User talk:SusanLarson

1 Jan 2005 - 31 Dec 2005

(Continued from 2005Archive#Vicki Walker)

Kind of, but I was wondering if it is possible to push the text up in to the blank area. Do you know what I mean? If not, that's ok. I just thought it would possibly look better if that could be done. Maybe it's that I'm just too picky. Davidpdx 08:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I saw the changes on the page. Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Hopefully I can find a better picture then the one I've got on there. There's so little time to work on these things anymore. I'm sure you'll hear from me again soon. Davidpdx 11:21, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Susan, thanks for your reply and I added a link to your site on my website, and I submitted my url under the Cross-dressing category on your site. Thanks for the suggestion! --Athena2006 18:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's going on with the FISA article? Incidently, could you sign your comments with ~~~~? Makes it hard to read the flow of discussions. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:13, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No worries :-) I only ask because I want to get the FISA article more up to date. Basically, my idea is to do what I'm doing with the article

USA PATRIOT Act, Title II - document each section and give a broad summary. What do you think? - Ta bu shi da yu 06:44, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks and good night! Killdevil 05:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know, I did that once too (and an anon reverted me!) which is why I made sure to say "or error".  :) CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 03:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Susan,

Sorry if you saw this article as advertising.

--Flacinhell 01:15, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean by retroactive editing. Could you explain? Perhaps we can move it to a relevant WikiProject so the list is still available, but not in the main namespace? - Mgm|^(talk) 14:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you be persuaded to reconsider your post at the poll? This particular list has unique educational and research value. Approximately 2500 children are diagnosed with brain tumors each year in the United States alone. This presents thousands of families and schools with the challenges of answering questions. The patients want to feel as normal as possible. Other children may wonder if cancer is contagious or be frightened of the side effects, which often include hair loss and seizures. [1] [2] Relatively few resources put a human face on this illness. Nothing on the Internet covers this particular aspect of the subject nearly as well as this presentation. It offers a starting point for parents and teachers to develop innovative educational techniques. Grade school age children may be interested in the early

Most of the time when i post someting, it puts it in a yellowish box with a blue outline. Also then when I go to my contributions, it says "(top)" by it. Why? - Abhorsen123 15:47, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Worry do not about sockpuppets on afd, :) they are usually discounted. By the way, the proper way to add a signature to an unsigned comment is {{unsigned|username|date of post}} as shown in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chronicles of friendship. I'll be away for rest of weekend, but if you need assistance, drop me a note -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 20:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, "Susan." I saw your vote on the NAMBLA discussion page, and couldn't help but be concerned that many of the reasons you have cited for casting your vote have already been discussed and refuted on the talk page. This leads me to believe that you voted on the subject without really knowing what NAMBLA is, what its history is, and without reading any of the discussion on the talk page.

NAMBLA does not "espouse illegal practices" or advocate that anybody break the law. This is made very clear at the NAMBLA home page. NAMBLA is a political and education organization that seeks to inform members of society about a different perspective on relationships between adult and adolescent males (which is NOT pedophilia, since pedophilia is a sexual attraction toward PREPUBESCENT children), and seeks to end the criminalization of those relationships.

