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Evidence presented by Carl Hewitt[edit]

I suggest that those interested in perspectives on this controversy see User talk:CarlHewitt#A quote and User talk:CarlHewitt#Arbitration with Rudy Koot and Edward Schaefer Thanks, --Carl Hewitt 05:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

26 November 2005

27 November 2005

  • CSTAR, I'm not opposed to conflict, but for instance, talk of banning by some persons clearly conveys a desire to end the conflict by brute force rather than by discussion of the content. I've seen this a dozens of times - a handful of aggressive amateurs, sometimes with chips on their shoulders, jump all over a new editor who happens to be a subject-matter expert in some area, hassling him/her endlessly about technical points, style, and any failure to conform to WP culture. Some SMEs lie low (or edit anonymously) just to avoid this fate, others quit after a couple months. My observation is that most SMEs start out trying to maintain the style and process they're used to (for reasons of ego, efficiency, WP lameness, etc), and if they last, they'll either come to see the value of the WP way or change WP - both have happened. Carl has chosen to jump in the deep end immediately, before he's learned all the ways that more-experienced people use to change WP to work more the way they'd prefer. IMHO his boldness doesn't actually get him where he wants to go any faster than a subtler approach, but his practice is well within the bounds of normal editor behavior, and I fault people for trying to turn it into blocks and bans. Stan 23:24, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
PLEASE, do a litle background reading before picking sides. Carl definitely is not an expert about several subjects he writes about (in contrast to several editors he has a conflict with). Furthermore, I only wish Carl banned from editing physics, mathematics and computer science (for a while) so he can learn how to become a great contributor while editing articles he does not believe he is an expert in. —R. Koot 23:30, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I assure you I've read all your complaints, and more besides. Just another reminder why I've never stood for the ArbCom, I always feel like I need to take a shower after reading one of their cases. Stan 23:29, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

10 December 2005

  • Carl,
Just wanted to mention that I think you've made a vast improvement in the structure of the Actor model article recently. In particular, the break between previous models and message passing is a good one, and really helps readability. Nice work!
I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to discuss the ins and outs (or puts and gets :-) of channels vs. direct communications with me. It's been quite enlightening, and has given me a few ideas for new directions in my own research.
Regards,
--Allan McInnes 04:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Allan,
Yes, thanks to your help the Actor model article is greatly improved.
I am pleased that our discussion was productive and helped you in your research.
It is a great pleasure to collaborate with someone who is both knowledgeable and fair!
Regards, --Carl Hewitt 19:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

11 December 2005

  • If only I had the power to make any Wikipedian quit just by saying something! There are a long list of editors who irritate me a lot. But when an active editor quits WP all of a sudden, there's a lot more to it than one comment by one editor, or even a pattern of difficulties attributable to one or a few editors. Sometimes they're just taking a wikivacation, or perhaps they finally realize that WP doesn't actually work the way they thought it did. One of the things that's struck me about the whole Carl Hewitt thing is the degree of upset over what are really rather small changes. You know, there are parts of WP that have ongoing multi-year battles affecting the aggregate structure of thousands of articles, with talented editors trying to make sense of inconsistent authorities, and it's just not considered worthwhile fighting over a single sentence or categorization. My own activity du jour includes identifying and deleting the thousands of copyright-violating images, so we don't get sued out of existence! Even if Carl's edits are original research, or kind of flaky, or whatever, when considering WP as a whole they are way down in the noise. So part of what I see is a lack of perspective on the scale of the problem. Another thing I see is a lack of willingness to engage in (social) experimentation - this is very likely the first time that a distinguished retired professor has decided to publicly dabble in WP, and what we know of sociology in the science world suggests that there are going to be certain unique problems (such as an expert tinkering outside his area, or being tempted to sneak in original stuff). I have a hard time believing I'm the only person that has thought of this, but going by all the diffs, everybody else is totally astonished that things have developed this way. Y'all are smart people, I'm sure you can think of ideas more clever than banning. (If I had more time, I'd volunteer to mediate, sorry.) Stan 02:57, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You wrote If only I had the power to make any Wikipedian quit just by saying something! It seems you do. Unfortunately, it was CSTAR, a highly valued editor, not some pesty crank. I did say last straw, and everyone recognizes that your regrettable comment was just that.
Please indulge me; I am testing a hypthothesis: I guess you are not a scientist and not trained as a scholar in some other discipine--- am I right? Because I'd find it much harder to understand your attitude/judgement if you were trained as a scholar.---CH 03:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
(You could have avoided the implied insult by reading my user page a little more closely, it has a thumbnail bio.) Going by your own commentary on WP in general, I think you're generally aware of its current strengths and weaknesses, but that it hasn't really sunk in that as one of the editors, it is partly up to you to choose how WP works; it's not something that you're given and can't do anything about. Not surprising that you might feel stressed as a result, that is a common reaction to a sense of powerlessness. But we are continuing to invent how WP should work; should we create a formal review process (there's been a dozen proposals, I have a couple of my own to write up)? Are anon edits worth it? (the statistics are unclear). WP today works rather differently than when I started almost three years ago - back then only a handful cared about citations and references, there were no templates or categories to organize things or provide boilerplate, and copyright checking was nearly nonexistent. As Jimbo says, this is Calvinball, and we'll keep changing the rules as necessary to achieve the goal. Stan 07:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

