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Biography: Science and Academia Start‑class

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This article was nominated for deletion on 8 June 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

Please delete "User talk:CarlHewitt" from the Misplaced Pages

Please delete User talk:CarlHewitt from the Misplaced Pages.

Thanks,

Carl Hewitt--67.180.173.91 (talk) 05:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

done --CSTAR (talk) 07:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Carl--98.207.43.7 (talk) 18:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Please delete "User:CarlEHewitt" from the Misplaced Pages

Please delete User:CarlEHewitt from the Misplaced Pages.

Thanks,

Carl Hewitt--98.207.43.218 (talk) 05:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't request this be authenticated somehow? Interesting.--CSTAR (talk) 05:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Also please delete User:Prof. Hewitt

Thanks, Carl Hewitt--76.126.57.246 (talk) 05:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for making these deletions, Carl Hewitt--12.49.221.91 (talk) 22:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't all these deletions violate the GDFL? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

In the expanding and ever more confusing set of principles (mis)guiding Misplaced Pages practice is the so-called "Right to Vanish" which I've seen applied in several cases. If Hewitt (or whomever) wants to vanish, then he/she should post the requests authenticated with a modification label in the diff associated to the account he/she wants deleted. In other words, log on as User:CarlEHewitt and make the request. This gives some evidence that the request was legitimate, namely that the requester knows the login password.

This isn't foolproof of course, but good enough.--CSTAR (talk) 17:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't the use of multiple socks preclude the "right to vanish"? Just curious. I also think he no longer has access to some of the accounts; at least his initial explanation for the use of socks is that he forgot the password of the original account. Furthermore, some IP is requesting edits of the CH article. If that's still the same "person" as (one of) these accounts, it doesn't quite fall under "right to vanish". But I could be wrong. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:36, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Your guess is as good as mine. Although I am willing to be loose and allow vanishing of various "instantiations".--CSTAR (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Please delete "User talk:CarlEHewitt" from the Misplaced Pages

Please delete User talk:CarlEHewitt from the Misplaced Pages. Thanks, Carl Hewitt--12.49.221.91 (talk) 22:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. Since the main page was deleted, this seemed uncontroversial.--CSTAR (talk) 23:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Carl--12.49.221.91 (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Please delete "Category:Suspected Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of CarlHewitt" from the Misplaced Pages

Please delete Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of CarlHewitt from the Misplaced Pages. Thanks, Carl Hewitt--12.49.221.91 (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Well I suppose this falls within the purview of "right to vanish".--CSTAR (talk) 03:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It's done.--CSTAR (talk) 03:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure such a deletion is appropriate. If we look at WP:VANISH, it explicitly says: "The right to vanish does not extend to pages retained for the purposes of protecting Misplaced Pages against disruption; for example requests for arbitration, requests for check user, or sockpuppet categories." That's a sockpuppet category, and Hewitt has been disruptive in the past... --Gwern (contribs) 04:51 28 January 2008 (GMT)

Possibly. I won't object to anybody reverting my deletion, but on the other hand, it may be a beneficial bargain with the devil. Moreover, the same argument you make can be made (and has I believe already been made above by Arthur Rubin) that based on the same page you cite, the right to vanish applies only to users in good standing. That characterization of the "vanishing user" I don't think applied in this case. My opinion, and possibly that of the other admins that deleted various Hewitt pages, is that WP will be better off without these pages. However, if you feel strict adherence to these rules is preferable, then by all means undo the deletion.--CSTAR (talk) 05:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The category can be resurrected if the sock puppetry resumes. If it doesn't resume then the category is unneeded. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I think some of this may have resumed, if only on this talk page. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

As I've noticed. --CSTAR (talk) 01:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Please delete article "Carl Hewitt" from the Misplaced Pages

Please delete the article Carl Hewitt from the Misplaced Pages. Thanks, Carl Hewitt--12.49.221.91 (talk) 19:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

No quick luck here. See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Carl Hewitt. Feel free to nominate it again, but I doubt there will be agreement for the deletion. Mr. Hewitt, you are notable, as such, Misplaced Pages has an article about you. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that will happen. Now, deleting all the articles about the Actor Model and Mr. Hewitt's interpretation of indeterminancy seems more reasonable and computation theory seems more reasonable. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Protection

Why is this page protected? There's no mention of it on this page that i can see Silent52 (talk) 07:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

According to the protect log, the reason is to enforce Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Carl Hewitt. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Is that still relevant though? It merely seems to show Carl Hewitt is banned from certain articles, also it's only him, not everyone. Or have i missed the point? Silent52 (talk) 14:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you're right that the page no longer needs to be protected. Let's see what Ruud Koot says (perhaps you could drop him a note?), he protected the page. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Done, we shall see what happens Silent52 (talk) 19:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Mmmm, I unprotected the page before I red this discussion beyond the first post. I think the page has been protected for too long. I hope Ruud won't mind. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Inaccurate DBLP article should be removed from external references

