User talk:VargasMilan

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Welcome!

Hello, VargasMilan, and welcome to Conservapedia!

We're glad you are here to edit. We ask that you read our Editor's Guide before you edit.

At the right are some useful links for you. You can include these links on your user page by putting "{{Useful links}}" on the page. Any questions--ask!

Thanks for reading, VargasMilan!

ṬK_/Admin^/Talk 07:52, 1 January 2010 (EST)

re: Atheism article

If you want to replace the bare link footnotes of the Atheism article with more descriptive non-bare links, that would be most welcome. I am involved in some major projects right now and I am pressed for time. Conservative 13:00, 16 July 2014 (EDT)

Okay, I'll do some more then. VargasMilan 16:01, 16 July 2014 (EDT)

Thanks. Much appreciated. Conservative 16:26, 16 July 2014 (EDT)

Thank you again for all your work on the atheism article. It's appearance looks noticeably better plus it is more informative. Conservative 00:43, 15 January 2015 (EST)

You're welcome. I also like the article and appreciate all the research you've done for it. VargasMilan 00:47, 15 January 2015 (EST)

Thanks. I don't think I would do the research again. Atheism is a rather stale topic and its prospects in terms of adherents looks poor in the 21st century. I agree with John Updike who said, "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic un-interestingness as an intellectual position." If I knew the New Atheism was just a fad, I wouldn't have bothered. In hindsight, it has a lot of indicators that it was merely a fad.

My research had a The Bridge on the River Kwai/Gestalt principle like element to it. Once I started the task, I wanted to finish it. :) Conservative 01:13, 15 January 2015 (EST)

You gathered in one place a lot of supporting evidence that otherwise would have been scattered all over the internet and of limited use. I think you deserve a kudos for that. VargasMilan 01:17, 15 January 2015 (EST)

I did put a fly in the evangelical/militant atheist soup by putting this evidence together in one place. And a good Christian apologetics team has both an offense/defense (Saying why other worldviews are wrong and why Christianity is correct). So some good came out of it. But there is the issue of the opportunity cost. I could have used the time to advance other causes (Christian evangelism, anti-slavery efforts, anti-poverty efforts, etc. etc.). If you look HERE and HEREand HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and at the global atheism article, it does seem like atheism is losing steam in the world, the US, the UK and Australia in recent years.

Part of this downward trend is due to Christian efforts and a lot of it is due to atheists shooting themselves in the foot through their ill behavior and infighting (see: Atheist movement and Elevatorgate). In addition, the more we know about the physical world and about the nature of man, the less plausible atheism is. In addition, the atheist community has largely allied itself with the left end of the political spectrum and in recent years, the left has not fared very well. And high sovereign debt around the world in developed countries, makes the left's prospects dimmer. Austerity measures are often not something a country chooses. It is something that is forced upon them. And austerity measures and leftism are not a good match. Conservative 17:01, 15 January 2015 (EST)

I just noticed something. If you look at those graphs, you will see that upward part of the graphs correlate with the rise of New Atheism and the political left (Obama, etc. etc.), but the descent of the graphs is correlated with the fall of the New Atheism and the political left losing favor. I didn't notice the political aspect until just now. Christendom has a higher degree of diversity in terms of politics due to its high geographic diversity. Like I am politically to the right within the multiple Christian editors of User: Conservate-ism and politically to the right of former admin Philip Rayment for example. Conservative 17:20, 15 January 2015 (EST)

Great job and small request

You are doing a superb job as far as the atheism footnotes.

I have a small request as far as the atheism article footnotes. For various reasons, I try to keep all the links on the page highly relevant. Like all the links going to the specific source pages. So if you could avoid the links going to the home pages of the news websites (or other websites), I would appreciate it.

The article is going to look fantastic when the footnoting is finished and it will be more helpful to readers as well. Conservative 21:28, 17 July 2014 (EDT)

Okay, I'll compress them if you like. Thanks for the compliments. VargasMilan 21:40, 17 July 2014 (EDT)

OK, I just compressed one. The footnote to the Marxism website. You can see what I did. Conservative 21:59, 17 July 2014 (EDT)

re: two other articles

After you finish footnoting the atheism article, consider footnoting the evolution and homosexuality articles because those articles are popular articles too. Conservative 20:11, 20 July 2014 (EDT)

Thank you. VargasMilan 20:05, 20 July 2014 (EDT)

footnotes - atheism article

The only reason I changed one of the footnotes in the article is because I found a better source. Your footnoting is excellent and makes the article more user friendly which is important. Conservative 17:29, 21 July 2014 (EDT)

