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Hello, SteveWolfer, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  V. Joe 20:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let me start off by welcoming you to Wikipedia. I hope that you enjoy it here and decide to stay.

The cleanup tag indicates, as it says, that the page needs to be changed to meet Wikipedia standards. You can find an exhaustive list of these standards here. The time stamp, as applied by me, is a convention for indicating the age of the cleanup task. Sometimes very old articles for cleanup are prioritized for cleanup. Having these month specific categories also reduces congestion to the general Cleanup category.

You are completely right about there needing to be a "root" page for the two John Rowans. On wikipedia, this is called a disambiguation page. They're pretty simple to make, and you can find more about them here.

Specifically, the article for John Rowan is lacking in that it doesn't interwiki link (that occurs when you place double brackets around the title of another article within the text of your article), fails to assert notability in accordance with WP:PROFTEST, reads like a list of accomplishments (see WP:NOT), and does not use proper section headings. It's kind of hard to understand these things with words, so it might help to take a look at the Featured Articles. They're a great model to work off of when refining an article.

I would encourage you not to get discouraged about this. Let me know if you want any help or if you have any further questions. It would be more convenient for you to respond on my talk page. --Alphachimp ^talk 23:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have replied to your comments at length on my talk page to keep it all together. --Bduke 11:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm picked up your case at the Mediation Cabal, and will now be handling the dispute. Would you prefer we discuss everything on the article talk page, or some other medium (such as IRC)? --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 08:09, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to the dispute! If it works for you, we can do email between the two of us if needed, and any three-way, or more public communications could take place on your user-talk page (I noticed you have another issue in mediation there). I'm new to Wikipedia so you'll have to let me know how a mediation is conducted. Have you had a chance to read the talk-page entries? Feel free to refer to me as Steve and let me know if you'd like to be called, Prophet, Wizard or ? SteveWolfer 18:32, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can call me whatever. Well, my talk page works fine. For a faster, real-time discussion... we could actually go to the Mediation Cabal's IRC channel... that might be quicker. Here's a link to the channel: [1]

The Mediation Cabal is an informal group of everyday users that like to volunteer to do this sort of stuff... we're a very informal group with a sort of "anything goes" guideline... so mediation is conducted which ever way is best. --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 18:51, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried clicking on the IRC link - serveral times - but my browser (IE 7 beta 2) either does nothing or brings back a 'page not found' fault. I went to the Wikipedia-medcab page and tried the link there - same results. I wasn't able to find an email address for you. SteveWolfer 21:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Steve, if you are using Firefox or Mozilla download chatzilla and then you can get on IRC from your browser. If you are using internet explorer use MRIRC - a stand-alone client. Good luck with the mediation. --Bduke 23:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

on Talk:Introduction_to_Objectivist_Epistemology you mentioned that you didn't know how to set up wikilinks. Talk:List_of_publications_in_philosophy#mediation where the part after the # is the section name, will link you right to the section. Also, remember to sign your comments on talk pages. Crazynas ^t 22:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your reply. I see that you had good intentions. What I learned from this misunderstanding is: Although I had explained my edit in Category_talk:Ethics, it was foolish to assume that everybody would see this. It would have helped if I had provided a link to the explanation from the change description. Well, I hope no one else falls into the same trap.

If you would like to learn something from it, as well, then I'd like to mention: My primary objective was not to add the book category, but to clean up the Ethics category. So, in my perception, you reverted the reason for my edit. I agree that you were not pushing a POV, but that's not a criterium for edit wars. For me, the criteria are if someone shows understanding (usually, people have good reasons for their edits) and communication (Explain reversions in the edit summary box).

That's all I had to say - have a nice day, too, and happy editing! Common Man 22:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Steve, I did not remove the disowned selves article from the psychology topics category. That was someone else. Please double check the entry and direct your question to the correct party. Personally, I think it should be included and will support your actions to reinsert it. Cate108 08:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK... Thanks Cate108 03:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please try to be more consistent in using edit summaries; it helps watchers, recent change patrollers and those digging through page histories. GRBerry 18:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Steve - I'm disappointed to see that we're back to the same old 'argument by reversion and edit summary'. I'm still convinced that we can come to a reasonable consensus about inclusion criteria and about Rand, and I invite you to talk part in working towards that, rather than playing this rather pointless game of revert and re-revert. Yours, Sam Clark 18:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again - I've just posted again at Talk:List of political philosophers before I saw your message on my talk page. I shouldn't have lumped you in with LW, and I'm sorry for that: I've also found you reasonable and amenable to compromise. The lesson I should learn here is that I shouldn't get involved in debates on WP after a long day of teaching... I'm going to leave this for the moment, and come back to it fresh tomorrow. Cheers, Sam Clark 19:53, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions to the Hagop S Akiskal article, but for legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted.

