User talk:JZambrano

I'm back after a multi-year recess. I saw the pages here had been deleted in May - I have no idea why - and made the Jzy account because I thought this account was banned, to ask what was going on with that and the numerous account deletions in recent months. Ironically I came back expecting to start posting only to find Conservapedia had deleted my page, re-igniting my previous suspicion of the site and its administrators. I've been editing variously at CreationWiki, Citizendium, and SourceWatch over the last several years. A lot of my recent editing has been at CreationWiki.

I'd like to have a more favorable view of Conservapedia since I'm a pro-life, Creationist, very socially-conservative Christian, but thus far have seen a disturbing level of administrative heavy-handedness from 3 separate admins. I also dislike the unwillingness to mention valid criticisms of Obama like the Born Alive controversy, and suspect a number of the admins here are secretly liberals who support Obama. At any rate, I'm just here to use the debate pages and provide some opinions defending Christianity and Creationism since CreationWiki is unfortunately down right now (hopefully the site's back up soon). --Jzyehoshua 19:38, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

When did CreationWiki go down? And why? Conservative 20:09, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

Just today. I'm not sure why it's down. I'd been talking to Ashcraft lately about a possible fix to the code so footnotes don't change the line height (I asked about it on MediaWiki here). I'm hoping it's nothing more serious than a coding fix or maybe some temporary site outage. --Jzyehoshua 20:20, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

CreationWiki liveesss!!! :) --Jzyehoshua 21:46, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

I notice Conservapedia has the same issue Creationwiki does, line-height alteration for lines with footnotes. I found a fix for this using a line height template, but to make it work here it needs to have other templates installed also, and apparently putting a lot of the }} brackets after each other isn't allowed on Conservapedia. So I can't install templates like Xpd, Xpd2, Purge, and lf, some or all of which are required to keep the template from messing up. I'll just remove the line-height template I was using at Creationwiki for right now I guess. --Jzyehoshua 01:33, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

The template only worked on a case-by-case basis anyway, so it was a pain to have to put it in for pages to make one page at a time look nice. To fix it site-wide I think would require adding a line to the MediaWiki:common.css file per the following discussion: http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Project:Support_desk&limit=20#Footnote_Line_Height_17453 --Jzyehoshua 01:51, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

He looks suspicious to me, and much of his edits rely on liberal sources. With that being said, I suppose that we could give him another chance. I myself tried to change his block setting to two days after seeing that you changed his block setting to ten minutes, but I accidently blocked you instead... Sorry about that. - Markman 20:12, 23 July 2012 (EDT)

I agree with a 2-3 day block, just not permanent. And you forgot to unblock my IP address, lol. I figured it out eventually. He made a serious mistake, reverting Mr. Schlafly's revert of his material, but this is something to be explained to him. It was a big mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. I hope he'd just be given a warning this time. I'll personally explain it to him on his page. --Jzyehoshua 20:25, 23 July 2012 (EDT)

In retrospect I'm guessing that you're right, although I still retain my suspicion... Let's hope that after the next three days are over our he'll learn to behave himself. - Markman 20:39, 23 July 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, I think he will. I've seen a lot of vandals and what they would have done is blanked a whole page and added pure opinionated material. That he even bothered to use ref tags was a strong indication he wasn't a vandal, but someone making what he thought were good edits, and who just re-added it, not realizing who'd reverted it. I think it was just a new user not aware of site policy. On Wikipedia, you actually need to revert material 3 times, so policy here is quite a bit different from what he'd encounter there on other wikis. I think he'll learn from it. --Jzyehoshua 20:42, 23 July 2012 (EDT)

If you make a motion to unblock anyone, do a check of the block first. If the original block was unwarranted and/or minor, unblocking is fine. If the block was done by a senior admin, do not unblock unless you check with that person first. Karajou 04:56, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

The individual you just unblocked was reblocked by me; the individual was involved in heavy spam attacks on the site. Karajou 04:59, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Alright, I didn't realize that. Were they a sockpuppet you mean? Or did they engage in spam some other way? Sorry about the mistake. I guess there's some info I'm not able to see from the logs, which is what I was going by. --Joshua Zambrano 05:21, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

I'd even checked deleted page logs for the user just to make sure they hadn't created a bad page that got deleted, and didn't see anything there. Just off the information I knew existed, I couldn't see any reason for the block, and apologize for the unblock. I will make sure to check with senior admins from now on too, I hadn't realized Ed Poor was one. I'll check with any users on this list[1] first from now on, sorry about that. --Joshua Zambrano 05:28, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Thought it might be more productive and discreet to continue our chat off the main page talk page. Here's my response:

To deal with your first and second points: yes, the BBC is a special case; I cited it (a) because I'm British and (b) because the unique status of the BBC (publicly funded through a levy on TV owners, but kept as scrupulously away from political control as possible by means of its charter) means that it's the only media organization in my home country that is actually meant to be unbiased (I suppose the US equivalents would be PBS and NPR, though as I understand it their audiences are so vanishingly small as not to matter very much).

