User talk:Bryan Derksen/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Bryan Derksen. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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Thanks for the Explosion stub! -- Tarquin 16:12 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No problem. I'll add more now, I only had a few minutes to throw it together this morning. :) Bryan 23:22 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Bryan, I saw some of your discussion with User:Docu which has now been moved to Wikipedia talk:How to use tables. As I am the principal author (to date) of the table examples, I can understand where you're coming from about the lack of closing tags. I prefer to always use closing tags, but according to the HTML 4.01 specification, they are indeed optional (and always have been). In XHTML and XML they are a requirement. For Wikipedia articles, it may be better to leave off the optional closing tags to make editing easier, especially for newbies. As you probably know, it is often the case that a table is being used inappropriately in the first place. Converting those to lists or another appropriate structure may benefit both readability and editability.

I'd appreciate any input or contributions you may have to the Wikipedia:How to use tables article. Also, you may want to check out the m:Wikipedia accessibility meta page I've started for discussing accessibility issues - it'd be great to have your feedback! Thanks. -- Wapcaplet 20:28 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmph. Guess I should stop my mad quest to fix all the tables after all, then. :) I'll pop over and see what I can add to the discussion. I'm hoping that Wikipedia will move in the direction of XHTML someday, so that MathML support can be more easily added, but I suppose that will require some sort of built-in translation for table code either way. Bryan 21:24 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I agree! It'd be nice to see Wikipedia move to XHTML (or even XML) someday, but it'd be a bit harder to stay valid with those, since they are stricter than the loose HTML DTD used now. As someone pointed out to me, we can pretty easily fix closing-tag issues with a conversion script, if/when that day comes. -- Wapcaplet 22:47 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There is a problem with the placement of elements 71 and 103 that I've mentioned at talk:periodic table. --mav

Table white space

Just so you know, white space (blank lines) between HTML table elements are displayed as blank lines before a table when it is displayed in at least Konqueror. --mav 22:38, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, shoot. The HTML tidy program I run most of my table code through after I'm done working on it inserts those blank lines automatically. I'll have to remember to trim them out manually before pasting them in. Bryan

10¹⁷ tesla

You wrote in tesla that 10¹⁷ T is the maximum possible field strength for any known phenomenon. Can you give me any clues about how this value was calculated, please? I'd like to add an explanation to the article (assuming I know enough physics to understand your reply). -- Heron 13:44, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It was a factoid that I read in an article about magnetars, I think it was in a recent Scientific American. As I recall, that was the maximum field strength that a neutron star was calculated to be capable of holding, and that nothing more capable than neutron stars were known - so it's a practical limit, rather than a theoretical one. I'd have to go back and find that article again to say more, I'll search tonight when I get home. Bryan

Thanks. Excuse me if I don't respond quickly next time, but I shall be away from Wikipedia for a few days. -- Heron

Okay, here's what the article says. "An upper limit to neutron-star magentism is about 10¹⁷ gauss; beyond this limit, the fluid inside the star would tend to mix and the field would dissipate. No known objects in the universe can generate and maintain fields stronger than this level." The fluid-mixing thing is in reference to the convection currents inside a neutron star that generate a dynamo effect. This is from the February 2003 issue.

Right off the bat, my face is red; the article uses gauss throuhout instead of Tesla, so all the neutron-star-related values I put into the Tesla article are off by a factor of 10⁴. I'll fix that immediately.

The Scientific American article has a couple of other interesting factoids about extreme magnetism. It mentions the quantum electrodynamic threshold of 4×10¹³ gauss, above which X-ray photons freely split in two or merge together. Polarized light waves change wavelength when they enter very strong magnetic fields, and the scattering of photons by electrons or other charged particles is suppressed if the magnetic field prevents the charged particle from accelerating in the direction it needs to. Fields above 10⁹ gauss squeeze electron orbitals into cigar shapes; in a 10¹⁴ gauss field a hydrogen atom becomes 200 times narrower.