Thank you, I was just about to ask you about that change. And thank you for the compliments. VargasMilan 17:33, 21 July 2014 (EDT)

The Evolution article is probably the most popular article on this website. And the topic is related to atheism too. Would you like to do the footnoting for the evolution article too? Conservative 21:43, 28 July 2014 (EDT)

That one is very long. I would prefer to work on some of the smaller "Liberal characteristics and traits" articles first. VargasMilan 00:01, 29 July 2014 (EDT)

OK. There is an article which has under 50 footnotes and over 1,000,000 page views. The liberal article. This would be an excellent candidate to do better footnoting. Conservative 01:46, 29 July 2014 (EDT)

spammer on the loose

See Recent changes at 23:52. SamHB 00:16, 28 September 2014 (EDT)

I'm pretty sure you do have blocking powers. Did Andy not congratulate you? SamHB 01:32, 28 September 2014 (EDT)

We now have confirmation direct from Andy. It's on my talk page. Go have a look. He appreciates your work. (As do I.) SamHB 01:01, 29 September 2014 (EDT)

News maybe?

I found this article on cracked.com mentioning 6 studies that proves that not all fields of science are trustworthy and that some scientists will do what they can to get more funds for their "research". I'm not 100% sure if it's trustworthy, but maybe after proofreading it you guys could use this in your news or global warming article somewhere. MontanaMax 01:20, 30 September 2014 (EDT)

http://www.cracked.com/article_20789_6-shocking-studies-that-prove-science-totally-broken.html

Thanks, I'll look into it. But how do you think we would look linking to Cracked on the front page? VargasMilan 01:25, 30 September 2014 (EDT)

I guess I understand, but its rare to see a usually liberal/gray site admit something like this. MontanaMax 01:28, 30 September 2014 (EDT)

They also did a piece something like "10 things you didn't know about life behind the iron curtain" featuring a writer who lived in Romania. VargasMilan 01:36, 30 September 2014 (EDT)

I suggest you be vigilant with the main page as some may try to vandalize it with crude drawings using this "hidden" graffiti program -> http://dudl.me/ Vandals use it all the time on major sites. -MontanaMax 16:54, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

If you like doing administrative tasks

If you like doing administrative tasks, there are a lot of orphan pages that need to be linked to from other pages. You can find the list of them here: http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Special:LonelyPages&limit=500&offset=0 Conservative 16:14, 11 October 2014 (EDT)

I started the work by deorphanizing the African Burial Ground article. Conservative 16:23, 11 October 2014 (EDT)

Relativity

Thanks for calling that missing counterexample to my attention, and thereby (that means "because of what preceded"  :-) keeping the numbering consistent. I'll get on it when I have the time. It will be a fairly straightforward one. In fact, there have been very few truly original "counterexamples" lately. I will try to eschew sesquipedalian expressions, and generally avoid "a stance of withering patrician disdain for the untutored mind"  :-) Though such disdain is often hard to avoid on that page  :-) SamHB 12:13, 12 October 2014 (EDT)

There's a lot to be said for self-confidence I suppose. Have at it. VargasMilan 13:09, 12 October 2014 (EDT)

another spammer on the loose

Check RC. I'm sure you would have noticed it pretty soon. SamHB 15:30, 30 November 2014 (EST)

Thank you. VargasMilan 15:40, 30 November 2014 (EST)

No hard feelings, I hope?

I really do respect you. And I see that, with your recent edits to the National debt, along with many other things, you really are a subject matter expert, and willing to use that expertise. There are a lot of people that just fix punctuation and stuff, in what appears to be just an attempt to curry favor.

Now if I could just figure out what "withering patrician disdain" means!

SamHB 00:08, 1 December 2014 (EST)

Do a search of the phrase in Conservapedia! It's one of Conservative's favorite quotes. You'll see who the original missive was actually aimed at without the substitution of your name. VargasMilan 00:25, 1 December 2014 (EST)

My goodness, you're right! I hadn't thought of that. Amazing. The way so much of his garbage writing is. SamHB 00:40, 1 December 2014 (EST)

Proper use of mainpage talk

OK, I'm going to follow your example, and try to get people to use main talk for discussion of the main page content only, and the community portal for general discussion, flaming, arguing, etc. We'll see how that goes. Maybe people are just too set in their ways, and they'll go back to the old way.