All other media, in a free market, are free to present the news as they wish. So you have liberal media (NY Times, MSNBC) and conservative media (Fox, WSJ). I've spent some time professionally in media analysis (though not to do with political bias), and it's a very tricky, nuanced thing to do. But ultimately it doesn't matter: news media are free to present the news with whatever slant they want. Audiences decide which they like best. The free market works: the only problem, in a democracy, is when uneducated people believe uncritically whatever they are told, because their lack of education means they don't know better. Democracy founders on the ignorance and indifference of the electorate; that is its Achilles' heel, which is why I value education so highly. And this wiki purports to be an educational tool, which is why I devote so much time to it, (It's marketed as a home-schooling resource, which is laughable and terrifying in equal measure -- see the entry on E=mc2, for instance).

I'm not convinced by your fourth point; let me tell you why. Yes, journalists tend to be better educated than the general public. But then you shift the blame to the colleges, which you claim exhibit liberal bias. Now, why should educational institutions be liberally biased? Perhaps because they tend to be located in urban centers, where people are more aware of the diversity of the society around them? (Cities are almost always more liberal than rural areas.) Perhaps because the very process of becoming educated exposes students to diversity, and causes them to be more aware of different people, and of how society as a whole works? One of the things any educational institution worthy of the name must do is encourage critical thinking, so that students question what they are told rather than swallowing it without tasting. It's possible to go through all of this and yet emerge with a conservative viewpoint; I have many highly educated friends who have.

In sum, I don't believe the assertion that colleges have a liberal bias. The bias they have is against ignorance and prejudice. Much of this wiki, in contrast, is biased in favor of ignorance and prejudice. --Esseph 16:34, 29 July 2012 (EDT)

As far as the OpenSecrets.org data is concerned, no surprises there. Business owners expect the GOP to give them breaks; all the other groups you mention will tend to fare better under the Democrats. Note how the Texas GOP recently came out against educating children to think critically. -- Esseph 16:48, 29 July 2012 (EDT)

Alright, that's fine. However, the fact of the matter is that here in the U.S., we have seen something of a takeover by liberals of whole industries in our country. I don't know if anything similar has happened in Europe, but this is a very real problem here in the United States. We let our court system become so liberalized that the liberals here were able to sue to force government to do pretty much whatever they want, and now require the teaching of Macroevolution, Abortion, and Homosexual role models[2] in public classrooms. All of this has occurred just over the past 4 decades or so, and is contrary to what our nation used to be like. As a result, the majority of our nation is much more socially conservative and is opposed to this takeover of our government to support a single partisan side.

76% of Americans oppose abortion after the 1st trimester (only 25% say it should be legal under any circumstances, and 13% under most)[3], 46% believe in Young Earth Creationism and 32% in Old Earth Creationism (39% say YEC is definitely true and 27% that it's probably true)[4], and 76% support voluntary prayer in public schools.[5] Support for gay marriage remains borderline, with 50% support.[6] The level of Americans with a "Great Deal" of support for our Education system has dropped now to an all-time low of 11% and those saying "Quite a Lot" are down to 18%, also a combined low.[7]

One reason educational centers tend to be biased is that we have a Department of Education here which controls them all.[8] I don't know if England has one, but here it tends to be very liberal and governed by court decisions as well. Again, it forces the teachings of liberals here to indoctrinate students. Those who disagree, the socially conservative 2/3 of Americans (which includes by the way many Democrats and Independents[9][10]), must homeschool and pursue alternative education (e.g. private schools). Also, colleges here actually get subsidized in large part by the government, especially by very liberal states.[11] If you look at the budgets of many liberal states (Illinois, Wisconsin, California, etc.), you'll see Democrat lawmakers voted to subsidize the state's colleges, and that these have become such major drains on state budgets as to be a major reason states are going bankrupt here. Democrats can essentially control the institutions through government subsidies and the courts. It's just a bad system that's cropped up.

