The French Wikipedia
November 22, 2013
December 6, 2013: Epilogue
In 2004, that was... nine years ago, a battle began on Wikipedia between pro-Petit and anti-Petit, on the page dedicated to me. It lasted for quite some time and eventually stabilized, albeit poorly. Well, it must be said quickly. I see that it is now marked with a banner, "because it does not rely enough on secondary and tertiary sources." That's a new invention by those who, in the shadows, weave their web.
The French Wikipedia science community is haunted by a fauna that wears masks.
Almost ten years ago, I was following the quarrels on this closed field that had become the page dedicated to me. Over time, things had somewhat improved: in the first version I was qualified as a... pseudo scientist.
An animal, who intervened under the pseudonym "le ya ya," finally annoyed me. He constantly claimed that for such and such reason I was trying to publish my personal, original works on Wikipedia, and he multiplied his alerts (normal, for a guy who has never found anything, nor will ever find anything in his life). At one point I wanted to see how far this fool would go. I took a passage from the excellent book by Adler, Schiffer and Bazin "Introduction to General Relativity," published in 1975 by Mac Graw Hill. It's one of my favorite reference books.
I chose the passage that deals with the linearization of the Einstein equation. A very rich passage, which shows how Newton's law actually naturally emerges from the Einstein equation, as well as the gravitational potential. In the end, we obtain the Einstein constant, which appears in his field equation.
I reproduced the equations, the reasoning, exactly the same. A lot of sentences were translated word for word. And there's "le ya ya" who intervenes, who puts banners here and there: "Attention, Jean-Pierre Petit is trying to publish his own work!"
Meanwhile, a reader had communicated the identity of this olibrius to me: a certain Yacine Dolivet, who was a doctoral student at Normale Sup, in the super socks, sorry: superstrings (he is now a banker, as far as I know). I finally wrote to him:
- "Listen, my good Yacine Dolivet, go check for yourself. The page I set up is completely derived from section 10.5, chapter ten of the excellent book, etc... It seems that you confuse a lot of things regarding General Relativity. If you want, we could meet at the Normale Supérieure, where you are preparing your thesis, and I could then give you all the necessary explanations in person."
By doing so, I had revealed the identity of a guy who was acting under a pseudonym on Wikipedia. I had taken off his mask. A major mistake, a real crime within this structure...
A council, made up of a few administrators, secretly driven by Alain Riazuelo, immediately voted my... lifetime exclusion (....)
That's how simple it is.
The years have passed. I eventually forgot all this mediocrity, the cowardice of some and others, the lamentable cowardice of Alain Riazuelo, this empty vessel filled with interstellar void.
One day, a guy translated this page on the Einstein constant into English, that I had created on the French side. I have nothing to do with it. He must have found that it well presented the link between the world of General Relativity and the Newtonian universe.
My own page has gradually filled up. I have done various things. And yet, there is something missing. There is the "two-temperature plasma kinetic theory" section.
There is no page "Alain Riazuelo." A guy tried to build one, but he faced strong opposition, people who thought that the works of this guy did not justify his presence on the Web. Strange, this guy has published so many articles, is cited a thousand times. That would give him secondary, tertiary, maybe even quaternary sources. There is something I'm missing.
I discover one of his friends, Jean-Christophe Benoist:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Jean-Christophe_BENOIST
47 years old. Computer engineer
https://plus.google.com/+JeanChristopheBENOIST/posts
Current employer: Thales Group. Software Architect
Esi Supinfo - MONTREUIL 1984 - 1987
A look that breathes honesty.
This encyclopedist is the author of numerous articles. I count thirty-nine, including one on General Relativity.
• Schrödinger's cat
• Aspect experiment
• Quantum measurement problem
• Quantum decoherence
• Marlan Scully experiment
• Quantum eraser
• Hidden variable
• Quantum cryptography
• Roger Penrose
• Wave-particle duality
• Quantum superposition principle
• Observable
• Density matrix
• Counterfactual (physics)
• Mach's principle
• Young's slits
• Unitarity
• Vacuum energy
• Riemann sphere
• Minkowski diagram
• Random sequence
• Chaitin's Omega
• P = NP problem
• Apollo 14
• Grover's algorithm
• Ada Lovelace
• Technocracy
• Gemini 9
• Technocratic movement
•
General Relativity
• Information paradox
• Weak measurement
• Einstein synchronization
• Population III star
• Look-back time
• Intergalactic medium
• Lunar Orbiter program
• Bell's inequalities
• Passion according to Saint John
The article on General Relativity lacks epic flair. It seems like a bureaucratic work. It's a compilation. This man is not a scientist.
He now attacks the page on the Einstein constant. The aggression is clearly visible, on the surface, in this cosmic Tartuffe. You will read the exchanges, the opinions, regarding the deletion or maintenance of this page. The argument? "It's too technical" and it does not correspond to what is expected in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Well, of course...
If he is right, then he will have a lot of work to remove many contributions. For example, I see that on the page he dedicated to General Relativity there is a link to the Schwarzschild metric. Very technical.
Quickly, let's vote...
I wonder if the French Wikipedia is not "Physics invaded by computer scientists."
Ah, don't expect to be able to express yourself so easily on this mini-forum, reserved for people with "more than 50 contributions," therefore for experienced Wikipedians. A reader, Paul M., who seems to be an old-style university professor, tried to do so. Here is the post he tried to write, which, he says, was promptly and immediately deleted, twice in a row:
The Einstein equation would not exist without the constant that bears its name, and which has nothing to do with the cosmological constant. In this article, the author explains how its value was determined. The reference indicated is the book by Adler, Schiffer and Bazin, which is one of the best introductions to General Relativity, in every respect.
The equations are clearly extracted and the steps are well placed. It is not necessary to cite other references, other books, where this standard calculation would simply be reproduced a hundred times identically.
But what is much more important, and which you have not noticed or perceived. This article explains...