Cold Fusion Times : Previous US gov't classified &other, documents from early &mid-years of the Cold Fusion coverup now public through FOIA &FairUse

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Things were "off"? "Could plausibly have been"?!? "An impression"??? What would it take for you to say this is fraud. How much more outrageous could they be? Imagine you come home, open the front door, and you find your furniture has been cut in pieces with a chainsaw, every dish in the kitchen is smashed, there is an ax through the TV . . . and you say: "Things seem a little off here. I get the impression someone trashed the place. I want to hear from the person who did this before I decide whether there is damage."

There is no conceivable "side" for Rossi and Penon to present. If they had any answers, Rossi would have given those answers instead of filing a lawsuit. There is nothing they could do to make this fraud more blatant or more obvious. Heck, sending the "steam" into a pretend customer site alone tells you it is fraud. The fact that the room is not as hot as an oven tells you it cannot be real. It is incredible that you or anyone else believes this nonsense.

There are many possible "wabbits" that Rossi and Penon could present. Just a couple wild guesses (not well thought out on my part) that come to mind are...

1) Proof of a low pressure source on the JM Products Inc. side of the wall that could have transported steam through the pipe.

2) Sensor readings or data from the manufacturing equipment indicating a high quantity of steam was brought in and/or thermal energy utilized.

3) Photographs or video of the setup somehow providing evidence the pipe was indeed full during operation of the plant. Remember, Rossi claimed they had the whole place rigged with security cameras monitoring everything.

4) An explanation for the rust line. I don't know what this could be, exactly. But a wild guess could be that at times when the plant was not in operation, the water level in the pipe could have dropped.

Again, I'm not saying these are good or adequate explanations. I'm just saying that there are possible "wabbits" that Andrea Rossi could submit. We don't know if he will or not. If all the way through the trial he does provide adequate answers, explanations, or wabbits, then obviously I.H. will win and public opinion will obviously be turned 99.99% against Andrea Rossi.

Quote from MrSelfSustain

ed Rothwell and Abd,

I do not know where I read it, but I'm sure I found a document or statement somewhere in the court papers explaining that the 0 bar reading actually represented atmospheric pressure and not vacuum. There is a chance I am mistaken (I've been doing a LOT of reading lately on many different topics) but I'm 90% sure that is specified somewhere. I'm going to search a little and try to find it.

Do that. Among other things, by searching for stuff like this, you may become more familiar with the documents.

Of course, 0.0 would represent atmospheric pressure. It would be stated as "barG," i.e., bar gauge, and gauge pressure meters show the difference between the measured pressure and atmospheric, it is how they are constructed. (Imagine a membrane with tested pressure on one side and open to the air on the other .... or something like that.). An similar absolute pressure gauge will have the compared pressure be a vacuum, sealed. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…e_measurement#Instruments. I'm talking about diaphragm gauges.

The chosen gauge in the Penon protocol, covered in the document attached to the end of RvD 70.1, was an absolute pressure gauge. PX309-100A5V. This may have been a typo. See http://www.omega.com/Pressure/pdf/PX309-100mv.pdf ... the 5 in the number is probably incorrect.

Choosing an absolute pressure gauge was appropriate. It's been pointed out that this gauge is only rated to 85 C. If it were directly installed in the steam pipe, then, it could be damaged. However, it might be mounted indirectly. A short tube connecting it to the steam pipe would probably keep the temperature below 85 C. However, there is another problem. Full-scale pressure for this device would be 6.9 bar. The rated static accuracy is 0.25% full-scale. That is about 0.02 bar. However, this would be repeatability, not actual accuracy. There is an offset of +/- 2% FSO. So that would be 0.14 bar. With in-situ calibration, and temperature protection, this gauge could have high precision, but ... how much do we trust Rossi and Penon to take those steps? The Report would presumably show what was done to measure pressure. Pressure should have been measured at both ends of the customer loop. for full caution, these gauges are cheap. There would be ways to sabotage the gauge, so one would want continuous recording of data in a serious test (like the GPT would have been).

A GPT would never have given Rossi full control. That's important to realize. The contemplated GPT would have been in the IH facility in Raleigh. A test of individual units would have been superior -- providing MTBF data --, cheaper to handle, with no regulator problems, and all it would have taken would have been an agreement, and we know that IH offered to waive the GPT for a payment, as one apparent fact alleged or accepted by Rossi (and he declined, and when this was offered will be a matter of interest, because it might recognize that Rossi was attempting a GPT, so ... my suspicion is it was in December 2015, when we know there was correspondence on this issue, with IH denying that Doral was a GPT and that Penon was ERV.)

I am not aware of any mention of "gauge pressure" in the court documents, except for Exhibit 5. (document 29.5 on newvortex). Addressing Penon, and with reference to the preliminary reports:

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According to the data you have reported, the conserved mass flow rate of the system from February to November 2015 was on average 33,558 kg/day (1398 kg/h) and the temperature of the water and steam were on average 68.7º C and 102.8º C, respectively. The steam pressure was reported (for the entire period) to be 0 kPaG and the piping is DN40.

For steam to flow, a pressure differential is required to overcome the losses in the pipe. Given the foregoing, this would require that the pressure on the JMP side of the building was significantly below atmospheric (vacuum) and that the steam would flow at extraordinary velocity. But this was obviously not the situation present at the location.

Given your reported measurements, how do you account for the lack of an adequate pressure differential to provide for the flow of steam?

What happened? Murray actually stated at the end of doc. 5:

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As I noted above, the questions above are not all of the questions I have from my visit to the 1 MW Plant location, but if you can address these, it would be a good start to me better understanding what you were measuring and how you were measuring it in connection with the 1 MW Plant. (Just to be clear, I am not asking you, and I do not plan to ask you, about the license agreement or whether you are an ERV under the agreement. I am trying to focus just on the test and its measurement.)

It is conceivable that Penon might have had answers, though they are difficult to conceive. However, Penon did not answer, IH claims, and since he was paid to make measurements -- everyone agrees he was -- this is why he is a defendant. And he has not made himself available for service of process, so, legally, unless this is remedied, he will be dismissed as a defendant, but could be re-served, since the dismissal will be without prejudice. His non-appearance will heavily damage any possible Rossi case.

Part of being a professional engineer, as is claimed about him, would be availabilityi to testify in court to what one has measured.

Peter Gluck has gone over the edge about Exhibit 5. Murray was behaving as a professional. Penon was not. If a client -- IH was a client -- asks some "stupid question," a professional answers it, and doesn't storm off in a huff as Peter thinks, excusing Penon's non-response. Rossi himself storms off, he's done it many times, and he seems to attract people who will do the same. Hence the behavior of the Lugano professors and Kullander and Essen before that. It's true that those experts have no particular responsibility to respond to the peanut gallery on the internet. However ... Murray was the IH engineer, asking a consulting engineer on-point questions.