21-22 December 2005

See Discussion with Allan McInnes from arbitration and prior discussion with Allan at Talk:Actor_model#Focus_of_this_article.

Allan has subsequently extensively amended his evidence below (see diff [10]). I have attempted to incorporate his changes into the discussion above.

However, I would like to note that this is an awkward way to negotiate improvements in Wikipedia articles.

Since our task is to create the world's largest free encyclopedia, we press on regardless.

Regards,--Carl Hewitt 05:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Calvinball

The Wikipedia has a couple of hundred thousand more articles now than when I first started contributing half a year ago to areas of science and technology. In some areas, basic articles have been written and as their development has continued are now faced with issues that are right at the edge of the state of the art.

However, so far very few experts have showed up and stayed. At every opportunity, I encourage my colleagues to contribute to the Wikipedia. However the response so far has been anemic. One of my colleagues has written that he doesn't want to put the work into contributing if it would increase the "brouhaha".

It seems that exponential growth means that the Wikipedia must periodically reinvent itself.

For example, one of the issues that we are going to have to address is mob rule.

Regards,--Carl Hewitt 03:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by User:ems57fcva[edit]

Let me say in openning that this is a complex case to document, as it involves a pattern of conduct stretching over several months. Each incident builds up over time, so that there is no one day or event that makes the case against Carl Hewitt. Indeed, the individual incidents are not all that egregious. The trouble is the constant need to fight back against Carl and the same type of over-hyping of the actor model over and over and over again.

My evidence at this time is focussed on a set of events of 13-17 September 2005, and another of mid-October 2005. Alone, either set is not grounds for action, and together they represent a weak case at best. Instead, it is this evidence combined with the specifics cited by others the demonstrate an ongoing pattern of behavior that has led to this RfAr.

Note: All dates/times are UTC. --EMS | Talk 04:26, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

13 September 2005

14 September 2005

15 September 2005

16 September 2005

17 September 2005

Discussion of Events of 13-17 Septmeber 2005

Overall, what happenned is that Carl Hewitt wanted to categorize a software paradigm (the actor model) as a part of general relativity and quantum mechanics. This effort was beaten back by the general relativity editors. However, as this happenned, Carl Hewitt kept changing tactics. First he tried creating a subcategory. Then he tried to do a "renaming" by recreating the category under a new name! I attribute the duplication to his being a newbie instead of maliciousness. Even so, he is failing to deal with the real problem (a total disapproval of treating the actor model as a part of GR), and is constantly moving the offending categorization from one venue to another. The edits of 17 September seem to represent a frustrated "last hurrah" for his efforts to associate the actor model directly with general relativity.

The categories were deleted 22 & 23 September. By that time, Carl Hewitt had relented as the related discussion demonstrate. It was not as "clean" a process as I would have liked, for reasons that are not Carl Hewitt's fault. If this was all that there was to compain about, this action would not have been taken. Unfortunately, it is not.

17 October 2005

18 October 2005

Evidence presented by User:R.Koot[edit]

16 June - 17 June

User:CarlHewitt makes his first edit to Wikipedia [31]. This is tagged as a copyright violation [32] by User:Cryptic, but later restored [33] by User:67.180.227.35. Carl Hewitt leaves an explanation, that he hold the copyright on this text on the talk page [34] and on Cryptic's talk page [35].

