User talk:Nikurasu/Archive 1

I feel it appropriate to indicate that I have not the slightest ill will to the articles that you have been submitting, or to Dr. Commons's interesting work. But as one of the administrators here, it is my responsibility to enforce our rules for copyright, which we are not legally able to modify or deal with informally. It is also my responsibility to make sure that articles meet our standards in other respects. In fact, i take a particular interest in shepherding academic articles and faculty biographies through the somewhat unusual complexities of WP rules and will do whatever I reasonably can to improve and maintain such articles. I do call your attention to WP:OWN and WP:COI. The insertion of references to ones work or the work of one's close associates in multiple articles is very strongly discouraged, regardless of the importance of the work. if the work is important, others will do so. This s a friendly note, intended to alert you to the problems and how to fix them. Do not take things personally, and remember that it is literally true what we say on the edit box, that anything submitted here will be mercilessly edited. DGG (talk) 06:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I apologize if that is how what I was doing came off as. I was not contesting your job and your need to enforce copyrights (surely this is an essential duty). In fact, I agree with the assessment that his use of copyrighted material was inappropriate, and I think your leniency is admirable. I was most interested in you elaborating in specifics what the problems were. This way, they could be more easily resolved. As was, there was little way for user Commons@tiac.net to understand what exactly the problem was, and this is why I replied. Also, I do not think it is good to make edits without supplying the proof of the justification. An authority than maintains the necessary standards is indeed important; however, an authority also needs to be transparent and specific about the problem they are addressing. If not, not only does it seem like a personal attack (even if it is not), but it is frustrating and confusing. Also, please do not take this personally (as you said).

I have read your profile and I understand that. I appreciate it very much. I think that that kind of openness is essential to intellectual advancement and beneficial to many people.

I understand WP:OWN and WP:COI, and acknowledge their importance and the significance of the issues at large in intellectual endeavors. I have been bedridden for most of the time in which this account has existed, so I have not edited other articles heavily. However, I am interested in doing so, and I think it is important to not restrict oneself just to an area of interest or just to assisting a colleague. I assure you that I will edit other topics and articles in the future. I will start doing so as soon as possible. However, I also believe it is important to act in a timely manner, especially when dealing with copyright issues, which are serious and sensitive issues. This is especially true on Wikipedia, where their resolution is extremely important in terms of the credibility of the medium. Though, regardless they are important. Intellectual property should not be infringed upon.

What else I have to say is that I do not think you should not act hastily in the present situation. You have indeed been patient so far, but I am afraid that with all the editing work you do you may be compelled to finish this sooner than is best in the name of efficiency. I have talked to user Commons@tiac.net, and it seems that he understands all the intellectual issues involved in why his postings are disputed, but is confused due to the the way the information way presented and some degree of difficultly in understanding how Wikipedia works. I believe he has said this himself in one of his posts (He is new to posting and has said so). Due to his current troubles with Wikipedia he has had some degree of difficultly understanding what to do, as well as trouble understanding literally where and how to place his edits. I think it would not be of benefit to Wikipedia and in the interests of anyone hoping to maintain the accuracy or appropriateness of information on Wikipedia (or in general) to censor him based on him not having perfect understanding of how Wikipedia works.

I am sure you will understand this and I know you understand the importance of working to include more. I have simply been hoping that you understand that I also am interested in this goal. I think in this case, it is important that you be patient and assist this user as much as you can. There is no reason that the worthy information he posts should be lost.

On that note, could you please continue to assist him, as well as assist him in other issues? For example, I believe he needs help regarding his article on Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior. His response is valid, but it is in the wrong place (actually, I see that good assistance has already come, but any further assistance would always be helpful).

I believe there was some degree of misunderstanding here, and while it is unfortunate, I believe we have made progress in resolving it through this communication.

Nikurasu 21:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

All new users get confused a little; its an artificial and complex environment with customs as important as the written rules. I no more expect someone to understand what's going on than I would expect someone to understand about an academic department at the first day of graduate school.--and in some ways it's a little similar. Of course I'll help him--and you--and anyone who lets me. You can see what I do as an admin from my logs; Special, Logs, User DGG, Block log. I don't even delete very much--you can see that too.

