Talk:Jack Sarfatti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. [FAQ]

	Physics Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, which collaborates on articles related to physics.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale. [FAQ]
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating within physics.
Help with this template Please rate this article, and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Jack Sarfatti article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

This is a controversial topic, which may be under dispute. Please read this talk page and discuss substantial changes here before making them. Make sure you supply full citations when adding information to highly controversial articles.

This discussion page may contain trolling. Before you post any reply, consider how you might minimize the effects of trollish comments. Simply ignoring certain comments may be the best option. If you must respond, a temperate response is always best, whether trolling is suspected or not.

This article was nominated for deletion on September 5, 2005. The result of the discussion was keep.

An individual covered in this article, Jack Sarfatti, has edited Wikipedia as JackSarfatti (talk • contribs).

Archives
Sep 2005 – Oct 2005 Oct 2006 – Oct 2005 Oct 2005 – Jan 2006 Feb 2005 – May 2006

Contents 1 Archives 2 Let's be more accurate... 3 Mediation offer 4 unsourced claims 5 undue weight 6 Section disappeared without a trace 7 enough about Sarfatti himself, already. 8 This guy has a userpage

Archives

Looks like this controversy has settled, so I archived the lot. Cheers ---CH 03:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's be more accurate...

The leading paragraph states: "He is known for his iconoclastic ideas, and ..." Well... He is known.. to who? In the U.S.? We cannot simply say "He is known", or even nothing at all (since the intent of the phrase is probably not asserting his notability to humanity, but to introduce his ideas). --euyyn 02:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I read in the deletion discussion that he's known in some usenet groups. Any other notability, or I just include it? --euyyn 03:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Mediation offer

A great number of edits to this article are being reverted. I am interested in attempting to penetrate the sometimes opaque assertions that are being inserted into the article (and steadfastly removed), so if the party (or parties) who are interested in having changes made to the article would be interested in my assistance I offer myself to this service, of course provided a satisfactory dialogue can be achieved. __meco 13:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

unsourced claims

There are many unsourced claims and quotes purporting to be from Jack Sarfatti here. Until sources are brought, I'm removing them. As per Jimbo Wales' edict regarding living persons, don't just slap a "citation needed" tag on unsourced info, remove that info entirely. wikipediatrix 14:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

undue weight

I'm also removing this paragraph: "A graduate seminar taught by University of Campinas, Brazil mathematics professor Waldyr Rodrigues, which looked for mathematical errors and inconsistencies in physics papers published in scientific journals or posted on the arXiv online physics preprint archive, recently focused on some of Sarfatti's concepts and methods. In his paper "A Comment on Emergent Gravity," posted on arXiv, Rodrigues cited alleged mathematical inconsistencies in the first version of Sarfatti's recent paper "Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory," [13] calling it a "potpourri of nonsense Mathematics," and said that later revisions of the paper also contained errors." While the information seems to be correct and factual, one has to wonder why it is notable enough to be here. An obscure seminar taught by an obscure Brasilian professor is not important enough to be a blemish on the permanent record of a worldwide-famous Nobel-prize-winning physicist from Cornell. Its placement here is giving Rodrigues undue weight. It's like putting a criticism section on, say, Sean Penn's article and citing references to a small-time community-theater actor who states that Penn is a poor actor. Not all criticism is encyclopedic. wikipediatrix 15:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a joke, right? First, Sarfatti is not a "worldwide-famous Nobel-prize-winning physicist from Cornell". Second Brazil and Brazilian theoretical physics is not non-notable and obscure by definition. --Michael C. Price ^talk 22:31, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

How is Sarfatti not a "worldwide-famous Nobel-prize-winning physicist from Cornell"? And I didn't say anything about the notability of "Brazilian theoretical physics", so why are you? wikipediatrix 13:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Since when is Sarfatti a Nobel prize winner? (Also, only his BA is from Cornell, so it seems odd to say that he is a physicist from Cornell. His association ended back in 1960, as far as I can see.) Phiwum 14:25, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Section disappeared without a trace

Following my mediation offer in the section #Mediation offer, a section has disappeared which included a contribution from me. A possible explanation could be that it was removed when the talk page was temporarily moved to Talk:Jack Sarfatti/test by User:Jayjg. I am not technically competent to exclude other possibilites of this anomaly. User:Jayjg is an administrator appointed to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, thus one in high standing, and I trust whatever was done to the article was done with good intentions. However, what took place ought perhaps to have been commented on spontaneously instead of having to be subjected to this inquiry. __meco 20:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