Finally, as far as tax breaks, actually, 1/3 of Obama's Stimulus consisted of tax cuts. Tax cuts are the least effective form of government spending, even moreso than spending on defense, which was one reason I criticized Obama's Stimulus so strongly.[12] (See pg. 6)

--Joshua Zambrano 22:41, 29 July 2012 (EDT)

Also, I noticed you mentioned that the New York Times is liberal. Some think this, but I disagree. It's actually more moderate. NBC is even more liberal than FOX is conservative (especially since FOX at least has some liberal hosts like Alan Colmes and Bob Beckel whereas NBC has no conservatives I'm aware of). CBS is very liberal, as outlined in Bernie Goldberg's famous book, "Bias" (I have a copy). CNN and ABC are the ones with reputations as more middle of the road, but CNN definitely slants liberal also. That the other stations all slant left resulting in all the conservatives going to FOX News is pretty well evidenced by TV ratings - FOX has consistently been annihilating other stations for the past 8 years or so.[13] It's not uncommon for it to have more viewers in a given time slot than all other networks combined. --Joshua Zambrano 22:56, 29 July 2012 (EDT)--Joshua Zambrano 22:56, 29 July 2012 (EDT)

Myself, Jpatt, and others know exactly what we are doing to protect this website; you don't. And right now, we are seeing in you someone who is making sure spammers, trolls, and vandals get in. It stops now. Karajou 05:13, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

I have a hard time believing 73% of all users are "spammers, trolls, and vandals", sorry. I've never seen a wiki that had 73% of all new users get banned like this. I can see the statistics over the past 11 days, and you and Jpatt banning 164 accounts over that time span is frankly ridiculous. Either you two are protecting the site as you say, or else you're sabotaging it. I'd like to know which. --Joshua Zambrano 05:18, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

You can believe what you want to believe, but you had better take this for what it's worth: I won't play the troll's games, I won't play the spammer's games, and I certainly am not going to play your games. Karajou 05:23, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

My only game right now is figuring out why more than half the new users are getting banned by you and Jpatt. It's pretty hard for Conservapedia to thrive if it's got two admins wrongly banning all its new users to sabotage it from within. Maybe you are the good guys you claim but until I see this addressed, I'm just too new here to accept that claim blindly. --Joshua Zambrano 05:27, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

And by the way, I don't understand why you were trying to pressure SharonW to leave also. She seemed like a good editor here, and you wanted her gone, even as you and Jpatt are steadily wiping out 2/3 of all the site's new accounts. Just a bit suspicious, sorry. I can't help that I have a curious mind. --Joshua Zambrano 05:30, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

And on top of all this, if you're so innocent, it seems even more suspicious that you'd delete all the evidence showing all the new user accounts were getting deleted that I just posted on Conservative's talk page. Innocent people don't try to hide discussion, that's something the guilty do. Sorry, but I've got 3 major reasons in my mind right now to suspect you, and while I trust God I've gotten suspicious of people. --Joshua Zambrano 05:36, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

And then there's the fourth reason, that first started me wondering. You called the Jzy account a sock account from Kansas with 3 accounts I never heard of. So I saw first-hand that your IP tracking and claims of sockpuppets were wrong. That's four strikes now. --Joshua Zambrano 05:38, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

Last comment. I want this site to do well, or I wouldn't contribute like I do. But we CANNOT do well if we are losing 73% of our new users to blocks. I care about the site doing well and I wouldn't contest this issue like I do if I wasn't really worried about seeing 3/4 of the new accounts getting blocked. That's a serious danger to the site. If I came off as uncivil I do apologize, I was trying to be polite in saying it, and will abide by the 3-day block. But I do not apologize for my concern, this still worries me. --Joshua Zambrano 05:51, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

Stop it, seriously. How are accounts like "PrayingForKenToDie" or the explicit Sarah Palin one legitimate at all? They are trolling, quite clearly. --James Wilson 10:37, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

According to the block logs, the reason given was "user name policy: please consider recreating your account with a real first name and last initial: removing IP and account creation blocks to allow new account creation". All of the blocks had IP and account creation settings preventing this instruction from being carried out. Every single block had mistakenly included IP and account creation blocks contradicting such an instruction, and therefore I was just fixing the blocks so the block instructions could be followed. Like I said with my block summaries. --Joshua Zambrano 10:45, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

It makes no sense that you tell these people to create new accounts and then want them to have IP and account creation blocks preventing them from making new accounts. It left me no choice but to conclude the block settings were wrong, and to go about changing them. I just set the time to 1 year so I could apply the "Username policy" explanation, which doesn't show up for infinite blocks. --Joshua Zambrano 10:47, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

You should have discussed this with me before blocking me, obviously. --Joshua Zambrano 10:48, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