Don't know if you want to incorporate any of these, but if you want to here they are. :) Bryan

Thanks. I put a short note in tesla about the upper limit. I'll wait on the other stuff until I'm feeling more ambitious :-) -- Heron

This isn't really a big deal, but regarding your edit to harp just now - is there really anything wrong with using an apostrophe when pluralising single letters? Every style guide I've looked at (which admittedly isn't many) says that it's acceptable, or even desireable, to use an apostrophe in this case. --Camembert

If there's a style guide that covers that specific situation, then that's probably the correct way to do it. I was operating only under the general guideline that apostrophized s is only used as an abbreviation of "is" and as a possessive. I see incorrect apostrophized s everywhere these days and it grates on me, so I get a bit trigger-happy. Bryan

Well, the AP style guide says to use an apostrophe on plurals of single letters, but not on plurals of multiple letter abbreviations, and somebody's told me that Chicago says to use apostrophes on lower case single letters, but not upper case. The idea is to avoid ambiguity between multiple letter As and the word "as", for example. It's not a big deal, as I say. --Camembert

"lightcraft" is non-standard naming for beam-powered propulsion, for which you have a largely identical article. Wouldn't a redirect be more than enough?

"beam-powered propulsion" is a very general term. It covers lightcraft, solar sails, magsails, and possibly other types of ship as well. Lightcraft are a specific type of beam-powered ship, and as such I believe they warrant their own article. Bryan

Bryan, I think I may have found an error in a page you wrote; can you check out Talk:Liouville-Neumann series? Carl

Hello! Thanks for the brave move of moving Arpad (etc) into Árpád. Are you sure that it won't cause problems for the USA guys who cannot probably write accents? Other thing: isn't it expected that if someone moves an article then fixes the links/references to the new one? --grin 09:11, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's not a problem, fortunately, because thanks to redirects linking Arpad still works just fine. Since this redirect is automatically created when a page is moved using the "move this page" function, one normally doesn't have to do anything to fix other page's references. The only exception that comes to mind is when there are already redirects pointing to the original location; since redirects only go one step (to prevent loops from forming) double redirects need to be updated. I've just checked (via the "what links here" function) and there are no double redirects for Arpad, so everything looks to be in order to me. Bryan 02:49, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to coordinate w/ you re IFF article: you may have noticed that i created one despite the one you worked on, and someone collapsed "yours" into "mine". I have two concerns:

The more substantial history got disconnected from the article.
The unofficial title is the article and the official is the redirect.
The old article title is misleadingly described

I think i know how to repair #1, and would like the practice; if you don't follow what i'm talking abt, let's discuss.
As to #2:
- IMO, the WP MoS recommendation should be no punctuation in article titles except hyphen, paren, & apostrophe; but include redirects to WP-std name where an outside standard or other common usage says otherwise
- IMO, what it should be is irrelevant if cases like this have been anticipated in a previous consensus
- IMO, #1 & #2 need to be corrected at the same time, not piecemeal
#3 is natural to fix as part of the above. --Jerzy 07:50, 2003 Nov 18 (UTC)

It looks like my only contribution to that article was to add a link and to remove a stray HTML tag that had no real effect on the article's display. I know nothing about how IFF works or anything like that, I probably just came across the article at random one day. So don't worry about coordinating with me, just do your thing and I'm sure it will be fine. :) Bryan 08:05, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Tnx, B; i'll go read up on the punc'n issue. --Jerzy 08:18, 2003 Nov 18 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I mangled your name in a summary of a revert. People have trouble with my own surname, and both my girlfriend and my sister are condemned to go through life with people misspelling their first, middle, and last names, so I sympathize. --Charles A. L. 19:05, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)

No problem, Wikipedia's article history is available with my name on it if it ever becomes important. :) Bryan 02:09, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See my question on Talk:Kubla Khan. RedWolf 17:55, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)

WikiProject Programming languages

Would you be willing to join WikiProject Programming languages, We could really use your help. —Noldoaran (Talk) 04:02, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Bryan, I just noticed your change to my Lincos edit. I don't claim to know anything about Lincos or SETI, but is the following interview totally bogus? http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763/index.php?page=interview01. I will defer to you. In case you're wondering, the reason I originally made the change is because I read about it in Stephen Webb's book, "If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens...Where is Everybody?" Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it to look up the reference. Thanks, Mignon 10:03, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Over on the interview you point to, Dutil says:

"However, Lincos has it own drawbacks. Since it is based on pure logic it become rapidly difficult to communicate some complex processes. For this reason many researchers find it impractical. Therefore, we preferred an hybrid method with the addition of schema and graphics to guide the reader."