As an admin, I can review the deleted edits. It appears that Jayjg deleted several revisions of the talk page because an anonymous editor was attempting to 'out' another editor by revealing (purportedly) that editor's real name. Your comments were probably caught up inadvertently; Jayjg might also have deleted them as they responded to comments that were removed from the page history. Did you try asking Jayjg why he deleted the section? I've found that polite requests for clarification can clear up most misunderstandings, and such requests are usually a much more efficient way to resolve matters than blind speculation on an article talk page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:39, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Simply because the topic of Jack Sarfatti has been riddled with smearing, accusations of censorship and casting of suspicions, I figured the only appropriate way to deal with this issue was to do it very bluntly, out in the open, here, to prevent any propagation of this local focal point of conspiracy theorizing. That is why, also, I comment as I did that whatever took place perhaps ought to have been commented on here, so that not only users exceeding a certain threshold of computer know-how would be able to understand what was going on. (I believe I read a comment about Sarfatti not having internet savvy in another discussion among administrators which in my view only strengthens the basis for this line of reasoning)

As a point in case I just read a comment made on the talk page of the Norwegian Wikipedia article about conspiracy theories relating to 9/11 which accused Wikipedia's editors of 1984 style, insidious ways of removing traces of dissident user edits by manipulating the databases so that the openness Wikipedia prides itself with becomes a mere illusion as the page history ceases to be a reliable instrument of learning about the actual changes made to a page. __meco 12:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Put those conspiracy theories back in the box, fellow, 'cause no one's buying it. Jack Sarfatti is a vexatious litigant, a permabanned pest whose ego will allow no contradiction, who floods anyone who disagrees with him with e-mailed rants and conspiracy theories of his own (ask Jimbo Wales). Sarfatti had his chance, and if he wants to contribute here, it'll be on Wikipedia's terms, following Wikipedia's rules. His posts were deleted under Wikipedia policy: if you don't want to believe it -- despite the fact that I'm certain you saw them before they were deleted -- take it up with the admin who actually did so (once again, it was User:Jayjg) instead of assuming bad faith as your starting point. --Calton | Talk 12:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I see from your contribution history, Meco, that you started editing the English Wikipedia (and this page) after Jack Sarfatti was permanently banned from editing here. Consequently, I can see why you might not be familiar with the history of Jack Sarfatti on Wikipedia, or understand why he was barred from further contributions. Frankly, the 'smearing, accusations of censorship and casting of suspicions' have almost without fail come from Sarfatti. I would strongly encourage you to review User:JackSarfatti's contribution history and the log of his blocks to see why he is no longer welcome here.

'Lacking internet savvy' is a not-infrequent challenge for some new Wikipedia editors, and we are more than willing to assist and educate individuals hampered by their unfamiliarity with Wikipedia practice or netiquette. A number of editors – including Ed Poor, who went to the heroic length of having several discussions with Sarfatti by telephone – have attempted to advise Sarfatti on appropriate standards of behaviour on Wikipedia. To put it most directly, Sarfatti utterly failed to heed that advice. He continued to engage in behaviour inappropriate for Wikipedia or anywhere else on- or off-line. After many second chances, he was finally banned indefinitely from Wikipedia in December of 2005. (The particular straw that broke the camel's back was his threat to report Willmcw to the FBI and have him prosecuted under the PATRIOT Act for adding Sarfatti's date of birth to Sarfatti's biography.)

On a technical note, deletion of page revisions (what Jayjg did here) is employed relatively rarely. Deletion of a revision takes place when an editor maliciously puts at risk the privacy or safety of another individual, and it is not done lightly. In most cases it is possible for Wikipedia administrators to view the deleted revision(s) – as I did above – which on the English Wikipedia means that there are about a thousand community-selected individuals who can review the use of the revision deletion tools. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:14, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

As I stated in my offer above to "mediate" this "mediation" is limited to assistance in having information added to the article if I and any party taking me up on this offer can agree on how this should be done. Although I have previously (I translated the article to Norwegian some time ago) made some attempt at updating myself on the history of the controveries leading up to Sarfatti's banishment from the English language Wikipedia, this is not something I am currently interested in pursuing. __meco 07:37, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

enough about Sarfatti himself, already.

Not sure why so much conversation here is devoted to Sarfatti himself, and the drama related to his interactions with Wikipedia. It doesn't matter what Sarfatti has said and has done as a Wikipedia editor. It doesn't matter that he's banned. This is supposed to be about editing the article. The article in its current state looks perfectly fine to me. wikipediatrix 13:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed.PaulLev 20:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

This guy has a userpage

yeah and he's been blocked why is all that? has he made controversial edits here? --– Emperor Walter Humala · ^{( talk? · help! )} 23:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you could say that some of his edits were controversial. He was ultimately blocked for repeated, thorough violation of a number of Wikipedia policies. He made legal threats, personal attacks, and harrassed another editor by trying to post that editor's name and physical address on this page. He also demanded that we not include his birthdate in the article for 'national security' reasons. If you look further up this talk page, there's a more extensive explanation of why he is no longer welcome to edit here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)