By the way, I have a vague recollection of someone fixing the lose vs. loose error recently, and I think it was you. If so, thank you. I fear that I am loosing my mind over this. SamHB 17:31, 6 December 2014 (EST)

The switch over to the community portal seems to be going extremely well. I'm pleased that something I did is already getting people to use the right page. By the way, at the very bottom you will see a note by me about a user ("TheonlySIL", or whatever) that really, really, really desires to be blocked. Just sayin' SamHB 21:51, 6 December 2014 (EST)

Project

Would you like to collaborate with other editors on a wiki project to help Conservapedia be a strong resource for a given topic.

The topic could be decided by the editors participating.

If you are interested, please go to: The collaborative project. Conservative 22:04, 25 December 2014 (EST)

Survivalblog

Thank you for your edits. Don't you think that this edit [1] was rather rambling to the point of distracting the reader from what we are trying to say? Could you please consider rewriting it for clarity? I think the reader can get the idea without a parody of the blog's writing style. Many thanks, Wschact 01:25, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Your edit improves things. It would be my preference to have moved the discussion to a general overview article like Survivalism and the long quote to Examples of Bias in Wikipedia, but I am dropping my concerns. Again, many thanks, Wschact 01:53, 13 January 2015 (EST)

Conservative vouched for this person.

Could you give me a link to this? Thanks. --AugustO 01:50, 14 January 2015 (EST)

They edited together consecutively within the space of one or two minutes. VargasMilan 01:55, 14 January 2015 (EST)

Sorry, I didn't know that not objecting to means vouching for. --AugustO 02:00, 14 January 2015 (EST)

I got rid of Burke trash and other trash on your talk page for you

I got rid of Burke trash and other trash on your talk page for you.Conservative 05:20, 21 March 2015 (EDT)

Account promoted

Your account has been promoted to make it easier for you to revert edits, and also for you to have night editing. Congratulation!

Thank you, Andy! I appreciate it. VargasMilan 22:57, 29 March 2015 (EDT)

Fixed typo on main page

I fixed the typo on the main page. Thanks. Conservative 03:20, 31 March 2015 (EDT)

I don't understand ...

Why do you keep reverting my edits to the Obama and Unemployment page? We all know that unemployment has fallen (albeit with a lowering workforce participation), why shouldn't the article reflect that?

I updated the Barack Obama and United States Unemployment article

I updated the Barack Obama and United States Unemployment article. Conservative 15:36, 30 April 2015 (EDT)

I just sent you an email

VargasMilan, I just sent you an email. Conservative 18:18, 9 May 2015 (EDT)

Thanks for the welcome. I sent you a reply regarding what you said in your e-mail. VargasMilan 19:05, 9 May 2015 (EDT)

OK. I just sent you a followup email. Conservative 20:30, 9 May 2015 (EDT)

Thank you. I will check into those to see if there's anything I've missed from my own research. VargasMilan 20:40, 9 May 2015 (EDT)

OK. I just sent you a final email to tie things up as far as our recent discussions. Conservative 05:24, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Inserting false information

When you banned me you put as the reason for my ban, "inserting false information", what was the false information I inserted? I just want to know so that I'm more careful and do not do the same thing again this time. --Burke39 23:53, 11 May 2015 (EDT)

Also, what was my bad behavior in general? I want to make sure I know what mistakes to avoid in the future.--Burke39 00:17, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Well the CNN article was one. I just remember there being a number of problems. I believe I noted the problems in the edit summaries.

When you asked about edits to the LDS article, I thought you were referring to the talk page, but in the article you made a mistake there too that I noted in the edit summary. VargasMilan 00:29, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

But thank you for your positive contributions. VargasMilan 00:44, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Was a feeling that my editing was "liberal" part of the reason I was banned, or was it more so for poorly sourcing what I wrote? Because when I saw the "creepy bizarre/liberal sex topic quota" I thought that comment was odd because I'm actually far right politically on most other issues, although I guess I might be less conservative than this site in that one area. --Burke39 00:53, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

You were behaving like a liberal spammer. The results of the edits being somewhat liberal made them seem more deliberate.

