User:Robertinventor/unblock appeal

This is a draft for an appeal for my indef block in Wikipedia I could do a short appeal if I said all the charges against me were true. But I wish to appeal on the basis that most of them are mistaken. Please don't just reject this appeal on the basis of a word count. If it is too long please give some indication of what I am indef blocked for in your response so that I can do a shorter appeal next time.

There were many reasons given in the sanction debate. The closing admin’s decision did not say which of them was the reason for the sanction. They just say "Closing with a consensus towards an indef block, plus my own admin judgment in that direction."

The only way to get unblocked would seem to be to respond as succinctly as I can to each of the main ones. I have split this into sections with skip links so that you can easily skip any that you do not think need a response from me (e.g. the platinum discussion, say).

I will start with the one that was the original reason given for the ANI action, the Modern Mars Habitability article. I would like to say that it is not a coincidence that it happened at the same time as my failed Buddhism topic ban appeal. The Mars article had been there for over a year (from March 2017 to August 2018). It was an editor taking part in my Buddhism topic ban appeal, with no previous editing on astrobiology or Mars topics who nominated it for deletion mid appeal. I was taken back to ANI when I tried to defend it from deletion.

Modern Mars Habitability article
skip to Planetary protection

This is what the original poster refer to as POV/OR/SYNTH/CHEESE in the sanction debate - that the very topic of the deleted article contradicted statements in Life on Mars that the surface of Mars is known to be sterile. It became an ANI matter when they claimed that this was my own view and wasn't in the sources I cited.

To get unblocked I need to demonstrate that I was summarising the views of others that I consider to be of the highest authority in the topic area. Many papers and books cover this topic, and were cited in the article, but in this appeal I'll use video as that shows with utmost clarity that these are indeed the views of these experts.

So, here is Cassie Conley, at the time NASA’s planetary protection officer, talking about future NASA searches for present day life on Mars. She is explaining why the spacecraft we send to Mars are sterilized to protect Mars from Earth microbes, 33 seconds into this video.


 * “So we have to do all of our search for life activities, we have to look for the Mars organisms, without the background, without the noise of having released Earth organisms into the Mars environment”

Do you agree that she is talking about future searches for Mars organisms?

She has many articles to her name on the astrobiology of Mars, in Nature and the top astrobiology journals - Google scholar search.

Here is Nilton Renno, talking about a discovery his team made. Please listen to what he has to say 2.18 minutes into this video


 * “Based on the results of our experiment we expect soft ice that can liquify perhaps a few days per year, perhaps a few hours per day, almost anywhere on Mars. … So a small amount of water is enough for you to create conditions necessary for Mars to be habitable today, and we believe that this is possible in the shallow subsurface and even the surface of the Mars polar region for a few hours per day during the spring.”

Do you agree that he is talking about the possibility for habitats in the shallow subsurface and on the surface of Mars?

He is a Michigan professor and expert on Mars surface conditions, co-investigator for the Phoenix, Curiosity, and ExoMars space missions, and with many accomplishments and awards,

Here is a google scholar search for his articles on the astrobiology of Mars.

The deleted article had 265 cites to experts such as these. It presented their views, not my views.

Another editor gave as a reason for deleting the article that I put this in the intro:


 * “The environment on Mars potentially is basically one giant dinner plate for Earth organisms,”

This also is not by me. It is a quote from NASA's planetary protection officer Cassie Conley, talking about how the perchlorates on Mars, hazardous for humans, can be metabolized by some types of life. The deleted article cited it to her, see the cite here in deletionpedia (article as it was when it was deleted).

Do you agree that in this quote she is talking about a possibly habitable Mars surface?

This topic is also frequently in the news, with typically several NASA announcements every year about the possibilities of habitats for native Martian life on the surface of Mars or in the near subsurface.


 * News coverage of potential present day habitats of life on Mars

Do you agree that these news stories do indeed cover the topic of potential present day habitats for life on Mars?

I can support a shorter article or section on the topic of this article. That is a matter of notability, which is often a gray area in Wikipedia.

