User:Jtl/EmailToAschlafly

Various emails I've sent Andy.

I'm not Ice
From: Todd Larason  Subject: I'm not Ice Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 09:56:10 -0700 To: aschlafly@...

Hi Andy, I'm user 'jtl' on Conservapedia, and I'm not Icewedge.

I don't know what TK's new problem with me is; as you can see on the Sysop Abuse report page, I've asked him repeatedly, and he first declined to answer, then he seriously insulted me, then he banned me with the allegation 'ice', presumably a short-hand way of accusing me of being icewedge.

I'm not. I disagree with you on many things, but I've never vandalized CP.

I'm not begging to be re-instated. I have no illusions that there's anything like due process; TK has made that exceedingly clear. But I do want it on the record that I deny the allegation.

Todd Larason I did receive a response to this letter.

Re: I'm not Ice
From: Todd Larason  Subject: Re: I'm not Ice Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 13:18:38 -0700 To: Aschlafly@aol.com

On 16 May 07, Aschlafly@aol.com wrote: > If you can give me more info to build our confidence, then maybe I can get > you reinstated.

Without having any idea what the charges against me are, I have no idea what I could say to build confidence. All that is probably moot, though: I have no desire whatsoever to participate in a project where an administrator has publically called me a terrorist. A public apology from TK (or from you, on behalf of the project, combined with his no longer being an administrator) would be a necessary step.

And since I don't have any expectation of either of those things happening, I think this is the end of my active participation.

> Conservapedia is up front about who we are and what we stand for.

So am I. My name is on my talk page; I'm very viisble in Google; I've been vocal but non-vandalistic in my participation in CP. -- Todd Larason | Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Do it now. I received no response to this letter, nor to any of the subsequent mail.

Copying Rule
From: Todd Larason  Subject: Copying rule Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 16:45:15 -0700 To: aschlafly@aol.com

At http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=User_talk:Starfleet7&oldid=166093 you reiterated the 'no copying' commandment, so I assume it is still in force.

Given that, you might wish to look at: http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Steny_Hoyer&diff=next&oldid=168799 http://hoyer.house.gov/about/short.asp

http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Bill_of_Rights&curid=25836&diff=169 067&oldid=168801 http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/billofrights.html

In the latter case, the editor included a reference, appearing to abide by commandment 2. If you look at that reference, however, you'll see that much of the supposedly-cited information isn't actually given there, and the source the information was actually taken from (exact words, actually, not just the information) wasn't given.

Conservapedia Morality Article
From: Todd Larason  Subject: Conservapedia Morality article Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 20:29:29 -0700 To: aschlafly@aol.com

When you say "This section relies heavily on" in [1], do you realize you mean "is a direct quote from"? Do you understand that the _entire article_, not just the parts marked as quotes, are quotes from other websites? How does that not conflict with Commandment 1?

I actually oversimplified somewhat -- the large section which _is_ marked as a quote isn't actually, for two different reasons:

1. it isn't a quote from "Morals from Mainstream Media" as it says; it's actually from the same author's "Morality and Public Order". 2. the quote has been altered; that is, it's no longer a direct quote. At least one of the chanegs has the effect of putting words into the author's mouth that were actually written by a third party and quoted in the original document.

Do you believe this is a good example of academic honesty for your students?

And finally, do you realize that most or all of TK's large contributions have been made this way? [1] http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Morality&curid=9942&diff=181604&old id=80938 -- Todd Larason | Obligatory 'blog: http://molelog.molehill.org/ | UIN:  1622765 -- Impeach the Motherfucker Already

Special:Statistics counts
From: Todd Larason  Subject: Special:Statistics counts Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 22:09:49 -0700 To: aschlafly@aol.com

Special:Statistics doesn't prefer "more words". You may not like the criteria it uses to try to tell which pages have "any real content", but saying it's looking at page length is just wrong.

It counts any article which meets the following criteria:

1. is in a namespace which is configured to be an 'article' namespace. By default, that's just the main namespace.

2. contains the characters '[[' at least once (that is, it contains a wiki link or something which syntatically looks like one)

There are two special cases.

First, if you re-generate the count for some reason using updateArticleCount, a slightly different criteria is used:

1. is in a namespace which is configured to be an 'article' namespace. By default, that's just the main namespace. 2. contains at least one out-going wiki link 3. has a size > 0 bytes 4. is not a redirect

I only see one actual case that makes a difference -- normally, an article which contains a [[category:]] tag will be counted; with the updateArticleCount script, it won't be.

Second special case: you can set a configuration variable to only count pages which contain a comma rather than [[. The updateArticleCount script doesn't pay attention to this config item, so if you're using it then the two counts would be very different.

The AncientPages list you're using, on the other hand, most certainly _does_ contain redirects. See for instance the current #10422, "FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp." and compare it with #10424, "FDA v. Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp.". -- Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Do it now.

Kickstarting an encyclopedia
From: Todd Larason  Subject: Kickstarting an encyclopedia Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 13:57:04 -0700 To: aschlafly@aol.com Moreover, is copying OK to "kickstart" a project? No, of course not, especially when attribution is not prominently given for such wholesale copying. -- Andy Schlafly, 2 April 2007 http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?oldid=81393&diff=prev&title=User_talk%3AAschlafly --                                                                                                                        Todd Larason | PGP key: http://www.molehill.org/~jtl/public.asc | UIN: 5968624 --                                            Impeach the Motherfucker Already