From what I've seen of both Lincos and the Dutil-Dumas message, the Dutil-Dumas message has only traces of Lincos concepts in it - mainly just the introduction to numbers and basic arithmatic at the beginning (and even there it's in base 10 rather than Lincos' base 2). It's very heavily graphics-oriented; they draw graphs, arrows, chemical structures, a map of Earth's surface, DNA helixes and cell membranes, even human figures ala the Pioneer plaque. This doesn't have much in common with Lincos' approach of defining a simple coded "language" and then describing more complex concepts using it, in my opinion. I haven't read Stephen Webb's book, nor have I read any other books on SETI itself; I just play around with these SETI messages because I find them to be interesting puzzles. But I'd be very surprised if my impression is wrong on this one.

By the way, if you liked the Dutil-Dumas message, I created my own variation on it a few years back that includes a lot more information. I'll dig it up and email it to you if you'd like to take a crack at decoding it; I've never had feedback on it from other people before. :) Bryan 10:42, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Atheism

"In general a revert is the advised action to deal with vandalism. It is not the advised action when dealing with edits that were made in good faith - indeed, we strongly recommend against it. Instead, have a look at our advice on staying cool when the editing gets hot." Don't revert, take it to talk Jack 22:18, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Taken to Talk:Atheism, as you requested. However, I still think that a revert was in order because I basically disagreed with all of the changes you made; I mentioned my reasoning in the edit comment for that change. Disagreement is not the same as an accusation of vandalism. Bryan

Your right, but things should be discussed, not reverted. Reverting is an accusation of vandalism, or very close to it, since your not supposed to revert unless it is vandalism. And whats this "I'm tired of doing all the work" stuff? What work? Your reverting things. Thats the opposite of work, its undoing work. I'd love to discuss this in depth in talk, but one of the people there, User:Lord Kenneth is trolling me. Anyways, I am reasonable, and if you want to discuss why my sentance shouldn't be there, but the paragraph should, I will listen. Otherwise, I am going to keep puting the one back, or removing the other. JackLynch 07:10, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You're the one who's implementing changes without discussion, indeed against discussion. The work I refer to is trying to develop a compromise with people who object to your additions. Do that over at Talk:Atheism, since I'm not the only one objecting to what you're doing. And quit complaining about being accused of vandalism before you've actually been accused of vandalism; a revert does not necessarily mean "you're a vandal" no matter how many times you repeat that. When you're accused of vandalism, people will come right out and say it. Bryan 08:02, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have to tell you that you really got me goat with the "terms in current use on the wiki" statement Talk:agnosticism. Those terms are only in use against my profound objection, and rather than seeking to resolve that and build concensus, you decided to boldly place them elsewhere. While I'm not accusing you of having an agenda with this, I am accusing you of being confrontational in those edits. This "hard" and "soft" atheism stuff is by no means resolved. Jack 03:23, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I didn't want to wait until there was a consensus on the terms' usage before creating links to the articles describing them. If at some point in the future different names for those philosophical positions are settled on, the links can be changed. In the meantime those articles describe the positions that were mentioned in the agnosticism article, so I linked them. Bryan 06:13, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Agnosticism

You comments here make it clear that you have an agenda and are "stalking" me on the wiki, attempting to prevent me from editing. Back off, or I am going to take necessary measures. Review your statement "

Problem definitely not solved, and you can't just declare it to be so. I don't have time to go over this right now, but at this point I consider you to be a strongly biased editor with a clear agenda, and everything you do here is suspect. Later this evening I'm going to go over all your changes and I'm sure I'll be making plenty of changes of my own to them. If anyone else is following this talk: but not talk:Atheism, take a look over there at some of the stuff Jack considered to be an example of an "unbiased" encyclopedia article that Wikipedia should strive for - [1] in particular. Bryan 16:07, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)"