As for the comment, I'd just be speculating. It was User:Conservative who said it. VargasMilan 01:06, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I think it might have been because of edits like this,[2], I was making a positive statement in this edit, not a normative one. A positive statement is a neutral statement of fact that is not related to issues of right or wrong, while a normative statement refers to statements of fact that involve moral judgements. I was not saying pedophilia was ok in that edit, I was saying that I did not agree all religions condemned it, because numerous sources have said that Mohammad married a child and that the Talmud (which is a book some Jewish denominations use as a supplement to the Bible) allowed child marriage, I was not saying that what Mohammad allegedly did was right or that what the Talmud allegedly said was right, I was saying that because numerous sources have said that, the statement that all religions condemn pedophilia is questionable. That's not the same thing as saying pedophilia is ok, that's not what I was saying. And when I removed the part about homosexuals being connected to the pedophile advocates from the article, the reason was because homosexuality isn't the same thing as pedophilia, and because the advocates I saw mentioned looked like they were more so advocating a slight reduction in the legal age for sex, not legalizing pedophilia. I was not saying that I approved of homosexuality or that I agreed with their proposals. In the Alfred Kinsey article, when I removed the part saying he advocated adult sexual abuse of children, I did not remove it because it was not true, but because it did not have a source [3]. I was not saying the statement was incorrect or defending Kinsey in any way. In the ephebophilia article,when I said that was not a problem [4], I was going by what the reliable sources says, that attraction includes attraction to legal adults, 18-19 year olds, so it isn't the same thing as pedophilia, saying its not a sexual perversion is not the same thing as saying it would be appropriate to act on it. So I think some of my edits were misinterpreted. --Burke39 01:25, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Like I said, they, perhaps incidentally, lined up on the side of liberalization. Because...treating human sexuality positively rather than normatively is in itself a liberal red flag. Beginning with Havelock Ellis. VargasMilan 01:39, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Ok, that is true. I remember Sigmund Freud, another advocate of sexual perversion whose writings I find highly disturbing, saying that he was not concerned with value judgements, and I think that is disgusting to ignore a normative role completely, because then things as heinous as pedophilia or sadism become acceptable. But when I made that statement about my statement about religious views on pedophilia being positive not normative, I was not saying I would treat the subject in general positively. It should be treated normatively because pedophilic acts are heinous and the attraction is disordered. I was just making the positive statement that some religions seemed to condone it, I was not advocating treating the topic in general in a positive way, in fact I maybe even should have followed making that statement by making clear with a normative statement that if a religion condones something that heinous, it is doing something morally repugnant and wrong. --Burke39 01:47, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Christian Science

[5] Wikipedia begins its article about Christian Science with the statement, "It was developed in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy" without saying "or as her adherents would prefer to say, discovered." I'm not going to edit war about this, but adding the second statement seems redundant and unencyclopedic to me. Saying that she founded does not imply that its a false religion, it just says that she is the person who started the religion in this world. --Burke39 01:32, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Did you read my edit summary? She is presented by the sect as discovering the laws of spiritual forces rather than as treating symptoms. VargasMilan 01:39, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I did read it, I just don't agree that its necessary to put that in the lead. I don't think saying she started the religion in this world, implies that her claims that she discovered spiritual laws are false. And I think its less redundant. --Burke39 01:49, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I don't know, doesn't it kind of provide a flash of insight that would make the reader interested to read more? VargasMilan 01:57, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Maybe, but it does not look like its neutral, it looks like its endorsing the religion's claims. Is the purpose of the article to neutrally cover the church, or to be an advertisement for the church? If the purpose is the former, then it does not make sense to make that the first sentence. Anyway, it still is redundant, that's the main problem I have with it. I know this encyclopedia is not supposed to be neutral the way wikipedia allegedly is, but I still think there should be some level of neutrality in reporting information here. --Burke39 02:01, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

But if the article can get a conservative to personally understand the appeal, it might put a conservative more on guard against its potential religious unorthodoxy as described later in the article. VargasMilan 02:10, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Honestly, to me it looked like the statement was endorsing Christian Science as the correct religion. (Since it seems like my saying the Talmud condoned pedophilia lead to people mistakenly viewing me as a pedophile advocate, I will clarify that I'm not saying I think Christian Science is true, I'm saying it looked to me like the article was saying that). --Burke39 02:13, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Soviet Union

The article about the Soviet Union,[6], has a photograph of a cat in it. That just seems kind of bizarre and off topic to me. But I'm not going to remove it myself because I don't want to cause problems. But my opinion is that it should be removed. What do you think? --Burke39 02:05, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

It does seem strange. But it was added by the same administrator who imposed your topic ban. He'd think you were getting even with him, so you'd better ask him about it first. VargasMilan 02:17, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I honestly didn't know that. Which administrator is that? I already removed it.--Burke39 02:19, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I readied the photo to avoid controversy.

You readied it? VargasMilan 02:23, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I meant I re-added it, or I thought I had. It was a typo. --Burke39 02:25, 12 May 2015 (EDT)