In Tim Ball: turned out NN again I gloated over Tim Ball's nth deletion, but now I have to eat humble pie because he's been undeleted. Or rather, he's been created from scratch. Before his partisans get too excited its worth pointing out that the keep rationales begin with
Keep: Michael E. Mann called him "perhaps the most prominent climate change denier in Canada".
This is clearly silly: you don't become notable just because some genuinely notable person thinks you're an idiot.
As compensation, there's still time to rub out Ferenc Miskolczi. He's looking pretty marginal: his puffers are having to pretend that writing a whole 4 PR papers makes you notable. And apparently he, too, has been told he's an idiot by genuinely notable people.
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You do, however, become notable by being a *prominent* idiot :-)
Wikipedia pages are supposed to be based on if you are prominent, not if you are right. There is, for example, a long page on Uri Geller.
[Yes, agreed. But there's a blurry line for what "prominent idiot" means. Simply being criticised by prominent people doesn't normally cut it. You normally need to have decent coverage on your own right in reliable sources. UG clearly passes that, Ball doesn't -W]
Perhaps a better phrase would be "Notorious idiot"?
Wiki might want to update the Rex Murphy entry. He is a prominent media personality and a climate change denier. Lately several articles have pointed out he often gets paid to speak by Big Oil:
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/rex-murphy%E2%80%99s-pro-oil-sand…
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/02/10/rex-murphy-the-oilsands-and-the-cone…
http://canadalandshow.com/rex-murphy-paid-oil-sands-cbc-wont-disclose-d…
Certainly Murphy has much more media airtime in Canada than Tim Ball does; and people who aren't paying attention do not realize how biased he is on climate change.
There are numerous articles on Desmogblog about Miurphy, see links here:
http://www.desmog.ca/2014/02/16/so-who-does-rex-murphy-work-for
One more article which apparently was the first of the recent ones about Murphy and Big Oil:
http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/rex-murphy-and-big-oil-friends-bene…
I should mention that Murphy opines about various Canadian politics and issues, not just climate change, usually sounding like a crabby old rightwinger.
He is in the media often; he hosts a weekly phone-in show on national CBC (Cross Country Checkup); he appears on CBC national news to rant about some topic once a week or so, I think; he has a weekly column in the National Post, which is infested with AGW deniers: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/author/rmurphynp/
So the AGW denial is just part of his overall schtick, which is why it's a little surprising that he seems to be getting so many speaking gigs for Big Oil.
I've many times wondered how would f.e. political history books or net encyclopedias, for that matter, look if all the articles on personal names were removed and on the other articles displaced by their equivalent occupation.
But:
http://www.climatewiki.org/wiki/Timothy_Ball
Why all this conversation about nothing? Wikipedia should (or maybe does) know better. It should talk about `Prominent Persons', not every tom-dick-or harry who spouts his/her opinion about anything/something which may or may not be controversial. That would be ALL of us (well, MOST of us), after all!
In the old days religious zealots would burn books. Now you guys burn wikipedia pages. History will judge you quite poorly.
[Errm, you seem to have somewhat missed the point. Perhaps you should try reading before writing? -W]
This particular Tom-Dick-Harry has just been vindicated in the Canadian courts by Mann's default in refusing to respond to "discovery" within the time period allotted by law.
Get those Wikipedia edit pens ready.
[Do you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timothy_Ball&diff=596515170&… -W]
According to Steve McIntyre, a report on the demise of Mann's suit against Ball is premature. Strike my prior.
[Score one to wiki then. It was reverted as not reliably sourced -W]
"[Errm, you seem to have somewhat missed the point. Perhaps you should try reading before writing? -W]"
OK, help me to understand what this means:
"As compensation, there’s still time to rub out Ferenc Miskolczi. He’s looking pretty marginal:..."
By "rub out", I assumed you meant to get his page removed. But I acknowledge that there are other meanings to the word "rub-out" and perhaps I have misinterpreted your intentions.
Hatshepsut, your problem seems to be related to your sense of humor.
There's a blatant error in the Wikiedpedia "Second Law of Thermodynamics"
[Snip. Excellent! So go make a comment on the wiki page, not here -W]
"his puffers are having to pretend that writing a whole 4 PR papers makes you notable"
Wow! Such disdain; exactly how many PR papers have you written?
[About 20. It doesn't make me, or anyone else, notable though -W]
And how many papers did Einstein write in 1905? OH, that's right, four.
[Einstein is notable for the content of his papers, not the number -W]
The Mann Trail is Galileo's turned 180 degrees upside down. Here a government funded scientist seeks the power of the courts to suppress any intellectual challenges
[Are you really so ill-informed? There are plenty of "intellectual challenges" to Mann's work. There are peer-reviewed papers that discuss it. There are endless blog postings. All these are fine. What's not fine are recklessly malicious smears -W]
by the uninitiated to conclusions supported by institutions affiliated with the government. (And no one sees a problem with that, do they? Hmm...)
In his current role as plaintiff, Mann is not so much Galileo as he is Lysenko. But hey, when you live in the age of cultural relativism...
[If you want to argue that there should be no limits at all to free speech - that anyone at all is free to say anything, with no restraint from the courts whatsoever - then you have a consistent position. But you will find no legal jurisdictions that agree with you; perhaps you and like minded friends should go off and, Atlas-shrugged style, found your own libertarian paradise? -W]