and then review Wikipedia:Wikiquette Jack 00:36, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Note that it is you are the one who is threatening me, here. Fortunately I consider it an empty threat, so no skin off my nose. I stand by my statements in the talk:atheism and talk:agnosticism articles; I believe that you are biased and that your contributions to these articles have been introducing POV. It will be up to the Wikipedia community and process as a whole to determine how the situation ultimately turns out. Bryan 01:16, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please review wikipedia:conflicts between users I never threatened you, I implied that I would place you there, and that we might be moving farther along the Wikipedia:Conflict resolution process. Jack 01:28, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I considered "Back off, or I am going to take necessary measures" to be a threat. Bryan 01:31, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you are right, and it was, I should be hard-banned, and promptly. You of course are not right, and I have taken measures, placing you on the wikipedia:conflicts between users page. I have no idea what sort of "threat" you think (or claim to think?) I was making, but insinuating I am threatening you is in poor taste. I don't make threats, I warn, and follow thru, as I have now done. Lets see if we can get past all this foolishness and character assasination, and do whats best for the readers. Jack 01:36, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Whatever. I've presented my descrption of this situation over on the conflict page in what I hope is a factual manner, leaving it up to others to decide what they think of it. Bryan 01:52, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Scientific Skepticism

I need some help over at scientific skepticism. It's turning into a JackLynch-type fiasco with anti-skeptic trolls. - Lord Kenneth 23:10, Jan 25, 2004 (UTC)

No problem. I'll watchlist it and read up on the history, and hopefully be of some use. :) Bryan 23:18, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Now JackLynch is helping them. Weigh in. - Lord Kenneth 02:16, Jan 26, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the "compromise" critics section in scientific skepticism is NPOV. It seems the only critics of scientific skepticism in general are those promoting quackery and pseudoscience. If one so-called skeptic is criticized often, then it should be on that particular skeptic's page, there is no reason to group all skeptics together. As well, skeptics may disbelieve a newly-discovered phenomenon, no one denies that: it's whether the evidence is present for them or not. - Lord Kenneth 19:55, Jan 26, 2004 (UTC)

It was only intended as a start, to try pushing things away from a cycle of total deletion/total reversion. There have been instances throughout the history of science where a new idea has been subjected to skepticism that could reasonably be called "excessive". However, such judgements can only be made in hindsight, so it's difficult or impossible to make such accusations in regard to theories that are currently in dispute. Surprisingly, I think Reddi's most recent additions have been pretty good. I'll just do a bit more editing right now and see if I can make sure the honor of skepticism isn't being trodden on too severely, and remove the CSICOP reference as you suggest. Bryan 00:33, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The page is turning more "criticisms of skeptics" instead of about skeptics themselves! It's obviously Reddi's (and now JackLynch's) wargrounds for their philosophical views. For whatever reason, Reddi hates skeptics. He's an idiot. Hell, look how he writes on the damn talk page. I'm getting pretty pissed off at his idiocy. The links he insists on adding are filled with nothing but lie after lie. Hell, why is it necessary to add what that Bruno Bauer said when few people have probably heard of him?

Skepticism is a part of science, or else we would be doing nothing more than accepting any idea out of the blue. I think that's what people like JackLynch and Reddi can't accept, that their theology and unfounded beliefs aren't considered "mainstream".

There's a reason evolution is given more credence here than creationism, and that's because one side is scientifically credible. If we start giving each side the appearence of "equal factuality" we might as well not have educations and just make things up.

Scientific skepticism has no critics except from the pseudoscience-peddlers. Why do we need to give them "equal time"? This is ridiculous. - Lord Kenneth 06:05, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

Sheesh, calm down already. You're preaching to the choir here; I'm a dedicated skeptic myself. But at the same time I think you're letting your own biases run away with you a bit here; the chunks of text you removed from that criticism section were steadily working their way towards a reasonably balanced explanation of how skepticism works in real-world science. I'm going to revert your deletion, and I suggest that you don't give Jack the satisfaction of getting into an edit war with me on it. Instead, why not suggest a better header than "criticism"? It's not really criticism any more, IMO. Bryan 06:41, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm getting mad because it's the page has turned basically into a debate. Reddi's edits suggest he doesn't even know what skepticism is. In fact, I'm curious as to whether he's copying and pasting, because it's obvious on talk he doesn't know how to write.

