Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Paul Bedson

Comment
This is not a comment on the Rfcu but in reply to History2007 is about Paul's last quote - Using Google I was able to identify it as allegedly Jesus' words according to The Last Temptation of Christ (but with Nazareth instead of wikipedia). I don't think he meant it that seriously! Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 21:34, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * So when can one figure out what he is saying? How about the Financial crisis of 2007–2008. Did he mean that one? Is he coherent? Anyway he has eaten up enough of my time. This type of user is headed for a broad ban, and most likely an indef in the end as I said in early November. Time will tell. But I will not bother here any more. This is how Wikipedia eats life, just to slow down the fringe floating in. Let it float... History2007 (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I also note that he claims religious discrimination as well, IRWolfie- (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Notifications
I have notified everyone who commented at one of the recent AfDs, or who made substantive edits to one of the relevant articles or talk pages. I also notified BrownHairedGirl, because of this edit. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I notified Dougweller who was involved in some communications about this RFCU, IRWolfie- (talk) 01:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I posted a note at the history, archaeology, and genealogy WikiProjects. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

DGG's comments
Please allow me to clarify something that DGG has highlighted. It is pointed out that the WP mirror is obvious as it says so right at the top of the page. In fact, it is more obvious than this. This text is the editor's own writing, since deleted from the article because it wasn't supported by the citations given for it. The mirror was not linked to accidentally or carelessly or even recklessly. It was linked to specifically because it was a mirror of his own deleted material. Agricolae (talk) 04:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As long as we are addressing the WP mirrors, let's look at the other one: . This was included in the original draft of the page Uffingas (since redirected).  A look at the Google Books page shows that the book description begins, "High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!"  Yes, it is that obvious, but let's set aside for the time being that it is obvious.  What is more crucial to this discussion is the following.  It is a no-Preview 'book'.  That means that it was cited by this editor without reading a single word of the 'book'.  Not a preview page, not a snippet, not one word. The 'book' was cited based on the title and description alone.  Words fail. Agricolae (talk) 06:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * You have just started the first steps for the inevitable case on WP:AN. That type of fudging of sources usually leads to broad bans. History2007 (talk) 18:33, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Legendary ancestries
I generally support this position being taken by several users, against Paul Bedson.

Published material needs to be divided into several classes:
 * The publication of an edition of a manuscript (if accurately done) is as reliable as the primary manuscript source. However, the reliability of manuscripts produced centuries after the event is itself questionable.  It may represent the equivalent of WP:OR by medieval monks who wrote (or copied) the material.
 * Secondary sources, discussing primary sources, including the introduction in an edition. The reliability needs to be judged on:
 * How old it is, but there can be no fixed rule on this.
 * The reputation of the historian who wrote it - for example, whether the author is an academic historian or not.
 * What subsequent discussion of the subject there has been. Recent historians will normally have considered the views of their predecessors.  If they reject them, it will be for a reason, which they will state.
 * Tertiary (and more remote) sources, repeating what appears in secondary ones. The quality of this is mixed.  It depends on the quality of the research done by the author: has he found all the recent academic literature or is he merely repeating what he found in older text books? If the latter, he may be repeating older views, now dismissed by academic historians.  To some extent this may be judged from the identity of the publisher and the extent to which the book (or article) provides an apparatus of referneces.  The republication of work 75 years old, whether a reprint or a rehash of it, will represent the academic views of 75 years ago, which may well have been overtaken by later research.

