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.

There were many reasons given, and the closing admin’s decision did not say which of them was the reason for the sanction. So, the only way to get unblocked would seem to be to respond as succinctly as I can to each one.

If any of these matters are not thought to be a reason to indef block me, please ignore that section.

Modern Mars Habitability article
This is why I was taken to ANI originally. Many of those who voted to delete my article did it on the basis of the title alone, saying that it contradicted statements in “Life on Mars” that Mars is known to be sterile. It became an ANI matter when they claimed that by defending the article from deletion I was trying to get my own views included in Wikipedia.

The only way I can see to get unblocked is to demonstrate that these are not my own views. I will share video interviews of a couple of experts who I consider to be sources of the highest level of reliability and notability in the project area talking straight to the camera.

So, here is Cassie Conley, at the time NASA’s planetary protection officer, taking 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:


 * “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”
 * 33 seconds into this video.

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 that suggets that present day Mars may be more habitable than previously thought, especially in the shallow subsurface and even the surface of the Mars polar regions:


 * “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.”
 * 2.18 minutes into this video

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 own views.

I can support a shorter article or section on the topic. That is a matter of notability, which is often a gray area in Wikipedia. However, the other editors made it clear that in their view any material that contradicted the statement in Life on Mars that Mars is known to be sterile had no place in Wikipedia. They seem to be sincere.

This made the deletion debate a debate about whether Wikipedia can cover the topic at all. This is what I can’t support. I hope after watching those two videos, 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 if unblocked. Indeed, I have no wish to return to it, unless there is some major change in editing policy to make it permissible to present the views of these experts who say that there is a possibility of extant life on Mars. When my article was removed, I made my own “Encyclopedia of Astrobiology” to host the deleted material. My latest version of the deleted article is here. All my editing in this topic area will be in my own wiki.

Use of unattributed material in a kindle booklet
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.

The material in question is a blog post that I made into a kindle booklet for convenience of a few of my readers. There were two versions of the blog post, the first version attributed a deleted section of Water on Mars, and the second version and kindle booklet did not. This was just a mistake.

Since it was only a few words, I have fixed that by simply saying the same things in my own words (it was not original material, it was an editor’s summary of a reliable source). The revised booklet is  here. 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.

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

Tune Smithy
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 answer this I need to explain why I considered 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.

Evidence that I added it because I thought it was notable
I added it because of a review in Sound on Sound. This is the top magazine for  musician’s gear in the UK, also sold internationally, and 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. One is to Tune Smithy and one is to Bounce Metronome which is the polyrhythms task of Tune Smithy updated and released as a separate program. 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. There are 17 cites of "Tune Smithy" and 3 cites of "Bounce Metronome" in Google Scholar. The editor who referred to this in the deletion debate as a WP:GOOGLETEST probably did not realize that the links were to Google scholar searches rather than to general internet searches. This is regarded as 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. They shortened it but nobody suggested it be deleted until this sanction debate. 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 notability as music software.

Why the deletion debate is not evidence that it is non notable, or of any commercial motive
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.

Evidence that I responded in an appropriate way when I discovered the 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.

Lack of any evidence 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
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 area
It has been made clear to me that my Buddhism topic ban still applies to me even during appeals of the Buddhism topic ban never mind an indef block appeal. So, I do not think I should comment on directly on anything they said in the discussion. But I do need to say enough so that you can see that it is not a reason to keep me indef blocked.

It is a similar situation to the Mars astrobiology dispute. It is about removing content from Wikipedia. As for the Mars article, the deleted text was cited to hundreds of sources that I consider to be of the utmost reliability in the topic area of my own faith. The main difference is that the deleted content was written by other editors, not myself.

I need to mention the diff accusing me of a topic ban violation, so that you can understand it doesn't mean that I will violate the topic ban if unblocked. The incident happened during the topic ban appeal itself. I was covered by WP:BANEX., so I was permitted to talk about the banned topic in ways relevant to my appeal. In addition, I didn't know that pings work in sandboxes and it was also never my intent that the pinged editor should fix the mistake that I mentioned in the draft. I immediately removed that sentence when I realized it could be read as an attempt at proxy editing and never posted it to the appeal.

In short, it was just a mistake, there was no intent involved, and I was covered by WP:BANEX. That is all that I can say on this matter, and if others want to discuss it I had better not comment on the discussion further.

All I wish to say here on this topic is that after all this, I have no wish to edit Wikipedia in this topic area and do not intend to appeal again.

As for the Mars astrobiology case, the only situation in which I might attempt to appeal that ban is if there is a major change of policy in the Buddhism topic area. That might be an independent decision by other editors to restore the material contributed to Wikipedia by Dorje108 and others that is the basis for our new encyclopedia, or a decision to add similar material sourced in the same way.

Our encyclopedia is continuing to grow exponentially, doubling the numbers of views every seven months, recently peaking at 500 visitors on one day in February. 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.

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

My merged away Morgellons article
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”. Which I did. After other editors made the decision that my article should be removed and merged it away, I did not try to restore it. Instead I used my deleted material as a basis for a blog post and kindle booklet.

I later discussed this topic some more on the Wikipedia talk page in a civilized fashion, until another editor 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.

It is similar to the situation with the astrobiology and Buddhism topics, I'd only return to the debate if the decision is made by other editors to include the material that I and many other editors think should be mentioned in this article. This is not likely to happen any time soon.

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

That I contributed material that other Wikipedia editors later corrected
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 this diff are still included in the article as far as I can see. If there is any mistake, nobody has corrected it.

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.

So what will I do if I'm unblocked?
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, misquoted numbers, and use of a fake news site as a source.

Others are more significant and it also includes some of the ones I posted about to the talk pages in the year before I was indef blocked, but never followed up.

In four cases of fixes I suggested on talk pages in the year up to the indef block, 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 major errors and minor errors discovered since the indef block.


 * Would post to talk page first
 * Minor, or expect no discussion, would just fix on the spot

My plan to prevent the same thing happening again in some other topic area, if I am unblocked
If the same thing happens for any other topic area as happened for the Buddhism and astrobiology topic areas, and the Morgellons article, I will do as I did for them, copy the material into another wiki, or blog post, and if the material includes substantial content contributed by other edtiors, attribute Wikipedia under CC by SA.

However I will be careful to avoid the situation that I got into when I added that article on Modern Mars Habitability. I will check that I have broad support of several other editors before I add any new article to Wikipedia, and preferrably do it as a combined project with other co-editors. I won't make a new article on the suggestion of just one editor as I did for the Morgellons article, or only on my own initiative as I did for the Modern Mars Habitability article.

Nowadays with so many other online encyclopedias it is much less of a big deal if a particular topic is deleted from Wikipedia. If it is indeed notable then readers will be looking for it, and not finding it in Wikipedia they will find it elsewhere, perhaps in my wikis (if an entire topic is deleted from Wikipedia, that of course means that Wikipedia no longer turns up in Google for relevant searches).

I also do not want my time to be taken up in the way it was for these debates. It is much more productive to edit in another wiki, or my own wiki, where my edits are welcome, than to try to get opposing editors in Wikipedia to approve the content.

Verbosity
This is the only complaint made that is valid, but surely is not sufficient reason for an indef block. 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.