User:67.180.227.35 edits the article on the Planner programming language [36], but User:RickK nominates it for deletion (Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/PLANNER). Carl Hewitt expands the article. [37] User:Macrakis tempers Carl's POV somewhat [38]

Carl Hewitt makes this edit [39] to SHRDLU. This is a subtle perverwsion of history. See for example, Terry Winograd's homepage and this quote from Artifical Intelligence: A Modern Approach

After the development of resolution, work on first-order inference proceeded in several directions. In AI, resolution was adopted for question-answering systems by Cordell Green and Bertram Raphael (1968). A somewhat less formal approach was taken by Carl Hewitt (1969). His Planner language, although never fully implemented, was a precursor to logic programming and included directives for forward and backkward chaining and for negation as failure. A subset known as Micro-Planner (Sussman and Winograd, 1970) was implemented ans used in the SHRDLU natural language understanding system (Winograd, 1972). Early AI implementations put a good deal of effort into datastructures that would allow efficient retreival of facts; this work is covered in AI programming texts (Charniak et al., 1987; Norvig, 1992; Forbus and de Kleer, 1993).

and

As mentioned earlier, backward chaining for logical inference apeared in Hewitt's Planner language (1969). Logic programming per se evolved independently of this effort. ...

Carl Hewitt adds some self-promotion to Lisp programming language [40] and Prolog [41].

Carl Hewitt adds some inappropriate links on articles related to philosophy [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49]. A question about this is raised on his talk page [50].

18 June - 4 July

Carl Hewitt makes some further adjustmenst to the Planner programming language article [51]. Especially note the section (emphasis added)

Kowalski's thesis was that computation could be subsumed by deduction and quoted with approval "Computation is controlled deduction." which he attributed to Pat Hayes. Contrary to Kowalski and Hayes, Hewitt's thesis was that logical deduction was incapable of carrying out concurrent computation in open systems. He argued that a mathematical model of Actors did not necessarily determine particular concurrent computations. The Actor model is exactly analogous to physics: Quantum theory does not necessarily determine particular physical processes. E.g., in the double-slit experiment, Quantum theory specificcallly does not determine where a particular particle lands on the screen regardless of how tightly the input of the particle is controlled. Indeed, according to the standard interpretation of Quantum theory, it is impossible to determine ahead of time where a particular particle will land. Indeterminacy carries over into concurrent computation because of arbitation in the implementation of Actor systems. However, Hewitt's thesis is still controversial and the subject of current research.

Carl Hewitt continues to push his Scientific Community Metaphor [52] [53] and himself and Planner [54] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [55]) [56] [57] [58] [59] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [60]) [61] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [62])

Carl Hewitt stated working on the Actor model article [63].

Carl added a link to the Planner programming language to the model theory article [64], which was reverted by User:Josh Cherry stating self-promoting as the reason. [65]

5 July - 24 August

Blissex and User:Koffieyahoo point out several inaccuracies and POV problems in Actor model. A full record can be found on the talk page Talk:Actor model (I consider this to be one of the most important pieces of evidence). Changes made to this article by these users are often reverted (without an adequate explanation on the talk page). ([66]|[67]) ([68]|[69]) ([70]|[71]) ([72]|[73]) The end result is that both User:Koffieyahoo and Blissex have stopped contributing to Wikipedia [74] [75], that the actor model article is still in a poor state (inconsistent with published literature, speculative [76]) and that it has been split into several articles (Actor model implementation, Actor model and process calculi, Actor model theory, Actor model early history) which is not helpful in providing a neutral picture.

There is also a strage edit where Carl removes or replaces links (with inaccesible pages) to online versions of the references cited. [77]

Carl continues pushing his actor model [78] [79] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [80]) [81] (reverted by User:Josh Cherry [82]) [83] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [84]; reinsert by User:CarlHewitt [85]) [86] (clarified by User:Koffieyahoo [87]) [88] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [89]) [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97]

Especially annoying are those in physics articles [98] (reverted by User:CSTAR), the dubious (don't -> usually?) [99] (see Talk:Uncertainty_principle#Indeterminacy in computation and Talk:Uncertainty_principle#Reply).

Carl also has interesting views on certain topics, which would require some further elaboration if we want to keep them included in Wikipedia [100] [101] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [102], reinserted by User:CarlHewitt [103]) [104] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [105]) [106] (reverted by User:Koffieyahoo [107], reinserted by User:CarlHewitt [108]). See Talk:X86/Archives/2011#Prospects for the x86 for some "discussion".

