User:SamHB
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Math and Science
Shortly after registering at Conservapedia, I saw, in "recent changes", a change by User:CSGuy about Talk:Laplace's equation. Perhaps unwisely, I jumped right in and promised to fix that, adding two more notes there.
But before proceeding with anything, I want to know whether I will be doing the right thing. It seems that CP at one time had, as a major goal, the creation of encyclopedic articles aimed at high-school age (homeschooled and otherwise) students. Looking around, I see four very prolific contributors to this field this back in early 2007 or so:
But they are all gone, and no one seems to be minding the store these days. Is there some policy reason for this? Are articles of this type not something that CP is currently interested in?
I note also that there seems to be some kind of viewpoint that frowns upon complex numbers, as seen by poking around in the various mathematics articles. Is this true? If so, that would be quite unfortunate, because I wouldn't be able to put in the fact, which I consider very educational at the level of ambitious high-school students, that the real and complex components of complex analytic functions satisfy Laplace's equation.
SamHB 20:10, 2 May 2008 (EDT)
IP Proxies
My situation is somewhat similar (but not identical) to Deborah's: I have to use proxies. So, to paraphrase Deborah, Please don't block me.
Now it turns out that I have already been blocked once because of a proxy conflict:
- 23:40, 4 May 2008 Karajou (Talk | contribs) blocked "AnthonyT (contribs)" with an expiry time of infinite (sock of banned vandals ArnieS, FrankD, SamHB, NormanTebbitt)
If I were more thin-skinned about such things, I would be offended by Karajou referring to me as a vandal, in violation of the civility guideline. Under the circumstances, it appears to be nothing more than an incorrect assumption that the use of proxies constitues vandalism. I have never seen Deborah ever commit vandalism. Nor have I.
I may start a discussion/debate page on this subject, if I ever figure out how to start such pages. The attitude toward IP proxies appears to be badly misguided and outdated, and doesn't seem to be helping Conservapedia at all.
SamHB 14:29, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
Further thoughts on IP blocking, and blocking in general
After a lot of looking through block logs, talk pages, users' contributions, vandal edits, and various controversies, it has become clear that the policy of blocking any appearance of duplicate IP addresses is counterproductive, and a total waste of effort.
- In fact, I think the entire blocking policy is being done in a nonproductive way, but that's the subject of a much longer essay in the future. But people might want to ask:
- Is the current way sysops operate actually effective in stopping vandalism?
- Is arguing over the statistical methodology leading to the conclusion that people in show business have a higher incidence of breast cancer distracting from more productive activities?
Getting back to IP blocks: They are completely counterproductive. Look through the contribution logs of the "vandals" that were accused of being socks of me -- AnthonyT, ArnieS, FrankD, and NormanTebbitt. They never committed vandalism (well, one of them used an off-color word.) Nor did I, nor did Deborah. They are not socks of me. I have no idea who any of them are.
The IP blocking policy is ostensibly in place to prevent people, who have been blocked based on the content of their edits, from evading the block by creating another ("sockpuppet") account and continuing what they were doing. A check of Wikipedia shows that they also have a policy against sockpuppets, but that it is only invoked when there is actual evidence of sockpuppetry. Such evidence is based on content and other factors, not on IP addresses.
Here in the 21st century, people use varied IP addresses for an enormous number of reasons. The internet is used from cell phones, "internet cafes", airports, corporate firewalls, and many other places that make it hard to draw conclusions about a person's identity. Drawing conclusions about who a person is based on the IP address from which they access the internet is just wrong. Anonymity is everywhere. One may not like it (the police and FBI sure don't), but it's a fact of contemporary internet life. Even the apparent policy that one has to use one's own name to create an account at Conservapedia is futile. You can't censor or police the internet!
As if that weren't bad enough in general, there is now a booming business of "anonymizing proxies" designed to get around censorship. These appear to have started as a way of circumventing the Chinese government's attempts to censor the internet. A couple of years ago I could find only about 5 such. There are now thousands, playing cat-and-mouse games with corporations, schools, and anyone else who tries to censor the internet. You can't censor or police the internet!
It appears that what connects me to AnthonyT, ArnieS, FrankD, and NormanTebbitt is that we used the same public proxy at one time or another. You can't censor or police the internet! Banning people for using the same IP address (or for saying things that sysops don't like) bans all the wrong people. Just look around at the block logs.
SamHB 22:36, 14 May 2008 (EDT)
Writing Plans, Writing Assignments, and more Mathematics
(Hi, Andy!)
It is my understanding that one is supposed to submit a "writing plan". I don't know where one submits it, so I'm putting mine here. It is also my understanding that sysops may give "writing assignments". I don't know how that is done, but feel free to put it here. Yes, here, on my user page, not the talk page. I give my permission for people to discuss things with me here.
Part of the writing plan was given above, relating to Laplace's equation. I still await instructions on that. There are a few more things I have noticed recently, relating to math. As before, I come at this from the standpoint of creating educational articles accessible to Junior-High or High-School-age people, whatever their actual educational circumstances.
- The mathematical series article, even after a sysop corrected one spelling error, still has 15 more, and 3 grammatical errors, and many statements that I question the mathematical correctness/appropriateness of. It doesn't explain how the geometric series formula works, it doesn't define alternating series correctly, and it doesn't explain their convergence criterion. These are all things that should be accessible to the target audience.
- I agree more with Andy than with DanielB on the fight over the fundamental theorem of calculus, but DanielB does have some good points. It could use more work.
- The gradient article is just wrong. Using the word "gradient" as a loose synonym for "derivative" is wrong. The gradient is a vector operation. This may not be accessible to our entire target audience, but it will be accessible to some, and we should explain it properly.
SamHB 22:23, 21 June 2008 (EDT)