Anyway, I'd rather have them justify their changes first. There really should be no reason to recognize the rantings of con-artists and pseudoscientists as legitimate criticism. - Lord Kenneth 14:08, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well, our opinions seem to differ on just how "bad" Reddi is. His comments on talk: are as you say somewhat hard to follow, but I've been tinkering with the wording of the article to move it away from pure criticism and he seems to have been pretty good about accepting modifications or caveats to "his" statements there. You seem to be stuck in "attack" mode on this, and I think it may be clouding your view of how adversarial the situation is. Bryan 19:21, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I find your attempts at compromise too liberal. Even the "compromise" version was inaccurate and misleading. There is no reason to quote Bruno Bauer, no validity behind the "instances" (and even if they are it's phrased in a misleading way), among other things. I'm a skeptic myself: I don't like being told what I think. - Lord Kenneth 19:24, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

I've already questioned that Bauer link, and I had been planning to try figuring out some way to work it in more "naturally" than it currently stands (note that the article doesn't currently quote him, his quote has been edited and worked into the text itself now). As for the rest, it seems we have a difference of opinion. Bryan 19:28, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't see what you see in the unfair bias that is the "revised" version. My version fairly demonstrates what skepticism is. - Lord Kenneth 19:31, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

Your version simply omits all the stuff you disagree with, instead of trying to present information such as historical context or the difficulty of gaining solid evidence or simple human nature that might explain why things work the way they work. Sometimes, valid theories really are slow to gain acceptance. This is your opportunity to explain why, and show how it's not really a fundamental problem with the idea of skepticism. Anyway, I think this is a debate that more properly belongs on talk:scientific skepticism ath this point. Bryan 19:57, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I removed what I removed because it was either irrelevent (Bruno Bauer), misleading (the examples are either entirely bogus or simply express reaction to new ideas lacking evidence, which isn't valid criticism because the concept of scientific skepticism has already been mentioned earlier), or just plain stupid and wrong (JDR's "this could be an argument from ignorance fallacy", which is completely nonsensical. I never denied that "valid theories are slow to gain acceptance", in fact, that's how they SHOULD BE... we can't know if a theory if valid or not until it's been properly tested and backed up by sufficient evidence. Such irrelevencies don't belong on scientific skepticism because it's like writing a long (by comparison) section on theories that aliens built the egyptian pyramids. I can't address every criticism JDR adds to the page, so I just stripped them off and referred to them in very general terms. Also, I removed the links because it's no different than adding a "jews caused 9/11!) page to the Sept. 11 section-- full of bias and lack of factual information. I don't know why you insist on JDR's biased-filled version, it's like you turned against me for no good reason, clearly not one based on reason. If you checked my version I mention criticisms but to not mention any particular ones because, like in my earlier example, there's too much to refute and doing so could almost be considered "POV". - Lord Kenneth 00:48, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

A digression from the above

At least I know whose in charge of you rascals ;) Jack 00:51, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There's that "conspiracy" I predicted over on Lord Kenneth's talk page that Jack would imagine. Jack, you evidently didn't notice that Lord Kenneth brought the Scientific skepticism article to my attention before you showed up over there. :) Bryan 01:13, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Don't be silly, of course I did. I've had both you guys on my watchlist since I met you. I guess I'm just nosy or something. I made a joke that "lord" kenneth was the head of your cabal, based on him giving you the orders, and you reporting back to him. The example you point out is exactly the sort of thing I was refering to. Jack 01:25, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It was hardly an order. You just can't seem to see things in terms other than pure black and pure white; the stuff I've done over on scientific skepticism is quite possibly not the sort of thing that Lord Kenneth wanted to see me do. In any event, I'm not going to bother "chatting" with you about such irrelevancies. Bryan 01:32, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I must say, I am impressed with your new perspective. My first impression of you as a reasonable, academic editor able to see beyond his personal prejudices appears to have been more correct than I have been giving you credit for as of late. My compliments. Jack 22:40, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Heh. Okay, you found the one sort of irrelevancy that I can't help chatting about; thanks for the compliment. I should mention that although I haven't looked at most of the other articles you've worked on, what I saw of your work on Amalek looked quite good - you may be biased, but you know your Biblical stuff. Don't think this will change my mind on the god/God issue, though. :)