<cap> <cat [109]> <sep Talk:Actor_model_early_history> <continuation>

25 August - 12 September

8 October - ?

<quantum indeterminacy>

Evidence presented by Linas[edit]

Summary: Evidence is presented that Carl Hewitt has driven at least two editors, namely User:CSTAR and User:R.Koot to leave WP. Also, my personal low point in dealing with Carl, and a short list of other contentious arguments that haven't yet been mentioned in other evidentiary sections.

Departure of User:CSTAR
Departure of User:R.Koot
Personal low point
Misleading edit summaries
Other disputes

Rather than further enlarging this page, I'd like to only breifly mention addtional controversies, wherein a variety of parties (and notably User:CSTAR) are engaged against Hewitt:

Comment by CH[edit]

An extended comment on this RfAr can be found here. Hope it's OK to mention this, since I don't understand what User:Chalst did with the original. CSTAR told me the same thing he told Linas and EMS: Carl Hewitt is the primary cause of his departure.---CH 09:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Jitse Niesen[edit]

This case revolves in my opinion around the following key principles:

I found it extremely hard to summarize the case as it spreads out over several months in which CarlHewitt has made thousands of edits (though his edit count is inflated as he often follows a major edit with dozens of minor edits fixing spelling or formatting). There is no smoking gun, no obviously bad behaviour of CarlHewitt's part; rather, it is a long series of annoyances that add up to make the experience of working with CarlHewitt extremely frustrating (this is also discussed in the evidence presented by EMS). Unfortunately, this means that a lot of evidence has to be presented, and I apologize to the arbitrators for having to read through all of it.

I chose to present the evidence in two parts. In the first section, I take one article (denotational semantics) and give an account of most of the events relating to this article; this has the advantage that the reader can see the context. The disadvantage is that it is a lot of work to read it (not to mention writing it), so in the next section, I present some diffs to illustrate the principles that I listed at the top.

Denotational semantics

This section discusses the events surrounding denotational semantics (which I'll abbreviate as "den.sem.") and the associated talk page.

September

There is now a break for over a month, in which not much happens.

November

As a result of CarlHewitt's edits, the article denotational semantics currently gives a highly skewed treatment of the field, doing little justice any researchers not associated with Carl Hewitt. Three quarters of the article is about the actor model.

Other evidence

This section lists examples of what I view as CarlHewitt's uncollegial attitude and the reactions of other editors to CarlHewitt's actions.

CarlHewitt evades questions
CarlHewitt answers a question by giving an unhelpful reference
CarlHewitt answers a question with another question instead of offering an answer
CarlHewitt answers a question by referring to publications that will soon appear
CarlHewitt is pushing his own work
CarlHewitt's assumption of ownership
CarlHewitt claims that something is controversial while he's the only one arguing for a particular PoV

Concluding remarks

CarlHewitt is clearly an expert on the actor model, and as such, he could prove very useful for Wikipedia. Unfortunately, most (if not all) editors that have interacted with him over some time, have felt considerable frustrations because of it, leading some to leave Wikipedia alltogether. An ideal conclusion of this case would allow Wikipedia to profit from CarlHewitt's expertise without his poisoning the community (the latter has of course a negative effect on Wikipedia).

Notes

  1. CarlHewitt often makes many edits in succession. For the convenience of the reader, I decided to group all edits together in one diff when they are made consecutively without any other editor intervening.
  2. Here, "CH" refers to User:CarlHewitt, and not to User:Hillman (Chris Hillman) who also presented evidence and signs his posts with "CH".
  3. The conflict surrounding Quantum indeterminacy is treated in more detail in the evidence presented by EMS.
  4. This diff also appears in the section #Denotational semantics.

Evidence presented by Allan McInnes[edit]

My initial interactions with Carl Hewitt arose from following links that he had inserted into articles about process calculi. We have since “sparred” (that seems the only appropriate term) on a number of occassions over the quality and quantity of information that Carl puts into his articles. Our interactions have not all been negative: I have worked hard to improve the structure and quality of the articles in question, both through suggesting changes, and by making changes myself [129], and I believe that Carl appreciates at least some of this work (see [130]).

My principal concern is that Carl seems to be attempting to subvert the Wikipedia to push his POV on his theory of concurrency (the Actor model) and to promote that theory. This subversion takes subtle forms:

Carl is generally unwilling to take part in any significant discussion on these issues. When questioned he tends to give evasive answers, or avoid answering the question altogether (see Talk:Process calculi, Talk:Actor model and process calculi, Talk:Actor model for examples).