However, I was told that the reason it had to be deleted was because it contradicted the statement in Life on Mars that the surface of Mars is known to be sterile. They weren't asking me to trim it. They were saying the material does not belong in Wikipedia at all. I hope after watching those two videos and the additional material, you will not require me to apologize for trying to prevent this topic from being deleted from Wikipedia in its entirety.

I can however agree not to edit in this topic area of the astrobiology of present day Mars. Indeed, I have no wish to return to it, unless there is some major change to make it permissible to present the views of these experts. When my article was removed, I made my own “Encyclopedia of Astrobiology” to host the deleted material. Gradually visitors are finding it, doubling time of a few months. My latest version of the deleted article is here. All my editing in this topic area will be in my own wiki.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked

Planetary protection
skip to Wikipedia content in a kindle booklet

My edits on planetary protection were also given as a reason for sanctioning me. Until I was indef blocked I was the main editor of the main space Planetary Protection article. Added 56,440 bytes and deleted                                                             11,761 in an article that is now 69,886 bytes.

I now edit a copy of it in my astrobiology wiki instead.

Despite mentioning it as an additional reason to sanction me, actually other editors were satisfied with my work there. Nearly everything I wrote has been retained after my indef block diff.

If I get unblocked, I will post to the talk page to check to see if other editors are happy for me to continue editing it. If so, then I'd continue with the updates of it that I used to do from time to time as a result of new research and other developments in the topic area.

While if it is clear editors here don't want me to update this article I will work on the version in my Encyclopedia of Astrobiology instead.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked

Wikipedia content in a kindle booklet
skip to Releasing text under CC by SA for Wikipedia and "All Rights Reserved" for my book

Some of the other editors were unaware that the Wikipedia license CC by SA permits commercial use of Wikipedia content. This is clearly stated in the license page linked to at the bottom of every page in Wikipedia. It is even linked to from the sanction debate itself! "You are free:


 * to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and
 * to Remix—to adapt the work

for any purpose, even commercially."


 * Text of Wikipedia CC by SA license

So the only issue here is of attribution, not of commercial use. Most of this booklet is my own work, but it incorporates a few sentences from a deleted section of Water on Mars called Possibility of Mars having enough water to support life, see this diff, which was edited by multiple editors including myself.

The booklet is  here and is released under CC by SA, and attributes the user space draft. When I created the user space draft I listed the sources on the talk page [diff]. I added a clearer attribution of the deleted section of Water on Mars before I was indef blocked. See Attribution. The wikipedia guidelines on reusing content don't require the derivative works to list all the sources directly. It is sufficient to link to a page on wikipedia which takes them to the history where the authors can be found.

And the only reason I did this at all was because at the time I did it, the user draft had not been accepted for publication in Wikipedia, so I decided to publish it on my blog and in kindle instead.

(This overrides what I wrote in the sanction debate, I've checked carefully what happened since I was indef blocked).

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked

Releasing text under CC by SA for Wikipedia and "All Rights Reserved" for my book
skip to I have never used Wikipedia for promotion

I also need to explain the matter of licensing of the content for the deleted article. It was released under CC by SA for Wikipedia, so how was I permitted to release some of the same material, such as the section on Eutectic / Eutonic mixtuers, in my Touch Mars? book on kindle under "All Rights Reserved"? I must answer this, as this was given as another reason for sanctioning me.

I did this under the practice known as “dual licensing”.


 * "It is legally possible to add more restrictions than the original license in some cases, for example, releasing a derivative work under all rights reserved which incorporates source materials licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license." Compatibility among different CC licenses

The userspace draft was solely written by me apart from those few sentences originating in Water on Mars. I released it under CC by SA for Wikipedia.

However, since CC licenses are non exclusive, I can also release my own text for my 2000 page book Touch Mars? under All Rights Reserved, so long as I make sure it doesn't include the material originating from Water on Mars. The same text is released under CC by SA in the user space draft, and under "All rights reserved" in my book.