Questions that were obvious from the preliminary data. "0.0 bar" was impossible under Doral conditions, and so Murray may have translated it. Or that is what the report said, and what was being measured was not as in the protocol, thus the IH complaint that test procedures were not followed has legs.

This is what the application called for an absolute pressure gauge, because the issue is the boiling point of water. Gauge pressure only provides an approximation, because atmospheric pressure varies.

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Abd,

Thanks for the reasonable response. I agree that on the surface the information from IH does seem to indicate things were "off" about the test. This combined with additional revelations creates the impression that Andrea Rossi could have plausibly been up to something very deceptive. But I'm not about to make a personal determination until I've heard Rossi's side and Penon's side. One thing I've learned over time in my own offline life and experience is that coming to a conclusion about a matter knowing only one side of a story can often backfire. I'm the kind of person who loves to talk, and I'm overall a pretty good listener. I've had people tell me long, detailed stories about how another individual did them wrong or conspired against them. On occasion, I was convinced by their seemingly genuine words and the limited knowledge I had of the situation. Then later a whole new series of facts would be revealed that changed the "reality" of the story significantly! Often, it would place both parties somewhere in the middle of the guilty/innocent spectrum instead of being polar opposites.

Indeed. I studied the phenomenon, beginning back in the 1980s. I was fascinated to see how debates would proceed, on the W.E.L.L., where, for the first time, there was an extended and "hot" interaction where all of it was recorded. I saw how entire communities would form a consensus that was contrary to the actual record.

I saw this happen on Wikipedia later. Information cascade. And hardly anyone would actually look at the record. Why? It's obvious. Your little story shows why. When two people are arguing with each other, the onlookers will actually assume that both are "guilty." However, they will also preferentially see the side they prefer already. They won't look at the record because they already saw it come down originally. However, humans remember what we make things mean, not what actually happens, unless one is a trained witness. Since they already "knew," why take the time to check? And what happens when someone actually does check?

Well, people will assume that someone who takes that much trouble must have an axe to grind, so they discount it, they think that this person is on a "side," and is cherry-picking the evidence.

The Wikipedia sequence fooled me. I had claimed that JzG was "involved" with cold fusion, first in a Request for Comment, where two-thirds of those commenting responded with "ban Abd." (Violating what RfCs were about, by policy, by the way.) This then went to the Arbitration Committee. The community was still screaming the same thing. I had compiled a list of all related edits. It showed clear involvement. The JzG faction claimed that the comments on each edit were comments I had added to make him look bad. No, they were simply his original comments, and I had compiled that record with careful neutrality. However, one arbitrator decided to check and wrote a script to compile what I had done manually. It totally confirmed what I'd shown. So that case went against JzG, and it seemed like a victory. However, behind the scenes, a majority of the committee was actually convinced that I was a pure troublemaker, and wanted to ban me, but this case was way too obvious to act on. So they waited until there was a case where I was, myself, involved. And then they were able to present an appearance of neutrality in topic-banning and site-banning me. One could look at that case (on "cold fusion") in vain for actual cause, policy violation on my part. I was not the only one sanctioned this way, it was Pcarbonn before me and then, again, later.

An administrator, a scientist, saw what I'd done, actually reading my evidence and arguments, and was inspired and ran for the Arbitration Committee, and won a seat. He was gone in not very long, threatened in real life with harm to his family if he didn't resign. He decided it was not worth the danger for a "hobby." Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they are not out to get you. However, he wasn't paranoid. The toughs that threatened him face-to-face were real. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

The Arbitration Committee invented new policy to prevent that arbitrator from mentoring me (i.e, approving my intervention in matters where I wasn't involved -- which Wikipedia policy considers ideal for an intervenor), which would have satisfied a certain ban they made up entirely for me, the "MYOB ban." Ah, reality! It's amazing!

(The position of the Arbitration Committee majority was revealed in a hack of their private mailing list, published on wikipediareview.com. Someone blew the whistle. Many members of the committee were well-meaning, but power can do something quite nasty to good people, particularly when data is overwhelming, and Wikipedia generates enormous volumes of data. Investigating and presenting a case, and then assessing it, took way too much time, and no staff support was provided. My major mission on Wikipedia, was, in fact, to address those problems, and that is the real reason I attracted such opposition. There are people who did not want a functioning, neutral system, because they would have lost some power. Good people can respond that way, believing that they understand better than the uninformed majority. And, indeed, they might!)

Meanwhile, my comments on Rossi v. Darden -- and Rossi himself -- are based on the preponderance of the evidence visible to me. I am fully aware of the at-least-theoretical possibility that Rossi can pull a Wabbit out of the hat. However, that does not shift the present state of evidence. So I am also sympathetic with Jed's claims of "proof," though they are not what I'd call proof, but merely strong evidence. To be sure, full proof is not attainable outside of math, where all assumptions are carefully managed and explicit. Math can still be incorrect where an assumption is incorrect. Rather, Jed uses "proof" to mean "very, very obvious to me!"

Murray presents a very good case for a problem with the preliminary measurements. The plot thickens when we know that Penon did not himself record the data, apparently, Rossi did. Or maybe one of the others. Fabiani?

Jed has called the fraud "clumsy" or something like that. Yet we must notice something truly remarkable. If Rossi was setting up a deliberate fraud, it was amazingly complex. Look at that plant, with all its complexity, all those devices, manufactured and arranged, and a staff of at least three monitoring or assisting with it for a year. It would have been easy to manipulate gauges -- or the recording process itself, which was, after all, programmed by Fabiani as to operating the plant -- to produce a believable record. However, the entire concept of a 1 MW test in that warehouse, with no equipment to handle the obviously necessary heat dissipation, was a major problem ab initio, and it doesn't appear that Rossi bothered to address it at all. Surely they could have installed some duct work!

My general conclusion is that Rossi is literally insane. He may believe in what he is doing, he may be "sincere." Look, here, at the behavior of Randombit0. In some ways, very knowledgeable, but stuck on something very Rossi. This is high-functioning insanity. It happens. Some may think this is some gambit in a game to win arguments with Zero. No. It's an assessment, and is rebuttable. It's not presented as a proof.

Just because someone is insane doesn't mean they are wrong.

Sometimes, in fact, the truth can lead to insanity, and ... my life showed that, I became obsessed about Wikipedia, and that is largely what led to my ban. In my training, all this came out .... that was an amazing process! It was difficult for me to recognize, because ... after all, I was "right!" Being right is the biggest trap of all, it can radically disempower us.

Semmelweiss was right, and it literally drove him crazy.

Consider the expression, "dead right."

In marriage counselling, "Would you rather be right, or be married?"

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
An administrator, a scientist, saw what I'd done, actually reading my evidence and arguments, and was inspired and ran for the Arbitration Committee, and won a seat. He was gone in not very long, threatened in real life with harm to his family if he didn't resign. He decided it was not worth the danger for a "hobby."

