User:Harry Potter/Archive1

you're obviously not new to earth if you know the word brusque. welcome to wikipedia. Kingturtle 00:17 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Not to rain on your parade, but unless you were born and registered on your birth certificate as Harry Potter, using the name on Wikipedia might violate J.K. Rowling's Registered Trademark. Even if you were legally born with the name, unlike copyright, her registered trademark rights can still prevent you from saying or portraying certain things that might be construed as coming from, or pertaining to, her character. Good Luck but keep the best interests of Wikipedia in mind. MammaBear

It's not the name that is trademarked but how it is used. If J. K. Rowling has a problem with the use of this name by a Wikipedian, then it's up to her or a properly authorized person to raise that complaint. In the absence of a proper complaint I think that you can safely ignore the ministrations of a self-appointed do-gooder with a half-baked understanding of the law. ☮ Eclecticology 21:42 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

FYI, Warner Brothers own the trademark, JK Rowling doesn't. It should suffice to say Harry Potter is a tradmark of Warner Brothers, etc. -- Jimregan 00:24 16 May 2003 (UTC)

It's not ordinarily the way that we handle theological terminology, to distinguish the term (e.g. the term total depravity) from what it describes (e.g. Total depravity). If you don't object, I would like to replace the new article with a redirect to the original article. Mkmcconn 23:25 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

After a mistake or two, I finally moved the article to where it belongs, at "Total depravity". Just goes to show even the guy who wrote the damned software can screw up sometimes. LDC

Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be lists, such as lists of quotes. Please use your knowledge to create an article for Neoist that explains to the reader its history and relevance :) Kingturtle 00:00 May 16, 2003 (UTC)

Your articles are very interesting to read. I encourage you to keep writing! But also please check out Wikipedia:Manual of Style to get a sense of formatting :) Kingturtle 03:37 16 May 2003 (UTC)

I do not believe that three-sided football exists as anything other than an idiosyncratic fantasy in the minds of a few people. As such it does not belong in Wikipeda as per Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not items 7, 8 and 9. Please prove me wrong by-showing evidence that games of three-sided football have actually been played. Mintguy 00:45 21 May 2003 (UTC)

Mintguy, the three-sided football is a situationist game, meant to disrupt one's everyday idea of football :) Kingturtle 00:48 21 May 2003 (UTC)

I don't doubt it. Is it perhaps some form of "conceptual art"? If it is, I don't mind an article on it as long it is made clear that it isn't a real sport. Wikipedia shouldn't obscure the truth because it might blow the gaffe so to speak. Take a look at Mornington Crescent. Mintguy 00:56 21 May 2003 (UTC)

devised by the Danish Situationist Asger Jorn probably was intended to do just that....but if it is ok with harry, i will touch up the article a bit. Kingturtle 01:01 21 May 2003 (UTC)

Well I wonder if it was indeed devised by this Danish chap. He died in 1973. The Luther Blissett references are all nonsense. But my main concern is that the football article is now tainted with a reference to this fantasy. Mintguy 01:09 21 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi Harry, please read Talk:Communitarianism and then reconsider adding the Taborites. That Communitarianism page as it is now doesn't make any sense at all; I should say it's wrong. --KF 23:03 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Non illegitimi carborundum. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 19:53 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Sorry if I was overly harsh in my comments on dread, by the way. What I said should really have been aimed at Kierkegaard - not yourself. As an analytically-trained philosopher, I have a low tolerance for this continental stuff. :-) Regards, Evercat 11:24 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I believe your post on the Limehouse page is somewhat mangled. It was Martin Frobisher who brought back some black rock with gold flecks in it, and an alchemist (not Frobisher or Gilbert) thought it might yeild gold. Mintguy 22:31 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In response to your comments on my page. A little hint for you. Look at the history before you decide to rant at someone. You would have discovered discoverd that I haven't edited that page at all, let alone reverted any of your contributions to it. Mintguy 00:42 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well I had forgotten the alchemy stuff until you decided to remind me of it. Since the only other reference I've found to the Society of the New Art, Humfrey Gilbert and Limehouse refers to a supposed quote from the London Spy alongside the comment that the London Spy has proved that Canary Wharf is a huge 'virtual' pyramid that is used by the vampire management to channel working class psychic energies - I believe it to be patent nonsense and will now revert it. Mintguy 00:54 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry but too many of your contributions stretch credibility to the limit and therefore all your contributions in general are suspect. As far as I'm concerned the possibility that anything you write, may contain deliberate and malicious inaccuracies is enough to warrant a blanket reversion. Mintguy 09:17 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