Back to atheism again

I think we got onto a very bad foot due to the harshness of Kenneths ad hominems occuring simultaneously to my placing a mention of Amalek into the article. You apeared to have found that threatening. Let me be clear. I love encyclopedias, and that is why I am here. My agenda is for this to be the best encyclopedia ever (and to have a good time making it so!). My personal POV is likely profoundly disimilar from what you might expect. If you would like to know more about my religious beliefs, take a look at Pantheism, Classical pantheism, and Panentheism. The bible is not the basis for my beliefs, but rather one among many other signifigant historical tomes relating to matters of spirituality. The issue about g/G is simply a matter of respect. IMO you don't want to show respect to God, by refering to him by a proper noun. I find that highly POV, and unencyclopedic. The one God who is All is not a god. He is a synonym for existance. Its a whole other subject from an angry space jew who lives on a cloud. Once the problems with the atheism article are solved (I actually don't see many left, now that so many have become involved in the editing, particularly eloquence) I plan to spend some time editing "arguments for/against God". I think you will find pantheism particularly difficult to argue against. I was once an atheist myself you know. Jack 23:11, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's not a question of respect as far as I'm concerned, since I don't believe that God exists and therefore don't have much of an opinion one way or the other on his respectability. I simply think that God really is a god, under all the definitions of those two terms that I consider reasonable. Not the same as every other god, of course; "god" is a very broad category. Pantheism may use the terms in other ways, but that seems pretty nonstandard to me and requiring no more than a special-case footnote or two in the atheism article to accomodate. If you define "God" to be equivalent to "the Universe", then since I believe the universe exists I must therefore believe that God exists - but I see that definition as being a bit odd and misleading, frankly. We already have a perfectly good word for "Universe" and the word "God" has a lot of other widely-established connotations. I do not believe that the universe has any sort of concious will, for example, which is a quality that most people seem to assume deities would have.

In any event, since I am a weak atheist, I don't concern myself much with arguments against God. It's the lack of (IMO) credible arguments for God that leaves me in this position. :) Bryan 23:36, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

first of all, the mention of my own beliefs was ment socially, not in regards to this subject of g/G. Secondly, the issue of God being distict from gods is not one which is being debated by much of anyone. Monotheism is clearly different from polytheism, and the term is simply used differently, in monotheism to refer to one individual with a proper noun, and in polytheism god is used in a different way, relating to many individuals. Finially, soft/weak atheism does not exist (atheism=rejection of God), IMO you are agnostic, since you don't appear to be claiming certainty. I reccomend you inspect Pascal's Wager and consider the utility of such a decision. In conclusion, IMO, the only sensible religious decision available to those who have not experienced personal revelation is reverent agnosticism. Jack 00:08, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There are many different monotheistic gods, though, whereas capital-G God is generally used to refer to just one specific subgroup of them. As for Pascal's Wager, I'm well aware of that particular argument and consider it to be fundamentally flawed. (It also goes without saying that our agnosticism/strong/weak atheism argument remains unresolved, too :) Bryan 00:18, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

A potential path to compromise has just occurred to me. How about temporarily bypassing the entire God/god issue, and adding a section on "Atheism and pantheism" to the Atheism article that deals with just that particular subject? If the pantheistic concept of God is really significantly different from other types of gods, it might be worth treating separately. I can't guarantee that I'll agree with whatever you write about it, of course, and I certainly can't guarantee what anyone else will think of it, but it'd give you a place to put stuff that wouldn't automatically step on sensitive toes and could later be integrated elsewhere into the article if it turns out to be warranted. Bryan 00:03, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Negative. Atheism shouldn't give special attention to any particular religion. Salsa Shark 00:07, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Well, keep in mind that atheism deals with gods and not necessarily religions. There are religions without gods, and I'm thinking that some forms of pantheism may well fall into a fuzzy area near that. But I haven't really looked at pantheism in detail, so if I'm off on that then so much for that idea. :) Bryan 00:18, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

see above (edit conflicts :(, and salsa is right Jack 00:08, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

the definition of atheism should take into account the differing types of gods (or God) being rejected, be they monotheistic or polytheistic. Thats what I'm getting at. I don't see a need for any specific mention of any specific religion. Jack 00:15, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Atheism is the rejection of God, or gods. it isn't innacurate to call a christian an atheist in regards to their rejecting shiva, or some other god than their own. We really need to get back to basics and knock this article out. Its not very far from being done! Personality conflicts have resulted in a mess, here and elsewhere, IMO. Jack 00:12, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