Is that for real? Did you hear it from the person himself, or only by rumor? Those people at Wikipedia are crazy. It is like a cult, or "Lord of the Flies" without adult supervision.

I heard it from the person himself. All that, starting with his being inspired by me to run (maybe someone could do something about the Wikipedia mess, and I had shown the possibility, but I was not an administrator, and the system is heavily biased toward administrators. Well, he was an administrator! So what could he do? Later, a *functionary* (a steward, highly privileged, with the highest possible privilege except for developers, who can modify the raw database) took on the same faction, before the Arbitration Committee -- and asked me for advice. His effort succeeded only very weakly and it was all mostly useless. The Wikipedia Problem is heavily entrenched, and it is a systematic problem, caused by the structure, that became extremely conservative. All, in fact, rather predictable. Wikipedia is clueless about how to deal with coherent factions, the structure mostly assumes that they don't exist. Then, if anyone actually coordinates, as with the Eastern European Mailing List, they throw the book at them, even though what the EEML actually did was harmless compared to other routine crap that is generally ignored. The faction coordination that harms Wikipedia the most is usually informal, it's a pile of watchlist data that tells "members" what needs attention. I saw and showed some signs of actual coordination, which, of course, was ignored. Not "proven." Later, the Guerilla Skeptics were quite open and almost nothing was done. See, their views align with the faction I confronted. Particularly egregious violations, users will be banned, so they do suffer some damage, on occasion. The administrators involved are smart enough to usually stay away from obvious actions.)

What they did with you, Jed, was absolutely outrageous. I did confront it, and that is part of how I came to the attention of the faction. This was actually before I researched LENR. I was simply a Wikipedia editor, trusting the goals of the project. Have you ever looked at what it took to get lenr-canr.org removed from the global blacklist? But then it was largely useless because that same administrator, JzG, reprimanded for directly blacklisting, proceeded to personally remove links that were obviously useful and within policy. He revert warred, and only gave up, and in only one case -- the Martin Fleischmann article -- when I managed to create -- with high effort -- community consensus against his action. And even though cold fusion was put on "discretionary sanctions", as a result of my case, the enforcement of those always ended up with factional -- or clueless -- administrators. They really had to get rid of me, I was a damned nuisance. I actually knew how to work within policy to create genuine consensus. Not tolerable.

But the system was, and still is, badly broken. That isn't about cold fusion, it merely has an effect there.

Quote from JedRothwell

LENR Calender wrote:

The data did show 0.0 bar. I checked again, carefully. Perhaps it was meant to be 0.0 barG, but that is equally impossible.

Nevertheless, 0.0 barG is more plausible. 0.0 bar is truly impossible, so there are some ready possibilities here.

1. the preliminary reports had 0.0 bar, but meaning 0.0 barG. Jed got a copy of a preliminary report.
2. Penon may have later corrected that to 0.0 barG.
3. Murray read 0.0 bar and interpreted it as an obvious error, translating it to 0.0 barG. Being in a set of questions, it really doesn't matter. There was an obvious problem, and he was asking about it.

As to "total loser idiot," the jury is out on that. We don't know who actually compiled the data, and making a typo doesn't establish idiocy, but ... the value of 0.0 barG is still way crazy for the conditions. Steam would create pressure there, because of how much it expands over the water sitting in the boilers. This will create flow, and flow will create pressure increase, basic physics. There is an issue of how much. There are also issues of the accuracy of the pressure gauge. Rather than attempt to distentangle it, I stay with the simple fact. Murray asked an obvious question and there was no answer, and there still is no answer, as far as we know.

Something is drastically off, that is obvious. Did Penon correct this problem or cover it in the final Report? Maybe. We don't know.

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Some of the data I have is 100.1 deg C.

Which someone might think was enough to establish dry steam if the pressure was 0.0 barG. Maybe. Maybe not, and there are two matters to consider, then, the accuracy of the temperature measurement and the accuracy of the pressure gauge. Calibrations? "We don't need no stinkin' calibrations."

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LENR Calender wrote:
Exhibit 5 is to be taken for what it is: a list of concerns brought up by IH. It's not a sacrosanct list of proven issues with the plant.

No, it is not a list of "concerns." It is a list of outrageous lies that Rossi and Penon stuffed into their fake data. The Exhibit asks "how is this possible"? That is a polite way of saying "this is not possible."

Well, it is not presented as a list of lies. Further, it could be a list of errors, not lies. It is, indeed, a list of concerns, but it also includes alleged fact, such as the content of the preliminary reports that Murray had, and some physical observations. These facts and observations do cast serious doubt on the preliminary reports, which were, at best, quite sloppy. None of this makes sense for a Guaranteed Performance Test on which a payment of $89 million would hinge.

Again, if someone is going to fake data, where they would reasonably expect some major attention would be paid to it, one would think that they would do a better job! Researchers have been whacked, their careers destroyed, because their data showed statistically impossible precision. Of course, Rossi and Penon were not necessarily highly informed. Maybe they could overlook the possibility. The thing is, a scientist or experienced engineer would immediately recognize the problems with the data. It's not rocket science.

LENR Calender's "sacrosanct" is reactive to Jed's certainty. Jed would not agree that it was "sacrosanct," so that is a straw man argument. It's probative, however, for it is unlikely that the preliminary reports were misrepresented -- though not impossible, people make mistakes. And even, once in a while, someone actually lies. Who is most likely to be lying here, if someone is?

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If you think it is possible . . . Then I redirect the questions to you:

How could the pressure be 0.0 bar or 0.0 barG? Take your pick -- they are equally impossible.

Right. Therefore they are either incorrect, or the plant was not operational as claimed. If they are incorrect, if the real pressure figures are not available, it is then impossible to determine the fraction of flow that was evaporated. So the test was useless and probably unrecoverable. The practical effect of this is that Rossi doesn't get paid, and Rossi v. Darden is either dismissed (not from this issue, which would be a matter of fact and thus only resolvable by a jury, but from the problem of no agreement to a GPT) or is taken to trial at high expense and still generates no revenue for Rossi, and quite possibly a large judgment against him.

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How could the exact same flow rates and other parameters be recorded day after day?

Well, I drank a lot of wine and forgot to write down the numbers, but it was about that, wasn't it? Whatsa problema?

By the way, the flow measurement is total flow, not rate. That this would be exactly the same day after day would indeed be, ah, unusual!

Here is how it could happen: the flow rate was determined as a constant value that, if totally evaporated, would represent a megawatt. The flow rate is determined by a pump, and the pump has a constant setting. This would actually be plausible as an operational approach. This would be expected, however, to produce some small variations in total flow, it would not be exactly the same every day, if one was writing down the flow meter readings. I forget if the flow meter has a sender for automatic logging. I'm thinking not, but if it did, there could be a more sophisticated version that would change the pumping rate to create exactly the same flow. In other words, it's possible. Then, for legitimate operation, the number of reactors operating and their levels of operation would be adjusted to totally evaporate that water, as assessed by the sensors. I.e., to answer this question, set aside the pressure question..... one miracle at a time, please!

