User talk:Brews ohare

 Hello Brews ohare, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To get started, you may


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And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 16:27, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way
I know how you must feel. If there can be any way to accommodate you, help, etc, don't hesitate to ask. Myself, User:Darklama and User:Jtneill tend to be the most active admin if you need anything. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:29, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I responded to your query on my talk page. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikiversity
Brews, Wikiversity is a special place. I'm slightly aware of your history on Wikipedia, and think that you might find Wikiversity a great place to work. This isn't an encyclopedia, and various pedagogical approaches are welcome. We handle controversy over pages, if it arises, and at least in theory -- this isn't a perfect community either! --, by forking or inclusive approaches. I'm specialized in cold fusion, but have only a general background in physics (Cal Tech, 1961-63, Richard P. Feynman), enough to understand the basic arguments, and at Cold fusion and subpages I'd specially invite you to help out, without any expectation that you'd agree with my point of view. We need knowledgeable participation, and if we disagree, I assume that any discussions would help students to learn more about the topic. We just have to remain civil! (Stupidity is allowed, at least to start, and ignorance is the foundation of learning.)

There is a set of articles that have been tagged with Category:Inexplicable physics pages, they have been up for deletion. Perhaps you would like to look at them and render your opinion about them at Requests for deletion and a couple of later entries. Generally, we prefer to keep stuff if it might possibly be useful. If anyone could use these articles in some way, perhaps they might be stuffed into subspace somewhere, I hate to throw away the work that the IP editor put into them, it would be fine to keep them, I'm sure, if there is an intention to use them. It's a shame that the user did not register and provide an email address so we could know what the intentions were. We do not need what merely duplicates Wikipedia, and which could be replaced by a link to Wikipedia pages, whether the current page, a prior revision, or both.

Anyway, again, welcome. --Abd 02:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I just did some reading in the area of your recent one-year site ban on Wikipedia. I've been through it, though my site ban was only for three months. I've seen what you've seen, and recognize what you faced there. That doesn't mean that I'd agree with every action of yours, but my belief is that the site never developed procedures for dealing with problems that didn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. They believe that any one who runs into trouble at Wikipedia has a problem and needs "rehabilitation," as it was said, and since "Wikipedia isn't therapy," forget about it, and only if you abjectly acknowledge your errors -- which may or may not actually be errors -- could it even be considered grudgingly accepting you back into the community. It is a community which is constitutionally incapable of ever recognizing that it can make mistakes as a community. That is fatal to its mission, unfortunately. I saw the same wikilawyering of bans to increasing stringency, until the original purpose was entirely lost. I saw people utterly unqualified to understand what fringe is and is not on a topic go ahead and make the decision, when it comes to sanctioning another editor. And I could go on and on, but Wikiversity is not for exposing Wikipedia errors on ban decisions, there are other ways to do that. However, it is for developing learning resources, so new approaches are very welcome here, and you won't find "fringe" flies very far as an accusation on Wikiversity. Just try to find consensus on overall presentation of a topic, so that a student popping into Physics is not immediately sucked into something that most physicists would reject. But alternative offerings are welcome, and, as Jimbo Wales wrote long ago, most "fringe believers" do know that their views are fringe, but merely want to see them fairly presented. So consensus is possible, and the notability "undue weight" bugaboo has far less power here. So if consensus at some page is that my view is "fringe," and shouldn't dominate the page, I can get a subpage and fully express what I find or think important to say. Original research is allowed, explicitly, here. That mainspace here allows subpages is a huge feature. Come on over to Cold fusion, the water may be heavy, but the temperature is roomy. If I've stuck my foot in my mouth as to the physics, anywhere, I want to know! The "experts" on Wikipedia -- grad students, really, pseudoskeptics, who don't know the fields and the current literature -- weren't interested.

Theoretically, Wikipedia pages, where there is a corresponding learning resource on Wikiversity, should have an interwiki link. That's been blocked for Cold fusion because they claim that the pages here are "self-published," which is a radical misunderstanding of what an external link would be. It's for a place to learn about a subject by deeply exploring it, with teachers, particularly experts, and with other students. Eventually, I'll deal with that problem, but prefer to wait until resources here are better developed and broader in scope. I have no intention of allowing Cold fusion to be a "fringe" resource, pretending to be mainstream while actually straying far from it. However, see this mainstream peer-reviewed secondary source on cold fusion. It's not isolated, it is about the 16th positive review on cold fusion to appear in mainstream journals in the last five years. There are no corresponding negative reviews, the skeptical position, in the literature, has collapsed, but uninformed skepticism still continues as if nothing had happened.

I was topic banned (a renewal under "discretionary sanctions") from cold fusion on Wikipedia for declaring a conflict of interest and confining myself to suggestions in Talk, and pointing to reliable sources, suggesting edits civilly, and most insane of all, for going to meta and successfully requesting removal of lenr-canr.org from the spam blacklist, which was actually pursuing an ArbComm decision from a year before. But to a certain admin, it all looked like "fringe POV-pushing," and I've just not been sufficiently motivated to challenge it. After a while, the illegitimi carborundum, and I really have better things to do, like real research, and, I'm happy to say, I helped edit that Naturwissenschaften paper and am credited for that. Real recognition from real scientists, gee, I wonder why I prefer that to acceptance by anonymous and very unpleasant believers in their own qualifications to judge others?

Ah, once again, welcome, and I hope we can work together here. If I can be of any assistance.... --Abd 03:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the introductory words. I don't know anything about this site, so everything you say about the site is new to me. On the other hand, diffculties at WP are all too familiar. I'd say my troubles there (IMO of course) stem from trying too hard to explain things on Talk pages that no-one wanted to hear, either becuause it was too technical, too boring, or just too much opposed to their own opinions. My persistance created a mob out to get me for anything they could find. I'll try to avoid such developments here. Brews ohare 03:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, it's always great to consider context. If I drop a tome on someone's Talk page, they frequently dislike it. Especially if I'm explaining how wrong they are! But explaining something in a resource, I can do it. And I can use collapse or subpages, perhaps later, to leave a summary at the top level and a fuller discussion underneath. Wikipedia dislikes depth, your experience has been matched by many who were, truly or relatively, experts. Again, Brews, welcome to Wikiversity. I think you are going to love it, if you like exploring a topic and explaining it. You have a good reputation, in fact, as to knowing physics. I'm looking forward to seeing your work here. --Abd 04:26, 23 November 2010 (UTC)