The main concern I have with you, by the way, is WP:WALL , 2nd paragraph, and the fuller discussion at [1] To write a page about oneself, the journal one edits, the society one is president of, and the specific topics one specializes in seems natural enough, but it does tend to give that impression that they are all in to support each other. This is reinforced when one puts links to them in pages on not just more general subjects, but very general subjects, especially if one includes one's name in those links. You'll understand. DGG (talk) 00:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I do, and thank you for all of your assistance and kindness. I am continuing to work with user commons@tiac.net to explain what he needs to do and why (as well as what he cannot do), and attempting to help him to do it.

Nikurasu 23:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Positive Adult Development

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have perfomed a web search with the contents of Positive Adult Development, and it appears to be very similar to another wikipedia page: Positive Adult Devlopment. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot 20:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I reposted the Positive Adult Devlopment page with the properly spelled name: "Positive Adult Development". The old "Positive Adult Devlopment" article should be deleted. I did not realize that there was a move page feature. I apologize for this mistake. Nikurasu 20:49, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Your recent edits

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Talk:Relationship of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes#Rename

Though this article has now been redirected, just letting you know that I replied on its talk page again to your statements. Flyer22 (talk) 19:17, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and archived again. I had reverted the archiving so that I could reply and we could end the discussion properly, but, for us regarding this matter, it usually takes too long between each reply. And the talk page should really be archived now that the article is no longer there. You can see what I stated here. If you are that much up for replying, then I guess you could de-archive things as well (as responding in the archives is not allowed), or continue this discussion on my talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 17:08, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Aspartame controversy

I was hoping to drop a message to explain about the concerns expressed on the talk page. The history of that page has been one of a number of editors that have been disruptively pushing the point of view that aspartame is dangerous despite multiple high quality sources showing the contrary. This disruption also spread to the talk page, with endless discussions about the topic in general with precious little discussion of how to improve the article besides the spamming of very poor sources (such as the ones Arydberg just put up today). This calmed down somewhat when these POV pushing editors were topic banned from the article for a short amount of time. I would reinforce that when making medical claims, we have a guideline for which sources are appropriate, which would include recent, high quality peer-reviewed secondary sources such as reviews in the medical literature (which are already in the article), and we do not use old or primary sources to rebut such high quality sources. I think this controversial article would best be served by people discussing specific changes with specific sources referenced. No one wants to return to a time where people are arguing endlessly on the talk page without specific suggestions in mind. Yobol (talk) 04:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I see. That makes sense. My primary concern was that the research looked too sparse, and the discussion had become too geared towards addressing these extremists. I am aware of their existence in general. I assumed there had been some group of them trying to write into the article. Obviously, addressing this group is a very important concern. Specious information from unreliable sources should not be on Wikipedia. However, we cannot lose ourselves in this process. I also thought there might be some corporate editing of Wikipedia, but this does not seem to be the case here.

I have no issue with the section I created being closed. It seems to have already been hijacked by wholly idle discussion.

As for the lack of broad research basis in the article, you have to understand that the goal and method of a government board is entirely different from that of a scientist. While many government reviews are posted, there is only a single scientific research review Aspartame_controversy#cite_note-Butchko-52. There is also one medical summary article. Aspartame_controversy#cite_note-16. I suppose you could count a textbook as a research review, as well. Aspartame_controversy#cite_note-Kotsonis-25 Aspartame_controversy#cite_note-53 appears as if it is a research review, but it is really just a review of data on aspartame consumption (rather than safety). This is certainly not bad, but it is not enough. Multiple research reviews, or at least, a research review and another's evaluation of that review must be cited. What is good is that there are a number of studies cited at the end. However, as I said, these are basically Google results (or Pubmed). It might help to dig a little deeper. Looking at recent issues or even older issues of medical journals might be a good idea, for example. I do not think Pubmed is complete.

I don't see what is so inspecific about pointing out the limited research.

As for what I pointed out in the beginning, it's valid to an extent, but I'm not sure that I will find the sources again. Nowadays, I try to keep a record of my research readings.