And if the operator really DGAF, it doesn't matter how the reactors are set, as long as they don't explode. So what if they don't evaporate all the water! So there is some overflow. Whaddaya want, perfection?

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How did the reactor produce 1 MW of steady heat on days when Rossi's own log book shows it was turned off?

Aw, Rossi made some logging errors. Whaddaya want, perfection? What really counts is the ERV Report. That is the final authority, according to the Agreement. They agreed to this, their own paid expert! The snakes!

As read on Planet Rossi.

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Rossi did not answer, because he could not. Perhaps you will take a shot at these questions, and the others in Exhibit 5.

He has not answered yet. I agree that we must qualify these statements with the fact. He still has time to formally Answer the counterclaims. At some point soon, the Judge will rule on his Motion to Dismiss and then he will have two weeks to respond, assuming the countersuit is not dismissed, and I think the possibility of a dismissal is less than that of Donald Trump being elected POTUS.

(Psst! Abd! ... whisper whisper). Ah, never mind! Less than a snowball's chance in hell.

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LENR Calender wrote:

You have the response. Exhibit 5 reports Rossi's data. It is Rossi's response. This is what he claimed before he filed the lawsuit. If that were not the case, he would have said so by now in the court filings. He would say "I.H. made that up."

Jed, you lost it here. The preliminary report data was not "Rossi's data," though it may have been based in data provided by Rossi. You obtained this data, you have reported, indirectly from Rossi. That does not make it "Rossi's data," but rather "ERV data" as passed on by Rossi. It is simply not the case that Rossis silence on this at this point establishes anything, since he is responding to the countersuit quite as IH responded to the lawsuit: starting with a motion to dismiss, which in the IH case actually shot down, immediately, four out of eight claims (which was high, MTDs mostly fail), then taking the maximum time to respond (IH asked for a short extension, even). We do not have the Rossi response to Exhibit 5, period. We can only imagine it, project it, infer it. And, frankly, what I expect to see is a lot of "Defendants deny the allegations in Paragraph 23," which is a quote from the IH 2nd Amended Answer etc. However, if Rossi does not allege more in his pleadings, there is a high risk that IH will move for total dismissal and will prevail. Right now, Rossi is fishing for evidence in his interrogatories and requests for production, we just got a glimpse of that.

Because he did not allege sufficient evidence originally, I suspect he doesn't have it. But ... there is always that damn Wabbit! He must disclose, at least, before trial. If he doesn't, there goes his case, it will disappear in a cloud of smoke, leaving behind the countersuit.

(We have seen some of the questions being asked of IH by Rossi. We have not seen any questions asked the other way, and they are being asked, for sure, and answers must be provided under penalty of perjury. This happens mostly out of public view.)

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
What they did with you, Jed, was absolutely outrageous.

Nah. Just silly. That's Wikipedia for you.

wired.com/2006/04/the-wikipedia-faqk/ (Hilarious)

chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ (Yikes!)

The only problem is that Wikipedia is influential.

Display More

Wikipedia is highly vulnerable to factional manipulation. A small dedicated group can essentially rule. Some of these have been discovered, but they simply made stupid mistakes. More careful coordination would be very difficult to detect. It's almost certainly been done, and there is at least one case of a high probability of paid corruption. (It would be that kind of corruption that would lead to an arbitrator being threatened. And the only penalty for detection is that the identified participants may be banned. Which is painless. In the known case, the beneficiary may have been a multibillion dollar corporation. Like the size of corporation that makes a billion-dollar corporation look small. There are issues on Wikipedia that affect the interests of heavyweights. Will they play nice? Some might. Not all.

I saw no sign of any anti-cold fusion manipulation on this level. Yes, anyone who attempted to move the Wikipedia article toward neutrality was blocked, sometimes literally. More often just frustrated with blind reverts and simple long-term insistence. The kind of thing that can be seen in an Arbitration if they look. They did not want to look. Too much trouble for a fringe topic, eh? And besides, it would upset some Valuable Volunteers, like JzG. That is what a friendly administrator told me! Another former administrator, of high reputation in the community, told me that if I filed the Request for Comment on JzG, I'd be, at least, topic banned. That actually didn't happen until later, but it did happen. She knew that the RfC was completely valid, and, in fact, she cosigned it. The "ban Abd" people completely ignored that, going after me. It's all obvious, and I did eventually give up.

I found that in the community of wikipedia critics, where I was also active, there was no willingness to actually do something to address the problems. The critics were much happier sitting back and blaming the Wikipediots. And they were afflicted with the same disease, basically. As are many on-line communities.

Quote from MrSelfSustain

Here is the quote from exhibit 5.

"The flow of steam through the pipe to J.M. Products.
You stated that the pressure of the steam that was available to J.M. Products (JMP) was nominally atmospheric pressure (0 kilo Pascals gauge (kPaG) or 14.7 psia). The steam passed through a stretch of insulated pipe that was at least 6 meters long before entering the JMP space. (Presumably there was additional steam pipe on the JMP side.) According to the data you have reported, the conserved mass flow rate of the system from February to November 2015 was on average 33,558 kg/day (1398 kg/h) and the temperature of the water and steam were on average 68.7º C and 102.8º C, respectively. The steam pressure was reported (for the entire period) to be 0 kPaG and the piping is DN40."

This explains to me that the zero bar pressure that you have reported many times here and elsewhere actually was supposed to represent a pressure of 14.7 psi or near atmospheric. This is from IH's own engineer, reporting what Penon had stated.

What Penon stated was not 14.7 psia. We don't know exactly what Penon stated. From Jed's report, the preliminary report was "0 bar." This, on the face, would be high vacuum, as Jed has pointed out. That's preposterous, so even if this was in the preliminary report, Murray obviously interpreted it as meaning 0 barG, if it was not already edited to say that. He stated it in KPa, and one bar is 100 KPa. That's absolute pressure. The "a" in psia is for "absolute."

0.0 barG would be what the "0 bar" must have meant. However that is not an absolute pressure, the g means "gauge pressure," i.e, the difference between atmospheric pressure and the measured pressure. So if Penon wrote "0 bar," he did mean "atmospheric pressure." Murray appears to have made that translation. What is atmospheric pressure? It varies with weather and time of day, for a fixed site and, of course, with altitude. The originally specified pressure gauge was an absolute gauge, and it is absolute pressure that is needed for a more precise determination of the boiling point. So reporting psig was downright weird, and that it was the same pressure every day would be double weird. I tried to find a normal variation and didn't find anything quickly, but it will vary. Doral is at an elevation of about one meter above sea level. (Florida!)

SS, you are making a very big deal out of nothing. We know it wasn't a vacuum, period, so if the original preliminary report said "0 bar" it was simply an error. We all get that. So then what? And this is where the confusion really starts revving itse engines.

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So Penon claims that the steam pressure PROVIDED BY THE PLANT was 14.7psi.