In order not to confuse Misplaced Pages users, the inaccurate h at DBLP Bibliography Server should be removed from the external references. An accurate list of publications Carl Hewitt's Publications is linked to from Carl Hewitt's home page.--65.160.18.38 (talk) 00:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello Carl. I've put your publications page on there, for balance, but I've left the DBLP reference because it is a well-recognized and independent external source. (It's odd they haven't recorded any of your recent publications, yet, though.) Sam Staton (talk) 09:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Corruption of Misplaced Pages

Hewitt has published an article titled "Corruption of Misplaced Pages" on Google Knol that can be found here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.210.240.23 (talk) 17:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Can we use his statement as evidence that he has no intention of agreeing to Misplaced Pages guidelines, and ban him indefinitely. It seems clear that he has no intention of agreeing to the consensus that he is not god. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

My recollection is that there was a vague consensus that he should be banned from Misplaced Pages, but we admins interpreted that as a topic ban.

No, perhaps the article is a relevant self-reference to be included here, if we note the obvious hypocracy. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

It is worth noting that Arthur Rubin has repeatedly clashed with Hewitt's students on Misplaced Pages. (See the appendix of "Corruption of Misplaced Pages.")76.126.127.45 (talk) 22:00, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I have. I, and at least a dozen other editors (Admin and not), were supporting the ArbComm decision that Carl and his students are not allowed to edit articles about Carl and his work, because of his violations of basic Misplaced Pages principles. It may be that his work is important in the field of asynchronus computing, or it may not be the case. We'll probably never know, as only he and his students have ever said it is important, either here or in print. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Arthur, that's not entirely fair. The Actor model is well-known in computer science, and has been quite influential. An anon user (Carl?) has already posted a mention of Milner's Turing Award lecture. The article to which this talk page is attached also contains several citations showing the influence the Actor model has had (most notably on the development of Scheme). Filman & Friedman's textbook Coordinated Computing devotes an entire chapter to the Actor model, and I've seen it mentioned in several other textbooks. I can't speak to Hewitt's work on logic programming (it's not really my area), or the recent publications on paraconsistent logics, but I think it's safe to say that a number of people aside from Carl and his students consider the Actor model important (and have said so in print). --Allan McInnes (talk) 10:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

In his Turing award lecture , Milner remarked as follows:

"Now, the pure lambda-calclus is built with just two kinds of thing: terms and variables. Can we achieve the same economy for a process calculus? Carl Hewitt, with his Actors model, responded to this challenge long ago; he declared that a value, an operator on values, and a process should all be the same kind of thing: an Actor. This goal impressed me, because it implies the homogeneity and completeness of expression ... But it was long before I could see how to attain the goal in terms of an algebraic calculus...So, in the spirit of Hewitt, our first step is to demand that all things denoted by terms or accessed by names--values, registers, operators, processes, objects--are all of the same kind of thing; they should all be processes." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.8.22 (talk) 02:04, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, so I may have been unfair. I don't see the benefit of treating objects as if they were processes, but I don't see the benefit of object-oriented programming which treats processes as if they were (attached to) objects. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

An academic would be well advised to think long and hard about whether to participate in Misplaced Pages

In the comments section of the above mentioned article, Hewitt says

Given the Misplaced Pages debacles of Afshar, Connolley, Gann, Harnad, Kort, Kowalski, Lanier, etc., an academic would be well advised to think long and hard about whether to participate! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.48.170 (talk) 21:28, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Kowalski hasn't said anything about his words or article being in error; in fact, he seems to have been supporting deprecation of some of Carl's comments. I can't speak for any of the others, but Kowalski has spoken for himself in this matter. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:04, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

There is not doubt that Kowalski and Hewitt were involved in a vigorous academic debate (see Middle History of Logic Programming). But Kowalski seems to have given up on Misplaced Pages and it doesn't look likely that he will return. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.8.22 (talk) 02:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

That's unfortunate. I don't see anything unfortunate in Carl's giving up on Misplaced Pages, though. Even people who clearly are experts in a field have been banned from Misplaced Pages for being unable to realize that they may be wrong. Now, here, I'm not saying that Carl's edits are wrong; just that they didn't have any sources other than his papers, usually unpublished. I take exception to many of the articles related to the Axiom of choice, but don't express my objection unless I can find a published paper, written by other than my family, supporting the statements. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