When I wrote that bit about not letting the "Bastards grind you down" (in latin), I meant it. If you have been systematically adding genuinely spurious matter (pataphysics is not spurious but rather necessary for an encyplopaedia) however, please desist! This encyplopaedia needs a balanced view of the world, and I think you could help in that, if you so choose. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 11:52 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ok. Such is life. I leave you to deal with it as you see fit. There is however a consensual object here under developement: "what belongs in a dictionary that is consensually edited". The facts and the pov are neither in general, nor in any specific case fixed. If this is not enough for you, but you overtly wish to subvert the very process, I suggest you will not succeed, if you do not take care to observe greater care than you have done so far. When you edit subjects where you think your POV is relevant, please declare is as a POV expressed from the fundamental paradigm that you have avowed to embrace. Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 19:53 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The way to save your material from deletion is to add reputable printed references, the kind that other Wikipedians can find in libraries and buy from a bookstore. Wikipedia is by intent strictly a secondary source; no original research, no unsupported assertions (yes, I know there are lots here already; if I were in charge, they would all be deleted). There are plenty of wikis on the web; if you want to challenge the line between fact and fantasy, good luck to you, but this is not the place to be doing it. Stan 21:13 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In reply to:

Try http://www.mun.ca/sgs/science/july1483.html for Sir Humphrey Gilbert's encounter with a sea monster.

I see now that Gilbert apparently encountered what he thought was a sea monster, but the way you phrased it:

...he returned to Newfoundland only to be swallowed up by a sea monster.

is part of what caused all the suspicion. If only it had been written:

...on his return trip to Newfoundland, his ship sank following an attack by a creature that observers of the time described as a "sea monster."

it would have sounded much more credible. -- Wapcaplet 23:18 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

OK, let me be a little more direct. I don't actually care what you think about reality, fact, fantasy, whether a line exists or not, etc. The other people who work on Wikipedia do make those distinctions, and if you don't respect that, all your work here will deleted. Keep in mind it's faster to delete than to add, and there are hundreds of active editors that don't share your attitude, so you can't possibly win at this game. Given your complaints about "blatant nonsense" in Limehouse, I think you're actually quite clear on what is factual and what is not, and that your line about not having a "naive realist viewpoint" is just a hypocritical smokescreen that only fools the truly naive. Stan 23:51 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Moved from Village pump

If anyone could take a neutral look at Limehouse, London, England, I would be very grateful. User:Harry Potter added things about spacejackers and sea monsters which I reverted assuming it was rubbish. However HP has reverted back again.. with a not totally pleasant Summary comment. I have had enough of HP and can't look at his contributions with a cool head any more... such has (IMO) the negative impact on Wikipedia by having him around. Can someone see what checks out. Thanks. Pcb21 22:13 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have noticed (at least I think I have) this user User:Harry Potter appears to mischievously and deliberately introduce subtle inaccuracies into articles, which can often be quite difficult to spot. The latest, I think (I could be wrong, is on Jamestown Settlement "The first people reduced to slavery there were Polish, owned by Dr. Woodall, the surgeon of the East India Company."... I could be wrong but I don't think this is true. Polish glassblowers were employed by the English colonisers but slaves!? -anon

Hmm.... similar problems with Limehouse. Errant nonsense contributed by HP has had to be reverted. The only matches for his contribution found on a google search was at http://www.t0.or.at/karloff/darkterrors.html and http://twenteenthcentury.com/uo/index.php/CcOpenNorthwestPassage Mintguy

Thanks anon and Mintguy, I was beginning to think that I was the one to notice/care what a pain this guy is. It is usually easy to spot problems in his new articles but the ones that are really annoying are the extra sentence or so he adds to previously existing articles. Unless they are clearly rubbish, they tend to be really difficult or impossible to verify. I guess we have to keep an eye and hope it dies down. He is either the same person as, or in very close cahoots with, User:Qqq. Pcb21 07:59 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

At first blush, they appear to be nonsense (especially the thing about a sea monster) but on closer inspection it really does appear that User:Harry Potter has the best of intentions in adding good, factual information. As he has pointed out, we can't assume that google is the ultimate reference for all things - there are plenty of strange facts about the world that would never turn up in a google search (and plenty of completely misleading nonsense that would). Aside from some minor difficulties in socializing with others, I think he's a good contributor. (but again, some of us have been flatly reverting any of his changes that are suspicious, rather than editing out the questionable content and taking it to talk--which hardly seems cooperative.) -- Wapcaplet 13:03 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wap, as an example of HP's contributions please take a look at Anthony Hancock Paintings and Sculptures: A Retrospective Exhibition. (talk regarding that article moved there by Martin) also look at three sided football. Mintguy