No, atheism is a lack of belief in any gods. It is quite inaccurate to call a Christian an atheist in regards to any other particular gods, because they still believe in at least one god themselves. Atheists believe in 0 gods. Anyway, this is the same old argument that's on talk:atheism, and if it's to continue it really should be over there. Bryan 00:18, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

communicate

come on IRC, or something. Your making me mad, and I see no reason for it. I have never noticed you to be unreasonable. Talk about it, don't revert. Jack 04:12, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Talk, talk, talk. We talked for a full week and we agreed to a compromise, and then you blanked the talk: and put your capital-G God right back into the article where this whole thing started from. It really doesn't seem like talking to you does much good, does it? Bryan 04:26, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I blanked nothing. The page was too big! I put it in the archive. Its not MY capital G! Everey source agrees w me! Plenty of others in the talk agreed w me. I did compromise~! prom was, I realized I can't say something thats untrue, w those citations staring me in the face.... I donno man... if you really think I'm unreasonable (habe you read the talk page recently?) you need to thinkn again. I am open to anything that isn't blatently misinformative. Jack 04:32, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Generally speaking, when one archives old talk: one should archive old talk. The stuff at the end was still quite pertinant to what was going on, as evidenced by the fact that I'm having to refer back to it in the continuing argument over there. As for discussing the content of the article itself, I'm not going to do that here - take it to talk:atheism. Bryan 04:37, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The problem has nothing to do w the article, its clearly personal( you not accepting facts when they are presented) and interpersonal (you accusing me of not understanding my own references?). If I was the admin/arbitrator/wikipolice, I'd ask the both of us (and a few others) to leave the page. This is ugly and stuipid and ignorant of all obvious facts/citations/sources. IMO its all based on anti-theistic rhetoric, but whatever. Thats my POV. Jack 04:55, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think I can quite safely say that this time, you started it. I was quite willing to leave off editing the article further as long as you didn't either; I have other stuff to do. Bryan 05:13, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How about we both avoid this article (and that skeptics mess) as much as possible, and let others enjoy the pleasent musings of lord kenneth ;). IMO your actually not a bad guy, you just have a very bad impression of me, and a very non-scholorly approach to dealing with that bad impression. Jack 06:38, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The scientific skepticism article seems to be pretty stable right now, so I haven't been paying attention there either. As for my scholarly approach, I guess one's impression depends heavily on whether I agree with them or not. :) Bryan 06:42, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What I'm saying is I have seen you be both scholorly (respectful of logic, polite debate, sources) and not. And the not has been centered around me, after you realized I wrote amalek. Jack 06:49, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It wasn't that you wrote Amalek, it was that you redirected "rejection of God" there and then featured that redirect prominently in the atheism article. The Amalek article itself looked quite good to me. But let's not recap our entire disagreement now that we've agreed to leave it lie. Bryan 06:59, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Right. I just wanted to point out that I see our disagreement based on certain subtle causes, not on a fundamental editorial failing. That is a signifigant distinction. I am basically trying to say "go forth, and sin no more" ;) Jack 08:07, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See?

Jack's use of "God" on atheism is like what Reddi and Mirv are doing to scientific skepticism. I don't know why you wish to side with them when they are just as biased and wrong. I've already discussed it with you but you refuse to listen. I've told you why you are wrong and you have refused to answer me. You're becoming like Jack. Once scientific skepticism is back I fully expect you to actually look at my fair and unbiased one instead of the unfair and inaccurate one. The fact that you reverted to Mirv/Reddi's inaccurate version is obviously an attempt to antagonise me. - Lord Kenneth 20:56, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

You and Jack are both interpreting "disagrees with me" as "out to get me," and I'm not going to waste the effort to try refuting such paranoia. Believe whatever you want; I will continue to argue for what I consider to be NPOV and leave it up to the Wikipedia consensus to ultimately determine whether my position is acceptable. Bryan 01:36, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I see, sorry. Obviously "NPOV" means "allows lies, exaggerations, etc" to go "undeleted". You seem like the type of guy that would allow discussion of creationism in school science textbooks. Since you obviously refuse to discuss the issue, it's obvious where your biases lie. - Lord Kenneth 02:59, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)

rocks and minerals project

Since you've contributed in the rocks and minerals area before, wanted to let you know that I created a WikiProject Rocks and Minerals if you'd like to join. Elf 04:50, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Cool! I'll check it out. I'm not a geologist, though, I just play one sometimes. :) Bryan 05:20, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)