Basically I just made sure several dozen people who were told the past few months they needed to create new accounts, and then were blocked from being able to create new accounts, will now be able to create new accounts like they were told to. And you're trying to keep them from being able to create new accounts like they were told to. --Joshua Zambrano 10:52, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

While you're at it, how about explaining to me how so many blocks like this are telling people to create new accounts because of bad usernames are ending up with IP and account creation blocks? Is it that easy to mess up the block settings so that people whose only mistake was not making properly named usernames, won't be able to make new accounts? Why is this going on? Why are so many people getting IP and account creation block settings while being told to create new accounts? What kind of nutty system is this? --Joshua Zambrano 10:56, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

It's the status quo. Get used to it, or go to Wikipedia. Usernames like those I mentioned above get infinite trolling blocks. No exceptions. --James Wilson 11:09, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

Then the status quo is wrong, and I'm not going to support it. You shouldn't tell people to create new usernames and then block their account creation and IP addresses. That is ridiculous that this is so widespread. This is the kind of thing that occurs at Wikipedia, and shouldn't occur here. --Joshua Zambrano 11:12, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

The status quo is not wrong. You are. Please refrain from discussing this further. --James Wilson 11:16, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

Well, there's a nice logical argument from you: "I'm right, you're wrong, don't talk to me." I really don't think this discussion is going anywhere so by all means take your own advice. --Joshua Zambrano 11:20, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

Again, the problem is you. Please note 90/10 and your recent habit of edits. --James Wilson 11:28, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

I just made dozens of edits creating a Climategate emails page, and have contributed hundreds of thousands of bytes of data in quality, productive edits so far over the past few months. For all my talking, I've also been extremely productive. You are more in violation of 90/10 I'm sure than I am. --Joshua Zambrano 11:31, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

"Productive"? That's a good one. --James Wilson 11:37, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

So far I have yet to see you make a single logical argument, just snide insinuations and insults. Let me know when you're ready to actually discuss what's going on and then we can talk. --Joshua Zambrano 11:38, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

Creationwiki

I hate to say it, but maybe you're right about going elsewhere. --Joshua Zambrano 07:49, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

I need to believe in the direction of a wiki, and that people are being treated fairly by it. Maybe I should've never used my time here instead of at CreationWiki. Maybe I belong better there than here. --Joshua Zambrano 07:50, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

I too think James Wilson and Andy Schlafly treat you unfairly. Basically they seem to resent you for signaling a contradiction in the procedure for blocking users and for proactively trying to fix the error. I don't really understand why they would react with such aggression to a simple and honest attempt at improving the site. Their arguments ("you are not productive", " this is the status quo, live with it") ring hollow. Richman 08:23, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

At least at Creationwiki I don't need to worry about seeing people banned permanently over silly things like username formatting. I will miss the debate section here, but maybe I can find a way for Creationwiki to start one somehow. If anyone needs me, I will be back over there where I came from. --Joshua Zambrano 08:26, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

OK, bye. --James Wilson 08:49, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

I hope you find inner peace and happiness. Wschact 09:57, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

Thanks. --Joshua Zambrano 10:01, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

Since Markman has now admitted to being a parodist and is blocked himself, I am going through his blocks examining each one for fairness. I'm doing this by examining the contribution logs of the people blocked, as well as the deletion logs for that time period (to make sure they weren't auto-generated spam accounts which made spam user pages that got deleted). --Joshua Zambrano 21:47, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

Furthermore, some people are reporting difficulty accessing the site which I assume is due to overly broad IP blocking, or blocks that shouldn't have been made. So it's important to examine the blocks not just for those who might have been wrongly blocked, but current users who weren't blocked and are seemingly having trouble accessing Conservapedia because of the IP range blocks. --Joshua Zambrano 21:48, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

The posting you made to Andy's talk page is restored; I'm making sure he sees it. Karajou 23:36, 3 September 2013 (EDT)

Alright, that's fine, it was removed as a courtesy to you, I actually didn't think you'd want it there. Your call. --Joshua Zambrano 00:19, 4 September 2013 (EDT)

I'm back. Just so there's no confusion, this is editing I did on Wikipedia,[14] which will be reversed because I made clear who I was. Anyway, Wikipedia didn't want it, so it's coming here. Enjoy. --Joshua Zambrano 17:10, 25 January 2015 (EST)

I just saw you did add some worthwhile material to the homosexuality article. For example, the income/education information. I wish I could work with you on the article, but I can't do that right now.

I have your Facebook contact information for the future though. Conservative 01:41, 26 January 2015 (EST)

I sent you an email further explaining things. Conservative 02:06, 26 January 2015 (EST)