Feel free to re-submit a new version of the article. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must include on the external site the statement "I, (name), am the author of this article, (article name), and I irrevocably release its content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and later, for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere."

You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here. You can also leave a message on my talk page. Mak (talk) 02:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See my comments also, on Talk:List of psychologists. -DoctorW 20:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have responded to a move debate. There is a related debate where your opinion would be useful at header tags. TonyTheTiger 19:08, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You gave an early opinion that helped turned the tide on the Robert Johnson move proposal. I am continuing work on the Johnsons. I would appreciate your opinion on the following:

Samuel Johnson → Dr. Samuel Johnson —(Discuss) Since the Feb 2006 page move, 6 new entries have been added to the Samuel Johnson (disambiguation) page including Sam Houston Johnson, a Presidential sibling, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr., a Presidential father, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Sr., a Presidential grandfather, Samuel Johnson (footballer), an active footballer, and Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr. the patriarch of the richest family in Wisconsin. The primacy of Dr. Samuel Johnson versus the remaining field of Samuel Johnsons should be reconsidered. This move would enable replacement of the dab page at Samuel Johnson TonyTheTiger 22:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

just a reminder steve, there is a 3revert rule. I know we've both broken it in the past, but i'm going to try to be civil about the 3 revert rule as I am with everything else. --Buridan 04:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate that. I hope one day we find our way out of this edit war. So, here's to civility and may we both hold it dear. Best wishes, Steve 08:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be helpful in the future if when you revert edits that removed Ayn Rand in addition to others, that you just revert the whole edit instead of editing Rand back into the pagespace. Since your justifications are that Rand deserves to be there because there are sources to justify it, and since the same is true for many of the others removed, there is no real reason to be selective. thanks. - Sam 05:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sam. It is out of respect for the intentions of the previous editor(s) that I don't revert an entire page. I just make the changes I think are important. Also, sometimes I agree with some of the edits made by the previous editor and don't want to change them. It would sure be easier to just revert it all to the previous page! I hadn't imagined that this would be a problem. Can you tell me how it causes a problem? I suspect that I'm not understanding something here. Thanks. Steve 05:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Steve, I checked my contributions to look into the deletion of the citation you mentioned. I think it happened when I reverted a strange deletion on the part of an anonIP. Go right ahead and add it, or I will add it tomorrow sometime - as long as something is verifiable then its kosher. As for my original comment (above), I do not think that your reason of 'respect' adequately defends selectively returning Ayn Rand's name to lists and not others that have similar verifiable citations. Be bold!, reverting an edit in part is no more or less respectful/disrespectful than reverting an edit en totum. I think the only problem I have is that the edits you made could've been more useful than they were - in that they could've corrected more material, and that leads me to see the selectivity as evidence of a narrow-sighted agenda. I feel strongly about Assuming Good Faith, so I wanted to let you know of my thoughts, so that the issue could be aired, cleared up, and that we could move on. - Sam 07:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sam. There was an edit that removed both George Elliot and Ayn Rand from the list of female philosophers. In that case I restored Rand but not Elliot because I agreed with deleting Elliot (extraordinary person, but as far as I know not a philosopher). On another edit, User 70.23.44.82 removed 13 names from the list of Twentieth Century philosophers. In that case you are correct - my focus was on a narrow-sighted agenda and I was being lazy. I didn't want to perform the due diligence of verifying that those 12 other names had valid citations and should be restored. And I see that it left it to you to do that work and then to restore them. Sorry about that. But I do believe it is important to temper boldness with respect. Trashing someone else's edit is one of the sources of ill-will and edit wars we see around here. I'll put more effort into future reverts and make a comment explaining any partial reverts. I appreciate your explanation. Steve 08:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it is important to temper boldness with respect; there are times when I exhibit the tendencies of a strict exopedian. It was my pleasure to explain my comment, and I thank you for the time you took to respond to my questions. Be well. - Sam 08:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I put the Valliant reference in the body of the NB article to reflect the article on Barbara, which has a reference in the body of the text as well as the criticisms. Can you tell me a reason the two should be different? Both articles should mention the Valliant criticism in a similar way I think, so that means editing the BB article or placing a reference in the body of the NB article. Endlessmike 888 13:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I made a reply on your user-talk-page. Steve 16:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Steve, please do not edit other people's posts in discussion, respond to them, yes, make an argument yes, but do not make changes to people's posts that might cause someone to misunderstand their opinion. Your edit of the discussion of the philosophy nav template did that. The creator and maintainer of the template's position is clear, you edited that person to match your viewpoint. That is unconscionable. --Buridan 21:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ahh, sorry for the deletion but that was because you put your comment in the page header instead of in the discussion. i did not see it. it is now back in the leader, it should probably be at the bottom of the page, with the other new arguments.--Buridan 22:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I saw his page header's notation "Add to this..." and took it for permission to make changes. And I used the strike-through to avoid erasing his origonal intentions. But as I said on your user talk page - my intentions were good, but editing someone else's comments is always a bad idea. And from your last reply I take it that your intentions were also good and that you didn't intend to erase my comments (I put them back). Best wishes, Steve 22:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also put an apology on the template creator's user talk page. Steve 22:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, it's fine. Add marxism in there if you want, but you should probably wait until the discussion reaches an OK decision. I'm not too keen on having it in the template myself, if my opinion coutns for anything. I just really don't think we should delete Randianism (edit: from the list of no-insert topics, I mean). That issue has been stamped into the ground repeatedly, not just by myself.