No. 0 barG, which can vary (you left the "a" out of psi, but you do mean psia.)

From a little searching, standard atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 101.325 KPa. There is a diurnal variation of maybe 0.KPa. The variation from weather is more; aside from extreme weather, it is on the ordar of 3.4 KPa. How much difference does this make in boiling point? The boiling point of water will vary with impurities, which is why the plant would have been charged with distilled water. Most impurities in water would raise the boiling point, so .... that's a possible fraud mode, as an aside. As a rough summary, the difference in atmospheric pressure with weather could make a difference of about one degree C in boiling point.

That's not the major issue here, in fact.

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If the zero bar pressure had represented pure vacuum, that would have been absurd.

We got it we got it!

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Anyway, what we DO NOT KNOW is if the equipment of JM Chemical Products provided a lower pressure that pulled the steam along.

I was just reading a popular science page that pointed out that "suction" doesn't exist. There is only pressure. There is no "pulling of things by suction." Small point, but these small points, accumulated, can cause confusion. Rather, there must be a pressure difference to create a force to move the steam.

There is an unknown here. Is the system sealed? It appears that there may be an open reservoir for the return water. If so, the pressure in the system, at that end, will be limited to atmospheric pressure, or close. (If the return pipe is entirely immersed, it will be higher than atmospheric pressure because of the weight of the water.) If the pipe is not immersed, but flows openly into the tank, the pressure at the end of the pipe will be atmospheric. So there must be a higher pressure at the other end to move water/steam through the pipe.

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I'm not a fluid dynamicist or an engineer, so I'm not going to try and estimate what quantity of steam could be transported along that tube. However, I'd guess that the amount thermal power in the form of steam capable of being transported exceeded the maximum electrical input power capable of being fed into the plant.

You will confuse yourself by considering power first. The fluid dynamics are not difficult for a rough estimate. You would need to estimate the volume of steam at 1 bar generated by evaporating the stated flow. You don't need to know the power, just assume total evaporation, which is the basis for the Penon calorimetry. This steam is essentially confined to the volume of the system before the condenser, though there will be some in the condenser. This steam will be compressed into the volume of the system, which can be estimated from the pipe size and a value for length. The compression ratio would give you the pressure in bar. For a hint, the difference in volume between water and steam at 1 bar is by a factor of about 1600. However, at higher pressure it would occupy less volume! There are calculators on-line.

I have not gone through this process. However, it's totally obvious: the pressure could not be 0.0barG. Murray's argument is that it wouldn't move. That is true. However, that's not the end of the argument, he barely began. If a megawatt worth of dry steam is actually being generated, this is one dangerous puppy. The pressure would be high.

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

They cannot actually do anything. If they try, they will be permanently blocked. I believe many of them are already, as am I.

Jed, you are assuming individual action by those who are naive about how Wikipedia works.

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
The critics were much happier sitting back and blaming the Wikipediots. And they were afflicted with the same disease, basically. As are many on-line communities.

This is like saying that Democrats sit back and blame the Republicans for GOP policy. Yes, they do, but they are not party members, so they cannot change those policies. A person who is blocked from Wikipedia, or whose edits are instantly erased, cannot influence Wikipedia.

It's not "like" anything. It is what I observed. Many Wikipedia critics still have accounts and still use them. You basically never figured out how the site works -- and how to get things done there. It's possible. However, doing it alone is very difficult, or impossible.

Edits are not "erased instantly" except for edits that can be identified as those by a banned editor, covered by an edit filter. They did deploy an edit filter to try to stop me, in the point after I gave up on due process and just started moving outside of policy. It caused extensive collateral damage and they stopped. They tried using Revision Deletion, which would hide the edits, and the administrator who did that got trout-slapped.

At that time I had dynamic IP. I currently have roughly fixed IP, so socking is more difficult. I could still do it, easily, by going somewhere to edit, like a library. It is impossible stop a person from editing Wikipedia, if they want to do it and are determined. Is it useful, though? The cold fusion article is moving at a snail's pace. Looking at the article, in May, a regular anti-CF editor removed some reliably sourced information. He was reverted to restore the information, by an independent user, and it still stands. 2 people made that difference. See the discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…Services_Committee_Report

"Reliable source" is defined in Wikipedia policy. The anti-CF faction uses a different definition. For them, if the source talks about cold fusion, it must be crazy, therefore not reliable. Two editors stood him down. Nobody from the rest of the faction was sufficiently energized to intervene. Basically, Jed, you have in mind ways of working on Wikipedia that don't work. It takes skill and knowledge of the system, but most of all, it takes working with community, not working alone. It takes knowing how to create an RfC to resolve editing disputes. It takes standing for basic Wikipedia principles rather than the usual stand with fringe editors, "the truth." Wikipedia actually follows a rough attempt at academic neutrality, implemented in a way that, if there are no factions, will generally work. It is factional affiliations and coherent factional action that causes damage to the neutrality. Those affiliations are not necessarily formal, at all. They are people who think alike, who follow each other's work, and who have each others Talk pages on their watchlists. If one of them is seriously challenged, the others know immeidately and pile in. They have certain articles on their watchlists. They watch for signs of revert warring by their friends, and they will then pop in to assist, if they are sufficiently energized. This particular case did not energize them. And, in fact, there have been developments to the article, where they did collectively resist, but now changes have been made. The Current Science special section is now shown. However, that's a collection of peer-reviewed articles on cold fusion, including secondary sources, i.e., reviews, a wealth of reliably sourced information that is not being used. A handful of skilled editors (and, in fact, only one needs to be skilled and the others can support) could radically turn the article around from the collection of obsolete views and simple errors that it now is, largely.

The key is seeking actual consensus, with the general community. The faction hated that. They don't trust the general community, it is too "gullible." However, the general community is highly skilled at spotting obsession, and it doesn't trust obsession. Very normal human response. Editors who are stone-cold certain they are right get slaughtered there.

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

I never edited the article. My comments in the discussion section were always deleted within minutes, so I guess someone set up an edit filter, whatever the heck that is. My comments were easy to identify because I signed them.

Jed, I watched and reviewed a lot of that. No, there was no Edit Filter for you. You never attracted enough attention to merit that. Edit Filters review every edit to wikipedia, looking for certain patterns. There would be two periods for you, when you edited as Jed Rothwell. This page lies about you, in part: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_JedRothwell&action=history. That page was created by the aptly-named user Hipocrite, which the faction used to attack me wrt the cold fusion article. Long story. That, however, gives a list of IP addresses that you may have used.

Looking at one, I immediately found a situation in 2008 where JzG personally reverted your edits. Had I seen one of those, I'd have reverted it back. He attempted to create a ban declaration for you. It failed. He tried to get the Arbitration Committee to affirm a ban. That failed. Then I took him to ArbCom over his involvement. He was reprimanded. However, he had many defenders, and I was told that the Committee would be very unlikely to remove his tools. Even though he had many times violated policy. You were being abused by one person, JzG, essentially, but he did have some support. My later case established the precedent that normally, an administrator may not simply declare someone banned so that what he mentioned as RBI becomes usable. That means "revert-block-ignore." However, it also established discretionary sanctions for cold fusion, which then allows administrators to declare topic bans. They are appealable, however.

