life and culture was the ill-fated *Encyclopedia of homosexuality* edited by Wayne R. Dynes, Warren Johansson, William A. Percy, and Stephen Donaldson (New York: Garland, 1990, 2 v.). It was withdrawn by the publisher when it was discovered that some of the ostensibly female writers were really males masquerading under false female names." Percy vigorously defends the fraud, on the basis that it was harmless, here. It's unclear to me if Percy himself was involved in the decision to sign articles with false credentials, but that he doesn't seem to understand why it's problematic speaks volumes. Nandesuka (talk) 21:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The fraud is not quite so bad as the actual material in the encyclopedia, for example this which really stinks - reads worse than a Wikipedia article. Best Peter Damian (talk) 21:38, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Peter & Nandesuka - there's a discussion of the Percy material that might be of interest, on this archived talk page of the Pederasty article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * (Oops - maybe this is redundant... I just noticed that Nandesuka had commented in that discussion, so I guess this is old news.) --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Oxfordian theory
Peter, I am perfectly well aware what the Oxfordian theory is. I am one of the regular editors of the Shakespeare page. Look who created the redirect Oxfordianism. I said as much in one of my earlier posts in the discussion. I was trying to get "Nocturalsleeper" to explain what he meant by his repeated use of the phrase "Oxford theory" in his edit summary. Oxfordianism is never mentioned in the story and has no relevance to it. In fact the story assumes that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I am perplexed by your statement "PPA's like the theory because De Vere seems to have been a pedophile." I'm guessing that PPAs means Pro-Pedophile activists". I find this rather difficult to credit. Supporters of Oxfordianism typically portray the Earl as a shining light of all the virtues, and get very huffy when any of his many faults are pointed out. Suggestions of pederasty are more commonly made about the other "candidate" Francis Bacon, since he is explicitly described such by John Aubrey. None of this, as I say, is relevant to Wilde's story. Paul B (talk) 22:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

My problem with "Nocturalsleeper" is his seeming pathological deletionism and his misrepresentations of his reasons for his actions. I do not approve of the excision of material that is in essence valid, if somewhat poorly supported and unsubtle. The aspiration should be to improve, not remove. The problem with many editors to this article is that they bring an inappropriate and often wide-eyed moral agenda that leads to confusion and which does not assist in the improvement of the article. Paul B (talk) 23:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Your comments on Wikipedia Review regarding Phdarts and Nocturnalsleeper
I fear that your comments veer close to misrepresenting what I said (or not disclosing all that I said) and you are also inconsistent with your own on-wiki statements opposing sockpuppetry (on my talk page yesterday, for example). I did say to you in an email in May "You have continued to attack FT2 on Wikipedia Review over other unrelated matters (Headleydown, whatever that is)," (emphasis added), but I also sent you a long message in July which I will quote here.

For background on the HeadleyDown situation you can start with these two pages:


 * Requests_for_checkuser/Case/HeadleyDown
 * Requests_for_arbitration/Neuro-linguistic_programming

On the RFCU page it talks about members of the University of Hong Kong skeptics club. Since that information is publicly available, I can confirm that Phdarts edits from several IPs in Hong Kong including the University of Hong Kong. That doesn't prove he is, of course, but if he were elsewhere it would rule it out.

If you read the RFAR case you will see that originally, HeadleyDown and others were merely reminded to follow NPOV and required to discuss reverts. The log of enforcement action at the bottom of the page documents an escalating series of blocks imposed for various reasons, including checkuser-confirmed sockpuppetry by HeadleyDown. Note that at that time FT2 was an editor only, he had no extra access (promoted to admin Jan 2007).

If you want Phdarts unblocked as a case of mistaken identity, then Phdarts needs to post unblock or email an appeal to Arbcom. Of course, Arbcom does not handle appeals well due to their work load and there are a couple of proposals for having Arbcom delegate some review authority to other editors. This is going to be a case decided based on patterns of behavior, so you need to hope for an independent review by someone openminded.

If you want Phdarts unblocked because he is HD but he is good now, he will again need to file his own appeal. HD was banned 2 years ago; apologies go a long way, and WP has recently taken a firmer hand against pseudoscience issues.

If Phdarts' claim is that he is not HeadleyDown, he will have to contact Arbcom about an unblock appeal. He will need a convincing argument to account not only for the geographic similarities but the editorial similarities, that takes into account the policies on proxy editing for banned users. (In other words, if he wants to claim he is a different member of the Skeptics Club, and that former member Headley has left a request that members of the club pursue this issue, that may very well be considered unacceptable.)

Alternatively, Phdarts could admit to being Headley and argue that he should be unblocked because he has learned from his past mistakes and that his edits as Phdarts were acceptable and avoided the problems that were sanctioned in the Arbcom case. He may find some arbitrators willing to consider that line of appeal, but he needs to make the appeal directly himself.