The problem with Paul Bedson's work is:
 * He has started new articles, when he might have done better to edit an exisiting one.
 * He has assumed that two "sons" of the god Woden must have been brothers. Descent from a god was the traditional start of a pagan royal genealogy.  When later monks copied this material, they may not have known that Woden was a pagan god or they may have wanted to disguise the fact by inventing ancestors for Woden, in some cases tracing ancestry back to Adam.  This is a variety of fiction.  Ancestors between a historical figure and Woden can be regarded as legendary ancestors, who may well have been historical persons but of whom we know nothing but a name.  The best view is that earlier ancestors are pure invention.  It may be an interesting issue to speculate on the significance of that matter, but even academics can do little more than that.  The whole problem is that it is the "Original Reasearch" (as we call it in WP), but in fact invention of medieval monks.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:46, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Comment on my support for Dougweller's summary
I am not involved in the current debate but have dealt with Paul's previous work on Near Eastern archaeology. Doug's quote on that Paul's output is too high for any single editor to fact-check is mine and when I compare what I wrote there with what I read here I get the impression that Paul's behavior hasn't changed much. My support for Dougweller's view is to be understood as that I think that he gave an accurate summary of Paul's past editing behavior, I am otherwise not planning to get involved in this discussion.--Zoeperkoe (talk) 19:07, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is a broader problem that needs to end up on WP:AN. Not that I will spend the time to do it, but is headed that way. History2007 (talk) 21:45, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Convince me
Ignoring talkspace, I have followed through several of the mainspace threads above. The subject matter is arcane but I'm just not yet seeing a conspiracy nutter trying to dupe me. Is there evidence of a clear intention to deceive, the "magic bullet" to shoot him down? Tommy Pinball (talk) 18:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone has suggested that. Most fringe writers believe in their ideas. Dougweller (talk) 19:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Doug. The problem doesn't appear to be deception; it's just a failure to follow very basic rules.  Paul doesn't appear to pay more than lipservice to arguments based on policy.  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 23:13, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay - I'm seeing a pattern of references that don't support the mainspace statements Tommy Pinball (talk) 00:21, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Current evidence that Paul is here to push non-mainstream ideas
Quoting an edit by Paul today at Talk:Langfeðgatal: "The less I say about 'Mainstream (corporate) scholarship' is probably for the better, that contemptable joke is just trying to turn a profit (as always), confuddling the issue with all sorts of phoney experts 'opinions' about who originally wrote it at the expense of real scholarship such as Monty (and Chambers, possibly Bruce and Viguffson in this case) detailing all the sources for comparison to judge for ourselves. If mainstream scholarship was of any use at all, I wouldn't have to be here would I? I could be off having a family and enjoying myself instead of having to work these 18-20 hour days to save Eden." Dougweller (talk) 12:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The idea that scholarship on medieval Icelandic texts has been distorted by the profit motive is hilariously out of touch. Which corporation is it that's paying the big bucks to suppress the truth about the Danish kings' descent from Priam of Troy? No doubt it's agribusiness that's preventing the real story of Eden coming out. I wonder what nefarious interests are preventing us from knowing the location of Atlantis? --Akhilleus (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Hey, if there is big money in medieval scholarship - who left me out? I'd gladly have stayed in academia studying medieval history if there had been any money at all in it... Ealdgyth - Talk 14:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

But the time Paul eats up is real, not a joke. I am amazed by all the time this has taken. Someone tell me he is not a liability. Someone tell me that with a straight face. If he is a liability, there is no point in joking about it. Liabilities need to be written off. History2007 (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Some additional information
Check out this page in Paul's userspace, with the title "Langfeðgatal". This page isn't just about the Langfeðgatal--it's got lots of material that other editors have rejected from pages about Anglo-Saxon genealogies. Is this some kind of massive synthesis of Anglo-Saxon/North Germanic royal genealogies? Whatever it is, given Paul's penchant for taking material that's been rejected from one article and sticking it into another, we can expect to see it in mainspace. Indeed, Paul's most recent comment at Talk:Langfeðgatal implies that he's going to try to get as much of this material into that article as he can. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:17, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It started as a stash of material that has been deleted. Three successive versions of Langfeðgatal (the one with the misformatted and inappropriate genealogies, and the one with the pointless tables used to present a list), then beginning with the ==Ancestry== heading, the complete content of the AfDed Ancestry of the kings of Britain, then right after the ==See Also== heading, it has the complete content of the blanked and redirected Godulf Geoting.  At first I thought this may just be another attempt to 'find a way' to have the material on Wikipedia (if out of mainspace), as when the Godulf table was posted to an AfD  so that it wouldn't be deleted when the page was. However, he has added material to the grand table in the 'Ancestry of the kings' part, suggesting that we have not seen the end of this in mainspace.  The time-suck continues.  (He has also expanded a redirect on Thane of Fife as a coatrack for random MacDuff family origin material, when it is unclear that the title itself existed outside of the quasi-historical Macduff (Macbeth) to whose article it formerly redirected.  True to form, in the process two different Google Books views of the same book chapter were unknowingly cited under different titles and authors.  It should probably be returned to a redirect, but I don't have the time for another tussle right now.) Agricolae (talk) 05:47, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Accusations of racism now:. It would be great if this could be put to an end... --Akhilleus (talk) 14:00, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * You know what you have to do to end it: WP:AN. I am not going to let Paul take up 3 days of my life, so I will not bother. But you already know that is the path. History2007 (talk) 15:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Closure request posted
I have posted a request to close at WP:AN. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)