The specific chronological evidence that I would like to present revolves around the Actor model and process calculi article, since that is where Carl and I have had the most significant interaction. It is just one instance of a larger pattern that I have observed in Carl's behavior on Wikipedia. There are a number of other articles that I have concerns about from a POV perspective, but have not had the time or energy to tackle as yet. Other articles about which I have concerns are covered in the evidence given by others on this page.

Actor model and process calculi

[159]

Article creation to support RfAr arguments

On January 1 2006 Carl Hewitt created the article Allan McInnes. This article obviously doesn't meet the criteria for the inclusion of biographical articles. I did not ask for this article to be created. Carl's motivation for the creation of this article is not immediately obvious, but it appears to have been created purely to provide support for arguments that are part of this Request for Arbitration[170]. The article was subsequently deleted [171], and became the subject of a (now closed) deletion review[172] as a result of its relevance to this RfAr.

Actually I created the article because I (mistakenly it turned out) thought that it was appropriate because you had published an article and I wanted to be able to refer to the author in the future. When someone kindly provided a link for where the criteria for article creation about academics are written down, I immediately said that it was OK by me to delete the article. Unfortunately, by that time I had referred to you as Allan McInnes instead of User:Allan McInnes in this proceeding. So it was decided to hold the stub over until this proceeding has concluded. (I don't know what they are going to do about the archive of this proceeding.) --Carl Hewitt 01:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be deleted when the arbitration ends, unless any argument is made for its continued inclusion. I requested a temporary undeletion on WP:VFD for the duration of this case, not because I think that much hinges on the example, but to ensure that no one feels that evidence is being hidden. --- --- Charles Stewart(talk) 18:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Koffie Yahoo[edit]

Since I'm mentioned a few times I think I should at least explain my lack of contributions over the past few months. Don't know if this really counts as evidence, but seems important here. (I made similar statements to CSTAR in private.)

My lack of contributions is three-fold:

I also mentioned to CSTAR that I still think it's best to try to argue with Carl Hewitt eventhough he is a master in evading answering my questions. I still hold this view.

Statement by Charles Stewart on the evidence presented by Jitse Niesen[edit]

I mostly agree with what Jitse Niesen has written in his evidence and wish to endorse it with some caveats.

The conflict I followed most closely, apart from the *fDs, was over the denotational semantics article. I think Jitse has done a generally excellent job of putting together his evidence, but there are a few issues where I think it is incomplete in a manner that has some risk of misleading, as well as some points where I can add something further (the following points are with respect to the den. semantics article):

  1. Ong, the authority whose survey was regarded as besides the point by Carl Hewitt, is one of the five originators of the modern approach to game semantics, which he argues gives new abstract mathematical structures for denotational semantics (there is some controversy over this matter, but the view is widely held in the field). He is unquestionably a key authority on the full abstraction problem, a central issue in denotational semantics. I should also disclose that he supervised my doctorate, which was not on denotational semantics or game semantics;
  2. Further to my statement of 17 Nov, I changed my mind about the value of Carl's contribution to the article, particularly in realtion to the question of unbounded nondeterminism, following an email discussion with Carl and his former PhD student Will Clinger (with whom I was already slightly acquanited). I did not explain my change of mind on the talk page (for which I apologised at the time to CSTAR), but I did retract my opinion that the existing content should be scrapped and the article started fresh.
  3. My current opinion about the article is that while Carl's edits profoundly unbalanced the article, he also grew the article in directions that were beyond my expertise, and I think that the article would, given more cooperative editing, have become a stronger article as a result.
  4. I never fully got to the bottom of what Carl and CSTAR were arguing about with respect to the issue of compositionality in denotational semantics, a topic I understand very well. That suggests to me that neither of them were arguing clearly from a well-seasoned perspective on the topic, a proposition that would about either party be surprising to me. It appeared to turn on an obscure-to-me turf battle on the value of the Sussman-Steele interpretation of continuation semantics, an interesting question to me but one whose relevance to the point at hand was not clear;
  5. Robin Milner is probably the second most weightiest living figure it is possible to cite in theoretical computer science (after Dana Scott). Milner's interest in the actor model should carry weight.

In addition, I'd like to draw attention to the evidence above of repeated conflict that arose from other editors dissatisfaction with Carl's approach to citation, which I think will be very important in the Workshop phase. --- Charles Stewart 11:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]


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