NAMBLA has been "rejected" by ILGA, but not after being a member for over ten years, during which time ILGA's own position statement coincided with NAMBLA's platform on revision of age-of-consent laws (see the section on ILGA in the nambla article). The fact that most gays now hate NAMBLA because right-wingers have used it to paint all gays as child molesters does not have any bearing on whether NAMBLA is classified as a gay or "LGBT" group for encyclopedic purposes -- a classification, I might add, which has already been given to NAMBLA by an online queer encyclopedia called GLBTQ. And quite rightfully so, since many other gay rights gruops in the 1970s and early 1980s supported NAMBLA's platform (again, see the article's subsection entitled "ostracism"). Regards, Corax 16:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I really think you need to understand that this is an encyclopedia. The entries should not be based on what you or anybody else wants, but what the facts dictate. The facts are clear, and they conclusively show that NAMBLA is LGBT. That you find this repugnant is irrelevant. That people continue to argue against it in spite of what the facts dictate is irrelevant. It sounds to me as though you would be better served maintaining a personal web page where you can write whatever you want without letting the facts get in your way. If people want to condemn all gays just because a few of them have supported NAMBLA in the past and continue to do so, that's their prerogative -- just as it is their prerogative to condemn all Muslims because Osama Bin Laden is listed in the "muslims" category here at Wikipedia. Corax 19:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, you are way off base. Look at the poll on the talk page. If anybody is trying to advance a minority point of view, it's you. Stating that NAMBLA is GLBT is not the same as agreeing with NAMBLA's positions. While not many gays ascribe to NAMBLA's platform, most are honest enough to concede that NAMBLA is GLBT. To answer your questions (which, again, are irrelevant to the issue of whether NAMBLA is LGBT), I have never been a member of NAMBLA, and I do not agree with the platform of totally abolishing all age-of-consent laws. Corax 19:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In case you must know, my interest is in reporting the facts. I have a very low tolerance for people who seek to revise history to suit their political interests. I have an even lower tolerance when those people are my fellow gays, and they're doing it because they think that catapulting anything even remotely related to the sexual rights of gay youth will enable them to win silly rights like "gay marriage" -- which they mistakenly equate with gay liberation. While NAMBLA's views of totally eliminating the age-of-consent are naive (as they stupidly allowed the religious right to portray the group incorrectly as advocating pedophilia and anal sex with toddlers), the modern-day gay assimilationists have totally forgotten that the very goals they are hoping to advance by joining in the attack -- like gay marriage -- are attempts to mimic the very same institutions that have both failed straights and oppressed gays for centuries. Corax 20:09, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The view that NAMBLA is LGBT is currently supported by 25 people, while the view that it is not is supported by 18 people. My view is hardly a "small minority." You are correct in stating that NAMBLA is extremely unpopular with most gays and almost all gay groups. But that doesn't alter the fact that NAMBLA itself is a gay group anymore than Osama's infamy amongst American Muslims strips him of his classification as a Muslim. As I've said repeatedly, the classification of "LGBT group" is not some status that must be granted by other gay groups. All that one need to be in order to be classifed as LGBT is to deal with gay issues. Since NAMBLA does this (yes, seeking to decriminalize non-coercive sexual relationships between teenage males and adult males IS a gay issue by the gay community's own definition of gay), it is an LGBT organization. The popularity of NAMBLA with most gays has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. Corax 20:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct in that we are obviously not going to be able to reconcile our views. Clearly you think that the acronym "LGBT" is copywritten by a segment of gays, and that these gays are free to apply this label only to other gays and gay groups of which they approve. I, on the other hand, think that gay is clearly defined in the dictionary and on the wikipedia article, and that if a person or group meets that definition, then it is LGBT. I suppose it's just an honest disagreement, although I'd remind that you that Wikipedia's own definition of LGBT supports my position, not yours. In any case, thanks for being relatively civil while disagreeing with me. Regards, Corax 20:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize -- you're right. I didn't think to check your own talk page. This whole cross-user talk business seems a little counter-intuitive to me, but I should remember how it works. Sorry. Clayboy 20:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Susan,

I sense you got a bit upset on

With regard to your self-appointed "arbitration" of the page, I would again encourage you to avoid such an approach in the future — it isn't very wiki, it's inaccurate (you can't self-appoint as an arbiter), and it's very aggressive; people are likely to be irritated and "push back". It's good that you wanted to help mediate a dispute; a better approach would be to have said something like, "Hi, I'm a newcomer to this debate, and having read the arguments it would seem that the biggest bone of contention is X; perhaps we could compromise by doing Y" etc. The job of a mediator is to help facilitate reaching consensus, not settle it themselves. — Matt Crypto 08:49, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, please realize that the vast majority of wiki users are not disruptive pov pushers. If you looked into either my or matt's edit history, you'd see we've both made many useful contributions to the encyclopedia. And, as for me, this is the first time i've been involved with any type of creationism debate. To be honest, i think creationism is effing ridiculous and don't understand how anyone could not believe in evolution (a recent doonesbury strip summed up my thoughts quite nicely, in which a doctor asks a patient if he wishes his TB to be treated in the form in which god made it or the antibiotic resistant form it's since evolved into). That said, it is most certainly a popular veiwpoint (unfortunately) and thusly should be included. This is, in a way, pov-pushing - but with the overall aim of NPOV. remember that an article with an npov should do its best to cover all popular points of view, lest it be pov through hiding information. As a result, i felt this pov deserved to be addresesd on

Occam's Razor takes care of that debate. --jfg284 ^{you were saying?} 09:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply

]

You claim one thing I firmly believe another. I don't see either of you convincing me otherwise. This is the last contact I want from either of you on this matter. Future contacts on this matter will be construed as harassment. So let’s let this end gracefully. -- SusanLarson ^{(User Talk, New talk, Contribs)} 17:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Matt Cryto's response and Jfg284's echo of it.

This is solely in response to what these two users placed after on their talk page in response to my Cease and desist contact request. If they had let the matter end gracefully I would have dropped the matter. Here is the full story.

I came to the article in question via the Special:Random feature. I go to random articles and edit them for clarity and word flow. At this article I found a dispute which had been ongoing for several months where the above two users and one or two others were trying to push the following text into an article about dinosaurs.

Advocates of young Earth creationism, a popular position in the United States, have views on dinosaurs which differ from 
mainstream science. Based on Biblical accounts and the belief that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, creationists 
argue that the scientific dating of dinosaur fossils must flawed, that the fossils date from the Great Flood of Noah, and that 
humans and dinosaurs must have at one time coexisted. Some contend that dinosaurs were present on board Noah's Ark, but became 
extinct after the Flood [10]. Virtually no life scientists support these views on dinosaurs [11]. 