You were never banned. Here is what the user page may look like for a banned editor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Abd ... notice "banned by the community." This was an ad hoc process that showed just how dysfunctional "the community" could be. There is policy about ban procedure. It was not followed. But ... if nobody speaks up, the faction can get away with this. That's how it works.

Here is your user page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JedRothwell

It was not blocked until January 2009. So JzG's claim that you were banned was simply a lie. He did that a lot. And the only reason you were banned was that you kept editing by IP, but you did not actually violate policy with those edits. It merely made you vulnerable. Here is a discussion, the one pointed to by Enric Naval (who did believe you were banned) on your user page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…n/Archive_22#Jed_Rothwell I intervened there.

This was the discussion where JzG ("Guy") tried to take the ban to ArbComm. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests&oldid=268329651#Cold_fusion_topic_bans
Read especially the last arbitrator comments. Guy's action was very much not supported. But ... you were still blocked. You are not banned, and if you did want to be able to edit Wikipedia, it would be quite simple to get the block lifted, my opinion. But you don't and that is the basic problem for you there. You really did not want to participate in the Wikipedia community. Your first blocks were classic POV-pushing blocks for 3RR violation (more than 3 reverts in 24 hours, that would be, called a "bright line." Basically, I've gotten away with violating that, but I had sterling reasons. I was still blocked (my first block) but then immediately unblocked when the administrator saw what I was dealing with and then he unblocked me and blocked almost everyone else in sight.... You were also blocked for obvious incivility. Any user would have been short-blocked for doing what you did. It never escalated, because you stopped using the account in May 2006.

You requested your talk page be deleted, and it was. It was restored for reasons unstated, but then deleted through an OTRS ticket at your request in 2010. Here is that log: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&action=view&page=User_talk%3AJedRothwell&type=delete

You could still edit Wikipedia any time you wanted, but not as Jed Rothwell, because that account is blocked, with one exception, I will cover that. By policy, generally, if you edit using IP when the main account is blocked, the IP is "evading the block." That wasn't true at the time JzG applied to ArbCom, but MastCell, his friend, made it so. JzG had actually been blocking IP that obviously was not yours. Basically, he's an idiot. But a popular one. Hey, sounds like someone else!

You never tried to work with the community, respecting policy. You just did whatever the hell you wanted. You did not deserve to be banned, however, unless you had continued through the normal process of being blocked with escalating block times, defying neutral administrators, and even then you would normally not be banned without a community-based process -- or an ArbCom decision.

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As I said, as of a few years ago they blocked me completely. I have not checked to see if that is still in effect.

It is. An indef block -- that is what it is -- lasts until an administrator removes it.

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

I would not go to the trouble to do that, nor would I post unsigned messages. If they don't want me posting stuff at a site, I don't want to post there. Life is too short for such nonsense. I stopped posting at e-catworld when I figured out they were sometimes deleting my messages.

The problem is that there was no "they." You mistook the actions of a few for a "site decision." As to ecat-world, I asked you if your supposedly deleted edits were showing in your Discus profile, and then I'd ask if we could see what was deleted. I don't see that they are generally deleting stuff, I have very few deleted edits there, maybe two, and one was brief and of no consequence and the other may simply have been a mistake and was also not important.

If you would't post unsigned messages, why did you not use your named account, which would simplify signatures? Basically, you acted outside of the envelop of what the Wikipedia community expects. That created a level of bias against you, that JzG was able to harness, but that only went so far. You are blocked only because his friend blocked you, and that block would be easy to undo, as I could explain if you were interested, but ... you almost certainly are not interested at all, from prior conversations. If I were to advise you, that would be private. I've advised several users, I was actually paid for it in one case. Which, by the way, does not violate policy, but if I were to reveal who I helped, it could cause trouble. I did not edit as part of that action. I simply told her what to do, she did it, and was unblocked.

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Wikipedia is influential so it is a shame I cannot affect things there. But I will not fight the people who control the article. They know how to block people and pull strings. They know the arcane rules. It is like a weird cult. Creepy.

You have it wired that they win, in advance. In fact, the faction picks editors off, one at a time. What normally happens is that an editor who tried to move the article toward neutrality either gives up, and stops watching the article (and thus being available to support someone else), or insists, goes too far, alone, and is sanctioned. Most people who try to help with the article don't know Wikipedia policies well and how the system works. And then along comes someone who does -- like PCarbonn before me, or, later, me -- *few stand up for them*. One of the things I did that the Arbs hated was to stand up for editors who were being abused. Supposedly, this is to be done by "uninvolved editors," i.e., intervention. What ArbCom banned me from -- it still stands, it was indef, very unusual for an ArbCom sanction -- was intervening in any dispute when I was not originally involved. That is utterly iinsane from a policy perspective. But I understand why they did it. I was thorough, and effective. That scared them. And confronting lies takes more words than lying. They didn't like that either.

One more weirdness. There were several arbitrators who supported me. They recused, leave arbitrators to make decisions regarding me who didn't understand the situation. The arbs tend to think of themselves as judges, rather than as representatives of the community, and there is no sophistication about factional issues. Some arbitrators were very intelligent, thoughtful, highly skilled. Others were basically idiots. Getting elected took popularity, not skill, necessarily. Hey, sound like anyone familiar?

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I do not know any cold fusion researchers who would consider contributing to Wikipedia.

Brian Josephson. There are others, published, but I'm not going to name them. The walls have ears. They are not using their real names, but the norm on Wikipedia, a pseudonym. Brian, they would have blocked, but, ah, how would that have looked? And Brian became a bit more careful. He listens to advice, by the way, he is one thoughtful guy.

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

That's a relief. Thanks for finding that out..

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

Why would I edit it as someone other than myself? That's nuts.

You are demonstrating, as was demonstrated long ago, that you do not understand Wikipedia policy and the Wikipedia community. Instead, you stand outside complaining about it. That's certainly your privilege, but it has implications. Among them, you acknowledge that Wikipedia has power. Editors who operate within policy -- and some who do not -- have power. We, speaking for the LENR community, are attempting to exercise real power, in the real world, which means as-it-is or as is within our power to transform.

You *could* still edit as "Jed Rothwell," as you did. And those edits, if seen by certain users, would be reverted. They would not be "deleted," you have been quite confused about the difference between a revert and a delation. Your user talk page is actually "deleted," which means, at this point, that only administrators may see it. If it was actually "oversighted," then only certain highly privileged users may see it. It is unlikely that it was oversighted. And then there is what developers can do, and it is highly unikely that a developer would get involved. They rigorously stay out of politics of any kind. I know of no example of a controversial developer action that involved concealing content. (There have been WMF Office changes to software that were opposed by the community, and some threatening noises made, and the Office backed down; after all the Community does the work to maintain Wikipedia. That generates power, but only when the Community is exercised -- which they were!)