Also there have been copyright, POV or (more debatably) 'nonsense' problems with London Virginia Company, The Tube, Pataphysics, London Institute of Pataphysics, Humphrey Gilbert, New World Negationism. That's nine articles named on this page. Now if you review the talk for all the various artices, I hope you'll agree that there has been considerable attempt at dialogue on the part of those who disagree with Harry's contributions. In response, Harry has never said he wants to make an encyclopedia, never admitted the factual errors he has added, instead he has insulted me personally on several occasions. Thus when we are faced with the line "...killed by a sea monster" and find that other sources indicate that the truth is "..some sailors are reported to have seen a sea-monster. Some have suggestion what they may have seen a giant squid. Gilbert died during a storm later in the voyage.", I hope you can appreciate why some of us have come to the view that it is better to revert and figure out the wheat from the chaff later, rather than argue back and forth with someone who talks in riddles. Pcb21 14:28 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I hope that the "some of us" referred to in that last comment will aknowledge that the attempts at dialogue have not all been without a presumption of being on the self-designated cause of truth. On the insult front, I think the honors are even. This whole thing (concerning as it does a limited number of people on both sides) smacks of a personality clash, more than anything else. All the references exhort us to check out this and that article and its histories. Why not just express a singular allegation of an edit made conciously and maliciously to harm the wikipedia? Is that too much to ask? Or maybe should we have easier rules about how we go about banning people? Please express yourself. This matter will continue to be a matter of contention, and you yourself may one day find yourself on one or the other side of it some day. And if you wait long enough, you will have found yourself on both sides of it. This is not a trivial housekeeping matter. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 14:53 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Singular edit #1 - [1] - no attempt to state that this in fact a fantasy.

Singular edit #2 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Football&diff=944250&oldid=944228 - inclusion of three sided football in mainstream description of the game.

Potentially unverifiable "factoids" -

From Edward Coke "In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain refused to make a public apology for the long history of slavery under the British Empire on the basis that it was legal"

Jamestown Settlement "The first people reduced to slavery there were Polish, owned by Dr. Woodall, the surgeon of the East India Company."

#3 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=London_Institute_of_Pataphysics&oldid=961114

#4 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pataphysics&oldid=955981

#5 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pataphysical_situation&oldid=961154

#6 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=The_Tube&diff=991375&oldid=991349

#7 http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=New_World_Negationism&oldid=987287

Well, Harry Potter; here is your chance. Refute the allegations. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 16:11 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm not speaking on Harry Potter's behave, but could you specify what s/he did to articles #3 thru 7? Or at least link the the diff page, if you don't want to. --Menchi 16:26 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Whew, I am afraid I haven't followed the discussion enough to really comprehend what must be going on. Looking closely at the examples provided above (in particular the Singular Edits #1 and 2), I can see what you mean - it was rather absurd to introduce three-sided football as a genuine branch of what everyone else knows as football, and there's no good way to edit it out without just reverting. Seems like most of the topics that HP writes on belong in some article about absurdist philosophy or situationalism, not in articles on mainstream topics, where they will be interpreted as fact. He clearly has a fine command of the language - too bad he is squandering it on silliness like this. -- Wapcaplet 19:47 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I am sorry if I have been brusque upon occasion, however I cannot help feeling that I am being expected to adhere to a far tighter code than other people. E.g. Pcb21 has removed the London Virginia Company because they consider it Povie. However other very Povie artciles are available e.g.: the American Revolutionary War article which fails to deal with the very anti-democratic nature of slaveowners like George Washington or the role of the Dunsmore Declaration as the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America. However I refrain from simply removing a page which perhaps reflects deep seated institutional racism because I am not yet ready to put the time and energy into that because I am subject to so many unneccesaary attacks. If I have been less than cordial with Pcb21, it is because I feel that they have been less than fair with me.

As regards specific points: The problem with the football article was that it stated early on that having two teams playing was an essential characteristic of football - something which is untrue, not merely since Asger Jorn developed Three sided football, but indeed since the Haxey Hood Game, which I have just noticed has been edited out of the football entry! The problem existed more with the way the original text put forward such an erroneous view right at the start of the article, that it needed correcting there.