I did it like this because by the "Share alike" provision of CC by SA then if I release any of Touch Mars? under CC by SA I have to release the entire book under that license. I do not wish to do this. And because of dual licensing and because the CC by SA licenses are non exclusive, I don't have to.

I hope this is clear now. It is understandable that editors would find it confusing who have never been in my situation and never had to work through these issues.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked

I have never used Wikipedia for promotion
skip to Tune Smithy

This is another reason given for sanctioning me, but without any evidence submitted to support it.

I have never linked to my blog or kindle booklets from mainspace Wikipedia articles or used Wikipedia to promote my blog or kindle booklets in any way.

In case anyone brings it up, I also added musical videos made with my Bounce Metronome program to some of the rhythm articles in Wikipedia such as the Polyrhythm article where the video I made for Wikipedia features at top right. I do not mention my program in the article. In some cases (not that one) I do add a brief one sentence mention of the program used to make it in the file description in Wikimedia commons, as is often done for animations. I also disclose my connection with these animations in the Declaration of Interest on my user page. None of this is WP:PROMO.

Some of the editors seemed to be under the impression that it counts as WP:PROMO to write about the same topic in Wikipedia that you write about in a blog post off wiki. If that was a rule hardly anyone would be able to contribute to Wikipedia. No I had no intention at all to promote my blog when I added material to Wikipedia. Indeed, it's the other way around. I blogged because the material was deleted from Wikipedia. My deleted Mars sample return article was one of my first blog posts in July 2013. So

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked

Tune Smithy
skip to Clathrate gun hypothesis

In the case of the article about my software Tune Smithy, I added it as my second edit of Wikipedia in 2008, before I discovered the guidelines on WP:COI. The reason they gave for using this as a reason to indef block me was that they said that it was non notable software that I added as WP:PROMO.

To show that it wasn't WP:PROMO, I need to explain why I consider it notable, I need to show that I responded in an appropriate way once the COI was discovered, and I need to show that no evidence was presented of any commercial motive.

Why I consider it notable - Deletion debate not evidence it is non notable - Responded appropriately when I discovered guidelines on COI - No evidence submitted to sanction debate of WP:PROMO

Why I consider it notable
I added it because of a review in Sound on Sound. This is frequently used as a reliable source in this topic area in Wikipedia. The deleted page's reference list has two cites to Sound on Sound. It also references a book by the American music theorist William Sethares which mentions my software as a modern implementation of dynamic tuning. This is a notable book with 554 cites in Google scholar.

I could have added many more academic cites. I mentioned in the deletion debate that there are 17 cites of "Tune Smithy" and 3 cites of "Bounce Metronome" in Google Scholar. The editor who referred to this as a WP:GOOGLETEST probably did not realize that the links were to Google scholar searches, an acceptable way to investigate notability under Specific uses of search engines in Wikipedia.

Other editors in the topic area edited the article over the last decade. Tune Smithy is also still mentioned in Wikipedia in the article Generative music, and I did not contribute this edit.

I had no reason to suppose that anyone else in wikipedia thought it was non notable in the ten years since I added it to Wikipedia. The first suggestion that it was non notable was in the sanction debate itself.

Whatever your views on its notability I hope you can accept this as sufficient evidence that I thought it fulfilled the Wikipedia criteria for music software.

Deletion debate not evidence it is non notable
All the votes in the deletion debate were by participants in my sanction debate and most just cite the sanction debate itself as the reason to delete it. They did not publicize the deletion debate on WikiProject Music Theory, WikiProject Electronic Music, or WikiProject Software, or any other relevant page or project (if they had they would have disclosed this on the deletion debate page itself, as that's a requirement if you publicise a debate).

As far as I know, none of the people who voted to delete it had any experience of editing of Wikipedia in the topic area of music software, music theory, electronic music, or any other related topic.

Responded appropriately when I discovered guidelines on COI
I disclosed my connection to the software on the talk page for the Tune Smithy article, and on my own user page in the section “Declaration of interest”. I did everything required of someone who discovers the guidelines on COI after contributing an article like this.