Nikurasu (talk) 16:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I prefer discussing article content on the article talk pages, so I will try to be brief. There are a number of reviews published in the medical literature cited, all of which conform to WP:MEDRS (the most comprehensive being Butchko and Magnuson). More reviews, if you can find them, are always welcome as long as they conform to policy, though when I reviewed the literature last, using Pubmed, Google Scholar, and Ovid, there were no other reviews that I could find that meet our standards. That you feel the research is scarce about aspartame safety is obviously a subjective and personal opinion, and one that is not reflected by the scientists who have published on it or the governmental agencies tasked with evaluating safety. Further discussions about the scarcity or incompleteness of the literature will need to be cited to a reliable source; I look forward to such discussion on the article talk page. Yobol (talk) 06:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The sources are not even "medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies." They are government committees, which may or may not be made up of experts. One needs to do further research to know. Still, you could argue that they are reliable by Wikipedia standards. You could not argue that they are "general or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals." Articles of that type are both most important and drastically underrepresented. I'll make a new post when I have found more reviews. We can then continue the discussion. Further, I will quote "Wikipedia policies on the neutral point of view and not using original research demand that we present the prevailing medical or scientific consensus, which can be found in recent, authoritative review articles or textbooks and some forms of monographs." Given the original distinction in the reliable sources article, they are not talking primarily about government recommendations. To add to that, it is specified that "The best evidence comes from meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews of bodies of literature of overall good quality and consistency addressing the specific recommendation." Government sources do not necessarily contain meta-analysis. They do not necessarily have a complete review of bodies of literature, though perhaps systematic. I would be willing to argue for completeness as a criteria here in any policy discussion as well. A government review may also be systematically political rather than systematically evaluative of the science. By the standards set by the statement "Look for reviews published in the last five years or so, preferably in the last two or three years. The range of reviews you examine should be wide enough to catch at least one full review cycle, containing newer reviews written and published in the light of older ones and of more-recent primary studies," the one review (as well as the many other government guidelines) may also be too old. Nikurasu (talk) 22:53, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Please present specific recommendations for changes on the talk page of the article when you have specific changes in mind and specific sources. There is much too much hand-waving here. Cheers. Yobol (talk) 23:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm tired of this. Do you not understand what I am saying? How could you possibly not know what I am suggesting? Can you not read through the 70 sources and see that there is only one scientific research review (rather than recommendations from a government body), which I already pointed out specifically? I can't tell you to look for something in the article that's not there, either. There is only one scientific research review. That's the point. It seems to me like you aren't trying and are excusing yourself by blaming me. I can give a source-by-source evaluation if you really need it, but it should be unnecessary. It's a lot easier overall if you just look at the reference list. I'm tired of playing games and fighting stall tactics. Just read. Nikurasu (talk) 00:20, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

If you are saying there is only one peer-reviewed review article cited, you would be incorrect. I will not be responding further on this talk page, as I already noted that I discuss article specific topics on article talk pages. Again, I look forward to seeing what specific recommendations to improve the article you have on the article talk page. Yobol (talk) 00:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Finally. There's only one. It's also 6 years old. I checked the entire list. I pointed it out. Why don't you point out specifically the others? Or at least point out specifically what information you are missing that requires details from me? If you can't do either, I am going to have to assume you are making a specious argument. There are other peer-reviewed research articles, but they are not reviews. I do not know if it would be appropriate to reopen the discussion at this time, or to create a new section. If it is, start it up please. I could also ask an admin if you don't want to do it. Nikurasu (talk) 00:34, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Re: Talk page

I have made an effort to close the thread at Talk:Aspartame controversy. The previous approach of collapsing was an inappropriate solution to the problem. Per the guidelines, there was insufficient basis of a collapse. The thread started on-topic, and that material should not have been collapsed. I could argue for or against some of the later material being collapsed, but since I understand that you concur that the thread is off track, I hope you will support my approach. While collapsing is useful to get rid of long blocks of inappropriate material (e.g. long quotes, speeches, strong personal attacks), it is not the best approach to end a discussion that has lost its merit. When you have materials to discuss, you can always start a new discussion.Novangelis (talk) 17:07, 24 May 2011 (UTC)