There are many Misplaced Pages administrators like Arthur who dream of stopping progress in the publication of free, open, online encyclopedias. And it looks like they are succeeding on Misplaced Pages. Fortunately, Google Knol has appeared where articles can be published without their censorship.67.180.94.190 (talk) 15:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Knol and arXiv have their place, as do Misplaced Pages, Scholarpedia and Citizendium. It probably would have been nice if someone other than Carl had been willing to work on asynchronous computing articles here, but Misplaced Pages rejects self-submitted material, even if accurate. (I'm trying not to imply whether I believe Carl's submissions have been accurate. English doesn't have the proper conditional tenses.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Because of its business model, Misplaced Pages attempts to host only articles of conventional wisdom and morality as judged and enforced by the censorship of administrators. However, the power of censorship tends to corrupt administrators. (See Corruption of Misplaced Pages for examples.) This corruption is tolerated and in some cases even encouraged because Misplaced Pages is highly dependent on administrators donating large amount of time to their censorship duties. Censorship power over article content is a necessary reward for the unpaid administrators even if it sometimes impairs the quality of articles.67.169.8.122 (talk) 22:39, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I dunno. At a recent Stanford Computer Systems Colloquium, Professor Hewitt said We don't know much. Some of it is wrong. But we don't know which parts! (see Scalable Privacy-Friendly Client Cloud Computing: a gathering "Perfect Disruption" Oct. 22, 2008).

Section on Hewitt's opinion about Misplaced Pages

I'm not comfortable with this section. Carl Hewitt has done much more important things than criticizing Misplaced Pages. Such a lengthy section about Hewitt's issues with Misplaced Pages puts too much emphasis on them and distracts from Hewitt's other work. Quite frankly, it looks like navelgazing. I thus drastically shortened the section and added some historical context, but I would be just as happy if the section were removed all together. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you actions look like more censorship by Misplaced Pages administrators. In his Knol article, Hewitt criticized the tabloid Observer article that you favorably referenced as follows:

"A recent example of Misplaced Pages libel occurred when I became involved in an academic dispute with Robert Kowalski over a Computer Science research area called “Logic Programming.” Kowalski appealed to an Administrator of Misplaced Pages to intervene in the dispute (see the discussion in the appendix of Corruption of Wikipeida). Thus Kowalski was in effect promoting his own side of an academic dispute by participating in my censorship by Misplaced Pages. (See Middle History of Logic Programming for a detailed discussion of the dispute.)

Although lacking expertise in this particular area of Computer Science, Charles Matthews (a very high level Misplaced Pages official) favored Kowalski’s side and using his Misplaced Pages power enforced it by censorship with the justification of “Neutral Point of View.” Furthermore, Matthews “tipped off” a reporter (who he had successfully “cultivated” to write stories favorable to Misplaced Pages) to enlist her in writing an article that libeled me. Matthews then became the principle unnamed source for the resulting Observer hatchet job appearing under the false guise of an independent “senior academic” in my field of research casting aspersions on me. While he was angry with me because of our academic dispute, Kowalski confided in Matthews. As a result, Matthews sent the reporter off to interview Kowalski. Consequently, the reporter has tape recordings and emails of Kowalski saying some things in anger about me. (Kowalski has subsequently made amends in his emails to me; see below.)

As part of its business model, Misplaced Pages engages in libel and vilification in an attempt to intimidate people into conforming to the censorship of its Administrators."

The material that you deleted from the article is as follows:

Hewitt has published an article Corruption of Misplaced Pages on Google Knol that is highly critical of Misplaced Pages citing "corruption" of its administration. In the article, he characterized the business model of Misplaced Pages as "generating Web traffic (primarily from search engines) for articles of conventional wisdom and morality (as judged and enforced by a commune of mostly anonymous Administrators) to motivate (financial) contributions." He further claimed:

"Misplaced Pages does not allow proper vigorous academic discussion and debate because they are incompatible with its business model as follows:

• In normal academic practice, the views of experts are solicited and discussed. On Misplaced Pages, academic experts who have tried to participate have been denigrated as "self-promoters", censored, and then banned.
• In normal academic practice, expertise is honored and respected. On Misplaced Pages, expertise has not been honored. Instead, the cult of the amateur has been promoted.
• In normal academic practice, open reasoned discussion and debate is the norm for addressing difficult issues. On Misplaced Pages, censorship is the norm.
• In normal academic practice, the qualifications and vested interests of participants are open for discussion. On Misplaced Pages, participants are allowed to remain anonymous. In fact, revealing the real name of an Administrator is a severe violation of Misplaced Pages policy." (emphases in original)

Thus he claimed that normal academic practice is in conflict with the combined effect of the Neutral Point of View, No Original Research, Conflict of Interest and No outing the real names of administrators policies as currently practiced by Misplaced Pages.

In his Knol article, Hewitt requested that this biography article be removed from Misplaced Pages.

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