When a user edits using dynamic IP, as you did, the edits may not readily be viewed in a single place. (There are ways to approach this using IP range specifications, but .... it's unreliable and will include anyone editing withini your IP range, i.e., it can be a mess. But, then, one could look for your characteristic signature, one could even write a script to do this. But the point here is that to review your behavior becomes difficult, whereas when a user uses a single named and registered account, it is easy. You made it difficult for the community to review what you were doing. They consider that suspcious, and will be prejudiced against you. And you did this for no apparent reason other than pique at being blocked for policy violations. (I have not investigated those, but I do remember at the time thinking that you had, indeed, violated 3RR policy and civility policy. And those were relatively harmless. You were not blocked more than normal short-blocks, which are easily issued, and relatively easy to recover from.)

If you didn't want to edit Wikipedia, fine. To do this with power takes a lot of work, and maybe it's not worth it. Once the faction was on my tail, they made everything difficult, and I was being warned -- and blocked -- even for behavior that, under normal circumstances. Editing Wikipedia to generate positive transformation was already difficult. It became way too much of a burden, so I bailed, every explicitly. I gave up on due process, it had been exhausted, and the Arbitration Committee had demonstrated deep bias (which surprised me, actually, because I had seen many excellent decisions. I did not factor for the depth of the faction's power and their skill at manipulating the community, which they often did by lying to it, with lies that would appear to be truthful as long as one did not look closely. There are lots of people who know how to do this, even unconsciously, and the Wikipedia administrative structure tends to attract these. And most of the Community is essentially asleep. Like Planet Earth.)

To say, however, that you "can't" is misleading and unnecessary. You could. You could even edit with the account JedRothwell. That account was blocked, yes, but that does not apply to two basic privileges: editing your User talk page and being able to email other users who have email enabled. Further, if you have email enabled, other users can email you, and this privilege cannot be removed except by an Office action. They recently started doing this, and it has cause a substantial fuss, because this is the Office disempowering the community. Most of the community, however, doesn't notice or realize these details. And, after all, isn't the Project the greatest thing since sliced bread?

My Talk page access is blocked on en.Wikipedia because I used the Talk page to point to IP edits. Admins may block User Talk page access if it is used for anything other than appealing a block. One of the remarkable facts about ScienceApologist (Joshua P. Schroeder. probably our very own Joshua Cude) is that he grossly violated this and nothing was done. He had substantial support in the administrative community, even when banned.

You have promised not to edit Wikipedia again in any way. Again, that's your privilege. But why might a user edit as "someone other than himself"? That is not what was suggested you could do. You can edit as yourself, as you did, by IP, and the edits would be seen by anyone watchlisting the page. If reverted, any user who thought the edits useful could revert them back in. I did this at times. The faction screams, but can't actually do anything about it. It is not against policy to revert back the edits even of a "banned user," if the user reverting them back is willing to take responsibility for them. And I was. So I did. This did not harm me, ever. I even defied a global ban with this, and the result was that the user was unbanned, when the community saw that he was making positive edits. (I suggested he self-revert, he did, and that cooperation turned the corner for him. It looked quite good!)

I used this, later, when topic-banned and blocked, to make some constructive edits, which, though my IP was blocked by an admin who had made it his mission to Keep Abd Away, were reverted back in, and those edits stood. I started out signing all those edits in the edit summary, with something like this: "Edit by Abd, under ban, will self-revert." In other words, I made the edit, then being banned, self-reverted, thus causing no work for "ban enforcers." This drove the faction and some admins crazy, because I had pulled the excuse for RBI out from underneath them. They could still block, but then, as I continued, they had to start using range blocks with increasing range until they were blocked a very large number of IPs. Collateral damage. Then an edit filter was set up to automatically reject edits with "Abd" in the edit summary. This was truly hilarious, because they were demanding, effectively, that I *not* identify myself, thus making identification of edits far more difficult, creating work for themselves. It was all a deliberate reductio ad absurdem.

(I used a similar argument in pointing out that your IP edits were not as disruptive as they would have been if not signed. Realize that there were arbitrators who recognized all this. Your position was not untenable, had you decided to work with the community. But I remember you then, you were, quite simply, vehemently opposed to Wikipedia, you wanted the cold fusion article to be horrible so that Wikipedia would be discredited. Well, how well did that strategy work?)

Editing under another name, when you have a blocked named account, is contrary to policy, and any such edits, if identified, may be subject to RBI. It is called "block evasion." Policy wants you, if you want to edit, to request and obtain unblock. You never did this.

Wikis have some intrinsic vulnerabilities. That's a far more complex story. At this point, Wikiversity remains highly useful, and you could build educational resources there, and you would be unlikely to be molested, if you follow community policy, and I would certainly assist. I have largely abandoned Wikiversity, myself, but am leaving all options open, and I may return to high activity there. In theory, Wikiversity content on a topic should be linked from Wikipedia. I and another user attempted to create those links; they were removed by the faction, but contrary to policy and, at the time, I was self-declared as having a Conflict of Interest, and confined myself to what should have been non-controversial edits, and to talk page discussion -- which are allowed with a COI.

What the faction did on Wikipedia, in general, was unsupportable if examined. So the faction went after any user capable of creating community examination!

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
You never tried to work with the community, respecting policy.

They have no coherent policies. Just a mishmash of contradictory, self-serving rules. As far as I can tell the unifying principle is: Winner deals and dealer wins. I will not play that game. I am not interested in participating in such nonsense.

You have no idea how Wikipedia policies were created. What you describe is not Policy, but Practice. The "nonsense" is more or less how almost all human communities operate, so your "not interested" would explain how you are somewhat stuck in the fringe. You don't want to work with real people. Real people are messy and may not think clearly, sometimes. However, treat them like enemies or as idiots and they will squash you, if they have the power. (More often they will simply ignore you.)

I created process that got JzG reprimanded; that was thought next to impossible by some experienced users. I then created process that got William M. Cpnnolley desysopped. That was astonishing! In the process, though, the faction woke up and realized how much they had at stake. They had already attacked, as a followup to the JzG case. Until then their position was that Abd was an idiot troublemaker, ignore him. Once they saw the risk, they devoted resources. I was not the only one to be targeted. Overall, the faction lost power, but it's still dangerous.

Anyone who attacks the faction will likely be seen as a troublemaker. So that is not at all what I would advise!