Singular edit #1 - [2] - no attempt to state that this in fact a fantasy.

The entry clearly refered to the Tony Hancock page. The exhibition certainly did take place, with real pictures and sculptures as represented in the film.

From Edward Coke "In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain refused to make a public apology for the long history of slavery under the British Empire on the basis that it was legal"

Well this is my understanding of the Queen's response to the Rastafarian request for an apology. What's your understanding of her response???

Jamestown Settlement "The first people reduced to slavery there were Polish, owned by Dr. Woodall, the surgeon of the East India Company."

If you check the Nicholas Ferrar page you will find the reference to this. So what level of ignorance am I meant to assume - and why have been singled out to supply verification for the facts I share with you whereas others are not/ (On a more practical level if there was a facility to build Bibliographies as an adjunct to wikipedia and the wictionary, then that would facilitate a place where references could be located - something I would fully support.

Perhaps Wapcaplet does not realise how demeaning their epithet of silliness is! Serious issues are being raised here. The English invasion of North America is a singular event in history, it changed the world. Yet when I start working on this, looking at the involvement of such luminaries as Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Martin Frobisher in alchemy it is because I feel that this is relevant. The fact that the dead hand of bureaucratic historification has so chosen to obfuscate the facts and created a climate when people both from North America and the British Isles find their minds easily befuddled. Yes I have apologised for making mistakes. Mea culpa, it was Martin Frobisher who brought the Black rock back from Greenland. Although Humphrey Gilbert invested in the enterprise, this was not one of his voyages. And I corrected it. But I am not the only person to have made a mistake. OK maybe the assertion about Gilbert's fate at the hands of the sea monster was POV, But the essence of the encounter has been demonstrated. Compared to the range errors in the mass loading of information on places in London, I wonder why I am being singled out for attack. As for the question about the tube, this is a serious point for people with disabilities. I have not had a chance to verify the issue, but as I recall there are restrictions to wheelcahirs and push chairs on the tube which do not exist on the underground, and that they were subject to political action by disabled groups at some time. Now this may not be important from an able-bodied point of view, but if we are to make something useful to people with disabilities, then the issue has to be addressed. As for the remark that I have never said that I am interested in making an encylopedia or dealing with facts: I aim to help wikipedia realise its potential as an encyclopedia, even if that potential overflows from the eighteenth century notion of what an encyclopedia could be. I am particularly interested in the heuristic questions which must arise from such a project. I see the goal of NPOV as laudable, even if it has its own problems. However, if this is to succeed, then I see that it cannot be constrained by a neocartesian epistemology. Harry Potter

What's DLR? Evercat 23:10 7 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Is this about right? Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I point out here, I'm not exactly an expert in this field. -- Tim Starling 06:57 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Harry Potter, It seems to me that the problem people have with your edits, is not that they are not valid, but that it is you make non-fact sound like fact. For instance, the Queen Elizabeth II is an interpritation (non-fact) not fact. Please be more clear in teh future, and you won't hav this problem. MB 22:47 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I'm guess I'm young, naive and lucky. Isaac Newton is my hero -- editing 30 pages of text from the 1911 Britannica was the least I could do to exalt him :) As for Gresham College -- let's hope you can write about it without drawing too much fire for including "unverifiable factoids" and "nonsense". At least you're relatively civil when it comes to discussion -- that's more than I can say for the proponent/s of neutrosophy. I'll be very happy when that debate is over. -- Tim Starling 07:06 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There's a difference between writing factually about fictional characters, and writing fiction about facts. However, it should always be clear which it is. If Stan is unclear, this can be fixed (the addition of the word "fictional" might be enough) Evercat 22:20 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Just to amplify on that, we have room for lots of fiction and fictional characters; one would be hard-pressed to discuss William Shakespeare plays in depth without the ability to have a article on Falstaff distinct from the article on Sir John Oldcastle. It's just ultra-important to distinguish - I've personally been slowly pushing all the Tolkien articles into saying "fiction" in a consistent way, so that nobody is misled; many of the Tolkien articles are more in-depth than the articles on real-life subjects. BTW, the habit of some ancient authors to add large-scale fabrications into their histories has misled many people about the origins of some of our own institutions, misinformation that could likely be found at the root of some of the social injustices you decry. So you yourself could be said to be a victim of your intellectual predecessors' habit of not distinguishing carefully between fact and fiction. Oh, the irony! Stan 23:38 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand your message. I think the article at Stan makes it clear that the story is fictional and that Stan never existed, and that Marshall Mathers raps on all four verses. If this isn't clear, feel free to edit the article to make it clear. Tuf-Kat