No evidence submitted to sanction debate of WP:PROMO
Although everyone in the deletion debate voted to delete it as a case of WP:PROMO, no evidence was presented to the deletion debate or to the sanction debate of any commercial motive. I assure you there never was any. I only added it because I thought it was notable.

I hope you can agree that this was not a case of WP:PROMO and is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

Clathrate gun hypothesis
skip to Buddhism topic ban

I have copied the article over to another wiki and fixed it with the newer material from the USGS (US Geological Survey), the Royal Society and the CAGE working group on methane hydrates.

My fixed article is here.

I submitted a list of points to be fixed on its talk page in Wikipedia before the sanction.


 * Some of the main points for attention

The last comment in the discussion on its talk page just said


 * “Follow Wiki rules and do as you will.”

If unblocked I will add a brief update note to the talk page mentioning the fixed article and ask if they still want me to do this work. If the answer is yes, I will do it, proceeding slowly one edit at a time to give plenty of time for anyone to comment. If the answer is no, I won't do anything and will continue to work on the article in my own wiki instead.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked

Buddhism topic ban
skip to Merged away Morgellons article

I am still subject to a Buddhsism topic ban and if I understand right, WP:BANEX only applies to a Buddhism topic ban appeal, not here. So I have to step carefully. On the other hand, I do need to say enough so that you can see that it is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

First, in case of any confusion, please be aware that any diffs presented to the sanction debate are from the topic ban appeal, during which I was covered by WP:BANEX.

The dispute is about content deleted from Wikipedia, as for the Mars article. The main difference is that the deleted content was written by other editors, not myself.

As for Mars again, we have dealt with this situation by putting the deleted material into a new encyclopedia, as permitted by the CC by SA license. Our encyclopedia is continuing to grow exponentially, doubling the numbers of views every seven months, currently running at 300 - 400 visitors a day. See stats. This is not far off the rate of growth of Wikipedia itself in its early years (Wikipedia’s numbers doubled roughly every 160 days or about every five months). Any editing in this topic area that I do is now in that encyclopedia.

After the way the last topic ban appeal went, I have no wish to try another appeal. It would take some really major change in the way the Wikipedia Buddhism project is managed to consider such a thing again.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

Merged away Morgellons article
skip to Contributed material that other Wikipedia editors corrected

This is another reason given for sanctioning me. I contributed this article in 2015, after discussion on the talk page of the main article when one of the editors there said “You’re welcome to create an article and see what happens”. When other editors merged it away, I did not try to restore it. Instead I used the deleted material as a basis for a blog post and kindle booklet.

I later discussed this topic some more on the Wikipedia talk page. Another editor then told me that I was not welcome there and I left the discussion. My last comment in the talk page of the article is in September 2016 and it has nothing to do with the dispute that lead to my indef block. I have no wish to return to this discussion.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

Contributed material that other Wikipedia editors corrected
skip to Off wiki discussion of platinum as a lunar export

I agree that my edit of the Pergean spring tide article was mistaken. If I'd noticed the revert and the reason given I'd have commented on the talk page agreeing with the editor who fixed it and thanking them for their edit.

On the black holes evaporation timescale, then the material I contributed in the diff mentioned in the sanction debate is still in the Hawking Radiation article. Simlar material in this diff is also still included in the Black Holes article. The editor who claimed I made a mistake has not tried to correct those articles to fix this alleged mistake.

Nearly all Wikipedia editors have made mistakes. Indeed in WP:BOLD it says


 * "Think about it this way: if you don't find one of your edits being reverted now and then, perhaps you're not being bold enough"

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

Off wiki discussion of platinum as a lunar export
skip to So what will I do if I'm unblocked?

This was off wiki and wasn't a discussion about Wikipedia or Wikipedia editing and was also some years back. It was given in the sanction debate as an example of the Dunning–Kruger effect. The argument was that I do not know enough to understand my own ignorance and so shouldn't edit Wikipedia.