As to Wikipedia Policies, there was high consideration and intelligence that went into them. The design, as far as it goes, is brilliant. However, there are things missing from it. Consensus is valued, but there was a naivete as to how consensus would form, and be measured (Wikipedia has no real concept of measuring consensus, it more or less assumes that consensus will be obvious, but then factions manipulate the process and claim consensus even when it is obvious that, by the ordinary meanings of the word, there is no-consensus.) In fact, look at what Enric Naval put on your User page. He appears to believe that there rwas actually a ban, even though ban policy was not followed, at all. Even though the last discussion he points to ended with some arbitrator comments that demolished the JzG position and confirmed that JzG was "involved" and therefore should never have touched you and your content with his tools.) The Wikipedia community, writing the policy, was largely naive about the 20th century experience with consensus process, and what it takes. Among other things, it takes a ton of discussion, as normally structured. And many in the Wikipedia community, from its origins, disliked deep discussions....

But the Arbitration Committee always -- not just this time -- avoided dealing with the problem of factions, particularly of factions including administrators. I think the cause is that they had no clue how to deal with the problem, so they kept punting. "The community will solve the problem." Probably not without leadership!

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

I didn't bother to learn how to do that.

Right. You never bothered to learn how to use Wikipedia, in the most elementary way. Create an account. Add "~~~~" to the end of a post to sign it. This is explicitly given as a tool in the edit window. It signs and date-stamps. Yeah, it's easy to miss. My first comments I "signed" by manually adding a name and time stamp. Then I noticed the instructions. Duh!

You can customize your signature in your profile, you can make it basically anything you want, but the software will track all your posts under your account name. Anyone can look, and this is an important MediaWiki feature, allowing the community to supervise itself.

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

Why would I participate in such a dysfunctional process? Why would anyone? It is a cult. Let the cult members do as the please.

Why should you participate with the human community, seeing how "dysfunctional" it is. It's all group-think, a bunch of idiots!

And what is the end of those who think like this? The meaning of a communication is the effect. What is the effect?

There is no "should." There are effects from what we do. A powerful stand is that we are responsible for the effects we create. We choose them. Well? Your argument would certainly apply to voting in the present structures. Why should one participate in such a dysfunctional mess? I get the argument, but the effect of voting is not only in the outcome, it is in the process itself and how it creates our relationship with power. Whatever I do is likely to be done by many like me. How I make my choices is not just about my own vote, but about many, many votes. How I think is communicated to everyone around me. Do I take responsibility? If I do, I generate power iin all areas of my life. If I don't, I'm a leaf blown in the wind, complaining about where the wind takes it. Damn wind!

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

The problem is that there was no "they." You mistook the actions of a few for a "site decision."

This seems out of context. I was talking about Wikipedia. I looked back and see that Jed brought up e-cat world at the end of his post, so my response allowed him to context it as about E-catworld.

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Who cares whether it is a person or a "site decision"? What the hell difference does that make? Deleted is deleted. I will not go to the trouble to write messages which are then deleted. For that matter, if a software glitch was deleting them, I still wouldn't bother. I don't care what causes the problem..

No. There are levels of deletion. True deletion is what, say, a moderator may be doing here, if he deletes a post of mine, as he has, I cannot read it, AFAIK. (Actually, maybe I can ... I think I've been able to recover such, but I'm not sure at this moment.) It appears that a "deleted" e-Catworld post is still visible in the user profie. At least to the user. Pending posts are also visible. It is easy to confuse a pending post with one being deleted, it can look like that. "I know I saved this post, and it's not here! It must have been deleted, the jerks!"

On Wikipedia, there is a process for hiding posts to a talk page, like those of Jed's as IP. It is called "revision deletion" and may not have existed back then except through something very cumbersome. It was made easier, but revision deletion is heavily deprecated, not to be used by administrators in a situation like that of JzG and Jed. Normally, all these posts are visible, like any edits to any page. And, if caught quickly, any user could single-button and a save, bring the edit back in. So the problem with Jed was that he was operating outside of community traditions, and with no support. And blamed "wikipedia" for that.

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In my opinion you put too much effort into understanding things like Wikipedia. I don't see the point to trying to understand it in detail. All I need to know is that the cold fusion article is run by a clique of anti-cold fusion people who erase messages, and the management at Wikipedia will not stop them. It may be that other articles are not run by cliques, but I have no desire to contribute to other articles

Well, when I was funded last year, it was out of writing about Wikipedia. That you don't see the point of something shows lack of imagination, nothing more. I've also been paid as a consultant re Wikipedia.

In general, Wikipedia articles are "run by" those who edit them and who continue to watch them. Those who give up and go away are not actually excluded, but they exclude themselves. I showed, here, how, in May, a factional editor lost a dispute, while complaining about "revert warring" which wasn't revert warring. It was normal process. The "management of Wikipedia" has almost no power, when it comes to day-to-day management of articles. Wikipedia is an adhocracy, which is, more or less, "government by those who show up." If you don't show up, you have no power. And you cannot effectively complain to the "management," since they don't actually exist. Previously the faction had tried to exclude mention of the Current Science Special Section. They lost. If they had insisted, this could have been taken to RfC, and key would be attracting general editors, not just factional ones. There are ways. Aside from this, key, as well, would be making sure that knowledgeable editors maintain focus on the article. It takes one button push to revert an edit. It takes very little to give a brief reason. It takes more to discuss, but it is not necessary that everyone discuss. Anyone can do it, and users can express support very easily.

But if users walk away in despair, this never happens. The faction wins, because they often show long-term persistence.

In theory, Wikipedia is managed by the WikiMedia Foundation, but it almost totally stays out of content disputes. They intervened, through OTRS, to delete your Talk page because you made a legal request.

You claim to be interesting in promoting LENR, but if it involves setting aside personal pique, forget about it. You are not abnormal in this, at all. However, if we intend to transform the planet, what is required of us is extraordinary.

Jed, I wouldn't bother telling you all this if I didn't have high respect for you. I want you to be fully successful, and I see that as quite possible. This is not about "Wikipedia," which is a detail. It's about everything.

And this is not just about you. If the LENR community had taken an interest in the Wikipedia article, had created intelligent cooperation, starting with thorough understanding of Wikipedia and Wikipedia policies, and fulfilling them, not denying them as stupid, the article would be vastly improved, and would have been years ago. That faction only had power in opposition to weak, disorganized fringe "believers," who generally set themselves up to be sanctioned.

Pcarbonn was shot down, and his "violation" was? How did that happen? To know, I'd have to study the ArbComm case. However, I know enough. He was only temporarily banned by the AC, and because JzG had presented an "insider's case," something that was actually harmless but could be made to look bad. Inadequate support showed up. He was later permanently banned "by the community," in a discussion that radically disregarded policy, that could easily have been taken to ArbComm. But did anyone do that? What do you think?

I know exactly what I did that caused the responses I got. That, in fact, is part of how I'm able to advise others. I learn from what I've done. Do I want to edit Wikipedia again myself? No, I have better things to do at the moment. But will I say, that I "can't"? No. I can. As to improving Wikipedia, they also serve who only stand and watch. But "can't" freezes and paralyzes.

Ah, we would have free energy, but we can't, because they won't let us.