The paragraph in question is clearly highly POV and in clear violation of NPOV requirements. Matt Crypto as an Administrator should know better. Jfg284 can be excused since he just started wiki'ing October 29th 2005. If they had attempted to add a neutral paragraph about religious disagreement I seriously doubt that the regular editors of the article nor myself as a non-interested neutral party at the time would have had any objection over it (I had never seen the article before that point and had no opinion on the matter). Instead they attempt to use the dinosaur article as a soapbox for these views, hyping these views instead of presenting them in a more general and neutral manner.

I read the entire discussion including the claims by Matt Crypto that he was pushing this tripe into the article in the interest in NPOV and that he had no personal interest in the matter except NPOV. I call as I see it and it is bullshit. If that was the case this text would not have had the clear POV that the above text did. Here are the steps I took that day and the ones that followed. It may not be how things are generally done but stopped the arguments and reached a consensus.

1. I removed the paragraph in question during a rewrite of the popular culture section for clarity. I stated my reasons on the talk page and made the statement that I would defend it if necessary. This is not a step I took lightly. I debated over it for several hours before finally doing do. At the end I stated “however be aware that re-addition of this material to this article may be considered vandalism.”
2. Matt Crypto raised a fuss over the removal as expected, he also fussed that this is not how things are generally done. I personally at the time could have cared less.
3. Based on the discussions that followed the consensus arose that there should be mention of the religious issues. So I added a religious point of views section to the article under the see also. This section linked to the Young Earth creationism article, the old earth creationism article, and the creationism article.
4. The consensus arose that the views about dinosaurs should be presented which resulted in the article Religious perspectives on dinosaurs being created and added to the see also section.
5. Matt Crypto then started a who appointed you whine.
6. Several users noted the fact that Matt Crypto was the sole user pushing for this information to be included in the article and supporting my efforts and actions to resolve this issue. One only opposed (not Matt Crypto).
7. Jfg284 showed up at this point. Before that he had not made an recent appearance in the talk pages.
8. I issued an invitation to Matt Crypto and the other proponents of the YEC text “So here's a compromise give me a piece of text on religion in general concerning dinosaurs covering not just the YEC, Creationism, and/or Christianity and I will consider it's addition to the article as a neutral party.”
9. Instead of taking me up on my offer to include a piece of neutral text Matt Crypto instead again launches into a diatribe about his disagreements with my attempts to resolve the matter. He also made slurs against my experience as a wikipedian which I took offense to but did not respond to until this point. I was content to let the matter drop. It's a shame they were not also. So I wrote the following text and included it in the article making the religious points of view section stand alone instead of being located under the see also which is where I initially created it.

Various religions may have other views on prehistoric life which differ from scientifically accepted fact. These beliefs can not 
be proved using scientific methods and thus believers accept them on the basis of personal faith. See the following articles for 
specific examples:

It ended up after Edits by Myself, Matt Crypto, Vsmith, and Killdevil as:

Various religious groups have views about dinosaurs that differ from those that are generally accepted as fact by scientists. 
While many mainstream scientists respect these views as faith positions, they argue that religiously-inspired interpretations of 
dinosaurs do not withstand serious scientific scrutiny. See the following articles for specific examples and further context:

In conclusion, it is neutral, meets NPOV requirements, and represents the views of all religions with differing points of view not just the YEC'ers unlike the text Matt Crypto was trying to push into the article. I have no problems nor embarrassment about my actions in this case as suggested by Matt Crypto and JFG284. In fact below is the entire text from the point I jumped into the fray. If anyone should be embarrassed it is Matt Crypto who as an administrator should have acted in a more neutral manner which would have eliminated the need for me to intervene in the first place.

Once again if they had been content to let the matter drop I would not have had to ensure that this complete and accurate version of the story got out. -- SusanLarson ^{(User Talk, New talk, Contribs)} 01:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Creationism: a decision of sorts.

There are competing theories even about creationism try researching the Gap theory which has no conflict with the existence of dinosaurs. Until you have scientific proof which one is right science, Gap theory, or yours, and since this debate has been raging over a month, I am removing this material.

You may not like this decision however, one has to be made. Since you are free to fork articles and since this article deals with primarily with the science of dinosaurs. This is how it needs to be.

I come to this as a neutral party who came here solely to clarify a article not one with a vested interest either way. I am a Christian and I am a believer. I believe that god in his or her wisdom had enough foresight to make science, the bible, and religion able to peacefully co-exist. This is not a statement against your beliefs only a statement of what is proper for this article.

I have added 3 religious links to the See also section and specifically said for a religious view point see....

You are of course free to add the removed material it to the creationism article or start a divergent dinosaur article. However be aware that re-addition of this material to this article may be considered vandalism. SusanLarson ^{(User Talk, New talk, Contribs)} 06:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC) [reply]