BTW. Please understand that my usage of "Randianism" is not supposed to be insulting. I just absolutely refuse to call it "Objectivism". I think that's a nasty propaganda trick. That philosophy is far from "objective" in any sense of the word. It's totally subjective. -- infinity0 11:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With respect to your Rand conflicts with Buridan, keep in mind that Wikipedia policies have been honed on disputes just like yours. The two policies which cover inclusion are Wikipedia:Notability, and Verification of that notability. Here's a link to a cover story from Time Magazine in which Ayn Rand is referred to as a philosopher: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995368,00.html. That makes her pretty notably a philosopher. There are thousands of mentions of her all over the internet, so I suggest you get digging on the most widely circulated and reputable publications & websites. Template:Smi And get to know those policies like the back of your hand! The Transhumanist (AWB) 05:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I almost forgot... In your inclusion debates you show a tendency to argue in one-on-one discussions rather than provide evidence (external links). Once evidence has piled up, in the form of link references, to a certain volume of links to reputable publications, it becomes pretty hard to ignore. Just keep providing more links to notable references until the threshhold for notability has been surpassed to the satisfaction of the community. When you are in deadlocked one-on-one discussions, you should seek to bring in neutral 3rd-parties by posting at Wikipedia:Help desk, Wikipedia:Third opinion, etc. The Transhumanist (AWB) 06:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked the sysadmin who protected the page to unprotect it. Please resist the temptation to add Objectivism until consensus has been reached in the discussion. It would also be a good idea to not revert anyone on that template. Bring it to the talk page. It's much more diplomatic. Once consensus has been reached in the discussion, or lack of consensus is clear, a sysadmin may be prevailed upon to enforce the outcome of the discussion.

Just remain civil and everything will work out okay in the long run. Buridan is only hurting himself by disregarding the accepted way of resolving disputes. Also, it is best to remain completely relaxed and civil in all debates. There's no need to engage in witwars or rhetoric flinging. Argumentation solves nothing. Only citations can break a deadlock like this.

Now that you know that edits concerning Rand will likely be opposed, it makes perfect sense to shift most effort with respect to Rand into searching for citations. My recommendation is to spend minimal time on debates - just enough to express your position, and no time on forcing your changes to an article. Defending long-existing material from being changed is fine, but is best kept to one revert per day per article, as long as you are hunting down citations in the meantime.

Citations are the only thing that can clarify such a situation. To continue to argue in the face of lack of citations is fruitless. Therefore either get the citations or walk away. Anything else is a waste of time. Wikipedia is vast. There are many other things to edit.

You can defend an article against changes which lack consensus forever. That is, an argument and edit war will go and on, and you will be stuck spending your time on defense. Thus the emphasis on citations. How many citations have you found today?  The Transhumanist   07:40, 5 January 2007 (UTC) [reply]