Regarding User:Burrburr, be aware that Nocturnalsleeper is in fact another sockpuppet of Burrburr (I did not have access to my original findings when I made my first reply to you yesterday.) FT2 has not blocked the majority of other sockpuppets found in the most recent search, I will look into it tomorrow. But Burrburr now has at least 120 checkuser-confirmed sockpuppets found by me, not counting any that were blocked on behavior or that were found by other checkusers. You say in one breath, "Who cares, he is doing good work" and in another breath "I hate socks, as you know, but I also like good editors." Obviously you can not say with certainty that he is doing "good work" unless you check the contribs of all his accounts, and even then you can not be sure that we have not missed some accounts. I am also personally troubled by Burrburr's original defense, which was that he was a teacher at a boys' school and that many of the accounts were really his students. That explanation never held water to begin with, and is certainly not true now, as all the recent sockpuppets are on a purely residential ISP. Do you not find that explanation the least bit suspicious, considering the topic area?

I can't imagine you will find much support even on Wikipedia Review for the proposition that someone who has used 120+ sockpuppets should be allowed to continue, no matter how golden his content contributions. Have you talked with Burrburr/Nocturnalsleeper to find out why he is acting this way? You can not realistically expect he will be unblocked until he makes assurances that he will stick to one account, and calling for a "nuclear war" over the subject seems completely over the top. Thatcher 11:14, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

2. In June you refer to pages that FT2 had set up, but that (I assumed) was a direct result of our emails, and certainly confirms my point (as with Alex B also) that when FT2 claims that nearly everyone in the community has bad things to say about Headley Down, it turns out that they were relying on FT2, or things FT2 had written in those pages. That was my whole point in this thread.
 * You write:
 * I can not recall my state of mind when I said "Whatever that means", but if you will look at Requests_for_checkuser/Case/HeadleyDown you will see that I commented on one of the checkuser cases in my capacity as checkuser clerk, so I was certainly aware of the matter at the time, even if I had forgotten that I knew about it. See also Requests_for_arbitration/Neuro-linguistic_programming.  Both the RFCU case page and the RFAR block log are contemporaneous records reflecting ongoing admin action and sockpuppetry.  Certainly the RFCU complaints were made by FT2, and it seems probable that FT2 was involved (in at least some instances)  in bringing complaints to the attention of the various admins who ended up taking administrative action based on the RFAR.  But we assume generally that administrators review requests for action, declining those that are not worthy of action and taking responsibility for actions that they take.  And of course, negative findings and (mildly) coercive remedies were approved by 7 to 9 arbitrators.  So it seems fair to say that HeadleyDown's behavior was recognized as disruptive by many editors.  As long as HeadleyDown is banned, blocking his sockpuppets is not an editorial matter in the same way that FT2 would not be permitted to directly block you due to your recent conflicts.
 * On the matter of Burrburr, he needs to edit from a single account if he does not want to be banned, or perhaps for some reason he chooses to make throwaway accounts and does not care if they are blocked because he has a dynamic IP address and never invests very much in any one account anyway. And I remain concerned about his "explanation."  He is free to contact me or another checkuser about designating one account that he will use.   Assuming he limited himself to one account, I see nothing else in his edits that would require administrative action. Thatcher 14:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And in reply to Kelly Martin, Burrburr's ISP was not a university. One was a residential provider that he claimed was a boarding school, and the other is Clearwire, a provider of wireless internet access that does business from kiosks in shopping malls.   I see no reason to believe his explanation, and on top of the technical evidence you have the similarity of contributions.  Who really believes that a bunch of middle school kids would all share scholarly interest in the sexual habits of historical figures and none of them would have any edits to pop culture topics? Thatcher 14:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Re-reading, I guess Kelly was talking about HeadleyDown and the HK University Skeptics Club, and not Burrburr. I guess she has a point here. But, if you have an editor, and he gets a bunch of his friends to all edit for him and to revert for him and make the same changes he is making, isn't that also a bad thing?  I'm sure you would object if you found out that NAMBLA was circulating an email asking people to register accounts and make certain edits, just as there have been several recent stinks over allegations that CAMERA is doing the same thing with respect to Israeli articles.  It's more complicated than simple socking (which you acknowledge was going on too) and I don't think there is an obvious  black and white answer that fits every editor and every situation.  Phdarts needs to make his own case, I think, if he wants to argue that even though he is involved in the skeptics group and edits with the same point of view, he should be allowed to edit regardless of the past history. It would be a tough case to make but not unprecedented. Thatcher 14:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Dion of Naples, and moving forward with minor historic figures
Hi,

Could you have a look at the discussion on Talk:Adrastus of Cyzicus? I plan on moving this article to List of historians of antiquity or the like, which will allow for Dion of Naples etc. to be contained within an article devoted to the general theme of figures mentioned in historical texts without having to try to establish details which may never be known. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:18, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

PD Scouting image
Since this is 1914, shouldn't this be PD? re Image:Scout-card-front.jpg — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 15:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry don't understand! What is PD? Peter Damian (talk) 15:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Public Domain, but actually it may be copyvio since some of it is by Baden-Powell and he died in 1941 and PD eligibility in UK is life+ 70 years. But I'm not a licensing expert, I was just asking. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 15:57, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh dear! Hope not.  Peter Damian (talk) 15:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

In the meantime I've added it here: The_Scout_Association. BP is only a few years from being 70 years passed away. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 16:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That's lovely - something to remember my father by. I've adjusted the size slightly for a better fit. Peter Damian (talk) 16:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
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