What the heck is a Neo-Cartesian Fundamentalist, anyway? Evercat 18:46 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And where on Earth does the term come from? My absolute frame of reference, Google, provides zero hits... Evercat 20:27 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I believe it's a made-up term - but as Harry Potter has said elsewhere using lots of big words, he's not limited to the same naive view of reality as the rest of us, so presumably there is a reality where the term is well-known, and we're just not intelligent enough or insightful enough to see it. Stan 20:57 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oi. There's no need to split the page ley line and I will resist attempts to do so. Evercat 11:29 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There's absolutely no reason to move to another page the information about how many "ley lines" one can expect to find. This is extremely important and should be on the main ley line page. Evercat 13:00 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I very much doubt that the difference between a plane and a curved surface makes a whole lot of difference to the probability of finding ley lines, and in any event, ley lines are usually found by looking at maps, which are 2-dimensional. Therefore, a discussion of how many ley lines one will get if one simply looks at a map is exceedingly useful.

Also, please explain how QM and the MWI can possibly be relevant to this. Evercat 13:19 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

As you might have guessed from my user name, I find Everett's interpretation interesting. Nevertheless, whether MWI is true or false clearly has no bearing on how many ley lines one can expect to find in any given world (no matter how many worlds there are).

Just because QM deals with probability does not mean that every question of probability is relevant to it. "Ley lines" would appear by chance whether MWI is true or not. They would appear by chance even if the whole theory of QM was totally wrong. Evercat 13:48 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

"Ley lines will appear by chance" means that, even if there are no spooky psychic forces at work, it is still the case that in the overwhelming majority of possible configurations of monuments, ley lines will seem to exist. This is a very easy position to maintain, and is not affected one bit by QM. Evercat 14:10 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Alright, I'm sorry if I mischaracterised your motives. Evercat 23:21 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hello. I see that you created a page at Nursling, Hampshire, England today. However, there was nothing at Nursling, so I moved it there. If there is more than Nursling, you need to create a disambigation page at Nursling, and then put a link there to the page with the disambiguated title. Otherwise, someone is only going to create an article at Nursling, and we'll likely end up with two articles about the same thing. Article titles should in general be as simple and straightforward as possible, to enable easy linking. I can't see any reason for as long a title as the one you made up. Besides, we in the UK don't usually go round calling places "Nursling, Hampshire" and the like - that's an Americanism! If there is more than one Nursling in the UK, we should probably use the usual disambiguation method of putting further information in parentheses. We could perhaps have Nursling (Hampshire) and Nursling (Othershire). The "England" part would be redundant unless there is another Nursling which is in another Hampshire in another country, which seems exceedingly unlikely! Actually, I've just done a Google search for "nursling", and almost all the matches are to do with the place in Hampshire, so I think it's sensible to have the article at Nursling, and later create a separate Nursling (disambiguation) page for other Nurslings, if any turn up. -- Oliver P. 09:21 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Consistency is great - as I said at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London I intend to achieve that by moving all the entries on bits of London to simpler titles without "London" and "England" (unless they need them for disambiguation purposes, of course). I'm leaving it a couple of days before I start, though, in case any objections are raised. --Camembert

I support Camembert's suggestion. I don't think pages should be disambiguated unless there is a demonstrated need for them to be. But as for consistency, disambiguation is almost always done here with the use of parentheses. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London for my views on applying this to placenames... -- Oliver P. 11:55 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

And Mr. Potter, I'd be interested to hear any counterargument you might have against what I say in my message above. And if you really do insist on moving things, please use the "Move this page" feature instead of copying and pasting the text. Otherwise the edit histories just get messed up. -- Oliver P. 11:55 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi - a lot of London articles have just been moved around, removing superfluous "Londons" and "Englands" from their titles. I think they've all been caught, but if you see any that have been missed, feel free to move them (of course, some can't be moved because there are other places with the same name). --Camembert

Thanks for pointing out that there was a larger image, I'll go ahead and make a link to it. - Hephaestos 16:17 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There, should be all right now. It probably still looks big on your computer because your browser still has the older version in its cache. - Hephaestos 16:33 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Can you state clearly and simply what your problem with the diagram is? It's just an example of the alignments of random points. How's such an example pseudoscience, please? Evercat 21:03, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ok then lets put it on the Alignments of random points page.Harry Potter 21:08, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's just silly. Evercat 21:09, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)