The idea of platinum exports from the Moon is due to Dennis Wingo, author of Moon Rush where he suggests it will be useful for catalytic converters if available at a low cost in large quantities. There are possible future developments such as the Hoyt cislunar transportation system that could hugely reduce the costs of future exports from the Moon.

In this off wiki discussion with another editor, I speculated about some possible uses if lunar platinum became as low cost as copper, say (which is widely used in the construction industry in many ways, for instance, for copper pipes, and wiring, and sometimes used as cladding and roofing materials see Copper in architecture). Some of my suggestions may have been impractical - I thought it was just a fun discussion we were having.

I would never add my own views on this topic to Wikipedia. However after the sanction debate I was surprised to discover that Wikipedia's Colonization of the Moon article doesn't cover the topic of lunar exports of platinum or Dennis Wingo's book as far as I can tell, although this is covered a fair bit in the academic literature on lunar colonization. So I have added this to my list of major changes to suggest on the talk pages in Wikipedia if I am unblocked.

I hope you can agree that this is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

So what will I do if I'm unblocked?
skip to My plan to prevent the same thing happening again

I will fix errors. I notice many of these when browsing Wikipedia, usually two or three a week. Many are minor and things an editor would fix right away, like broken urls, bs misquoted numbers. Here are some I noticed since I ws unblocked


 * Minor, or expect no discussion, would just fix on the spot

I was in the habit of mentioning proposed fixes on the talk pages before making them. In four cases over the previous year, the other editor said to go ahead and do the fix, but I only noticed after the block, and so couldn't do it, so I would do these fixes first:


 * Other editor said to go ahead and do it (but only noticed after block)

It also has a list of somewhat more major errors discovered since the indef block, also articles that are several years out of date, and requests to expand an article that I could fulfill. I would post to the talk page first for these.


 * Would post to talk page first

I also have some major things I'd like to do in the Microtonal music topic area. For some example see the


 * Examples of things we could do

in my proposed project


 * Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Microtonal Music, Tuning, Temperaments and Scales.

However I would be super careful to make sure I do not add anything that has a chance of being deleted.

My plan to prevent the same thing happening again
skip to How I will deal with verbosity

If I am unblocked, I will be careful to avoid the situation that I got into when I added that article on Modern Mars Habitability.This is how I plan to prevent this.


 * I will check that I have broad support of several other editors before I add any new article to Wikipedia.
 * If possible I will do it as a combined project with several other co-editors.
 * I won't make a major new article on the suggestion of just one editor as I did for the Morgellons article
 * I won't make a major new article on my own initiative as I did for the Modern Mars Habitability article.

If despite my best efforts the situation arises that other editors want to delete my work, I will copy the material into another wiki, or blog post, and if the deleted material includes substantial content contributed by other edtiors, attribute Wikipedia under CC by SA.

If an entire topic is deleted from Wikipedia, and it is indeed notable, then it no longer turns up in relevant Google searches. When this happens, then of course they will find it elsewhere, such as in my wikis.

These long debates take up my time as much as anyone else's. I had to take an entire week off work to deal with that Buddhism topic ban appeal overlapping with the AfD and the sanction debate (which I was able to do because I was self employed). I have no wish to get into that situation again!

How I will deal with verbosity
This is the only complaint I found in the sanction debate that I can agree is valid, but surely it is not sufficient reason for an indef block.

A point of clarity. None of these are complaints about me being off topic as far as I can tell. Just that I use more words than many of the other editors here. I am not good at one line repartee in Wikipedia.

As before I will do best effort to be less verbose. Also if about to make a comment that is likely to require editing after I post it, I will use the sandbox to compose it first. As you will see there is a note to myself at the head of my user page, and also at the head of this talk page, as a reminder to do this.

I will also pay attention to how often I post to a debate, to make sure I don't post more often than other editors, or do multiple responses to a single post by someone else.

Please lift the block so that I can continue with my work of fixing errors in Wikipedia, minor and major.