Talk:Skyhook (structure)

Needs more information about their albums

There is no information about the Skyhooks' albums or singles, an oversight that really needs to be addressed. 101.166.74.188 (talk) 14:46, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

See: Skyhook, a disambiguation page where you will find: Skyhooks (band). BatteryIncluded (talk) 18:24, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Merge overlapping articles

The Non-rotating skyhook article was recently created. There is not enough material to justify a fork, hence the new article should be merged here. — JFG ^talk 08:00, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Merge: the newly-created article contains additional information but not sufficient to merit a separate article. It also lacks context as it stands, with no explanation of what a rotating skyhook might be and why a rotating one might be better or worse or just different. Lithopsian (talk)

Do not Merge: I have seen much overlap of articles in Wikipedia so I am not sure that just because there is overlap between these two that the articles should be merged. There has also been a long history of contentious edits in this article that has resulted in a couple of non-neutral statements and the deletion of a number of references, most of which appear to be due to differences of opinion regarding the relative merits of rotating versus non-rotating skyhooks. I created the article Non-rotating skyhook in order to have a current and neutral description of a non-rotating skyhook to support the article Combination launch system. I limited the Non-rotating Skyhook article to just the non-rotating skyhook concept in the hope that it would avoid a continuation of the edit war that has occurred here. So as an alternate suggestion to merging these two articles, how about someone rewrite this article to both update it and to remove the non-neutral statements. If that can be done without restimulating the edit war, and if it contains an honest, fair, and neutral description of both a non-rotating and rotating skyhook, then (and only then) consider a merger of these two articles.Jonah and the Whale (talk) 16:38, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that the Skyhook article should present all options neutrally, but I'm not enough of an expert to contribute on that. On the other hand, Combination launch system looks like an essay about four alternative launch architectures; I'm not sure there are sufficient external WP:RS analyzing these concepts. — JFG ^talk 18:13, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

What gives JFG? You asked for a merger, you get it and now you delete it? As to the so-called copyright violation, the Space exploration technologies article that was the source material for this edit predates the website you mentioned.Jonah and the Whale (talk) 17:56, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh wow, it gets more complex. Let me open another section to discuss the sourcing of the material. — JFG ^talk 04:20, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Sourcing of the skyhook details

A large part of the article is a verbatim copy of a web page called "Skyhooks and space elevators" at this address: https://skyhooksandspaceelevators.wordpress.com/tag/space-elevator/ Consequently I removed it as a Copyright violation but Jonah and the Whale restored it and said that the Wikipedia material pre-dated the external web site. It's hard to tell if Wikipedia copied the external web site or if the external web site copied Wikipedia. Examining the edit history of our earlier "Space exploration technologies" article, we see that:

• In 2005, this was a redirect to SpaceX, whose full name is "Space Exploration Technologies Corporation"
• On 6 January 2015, an IP editor inserted 68 kB of text, let's call it Version A, which is structured like a massive essay on skyhooks and assorted hypothetical space transportation technologies allowing to reach them, mixed with a few links to real artifacts such as the VASIMR and the DC-X
• Over the following days, the article was slightly modified by two other editors, then on 17 February 2015 the contents were blanked and the SpaceX redirect was restored by Deunanknute, with edit summary "Rv to proper redirect, page was changed by sock of User:Skyhook1."
• On 17 June 2015, AmericanEagle2000 restored the full text, asking "why was this removed?"
• On 14 October 2015, BatteryIncluded deleted the contents again, complaining about an article "hijack" by User:Skyhook1 again. An opponent calling himself Brains not included briefly restored the text, which BatteryIncluded removed. The page was protected by administrator NeilN and locked for admins only by Courcelles.

It strikes me as woefully improbable that a fully formed Version A appeared out of nowhere on the whim of an IP passer-by: this must have been copied from elsewhere yet. Because version A has sections with wiki markup and sources, and sections which are totally unsourced essays, I suspect that it was copied in part from another, earlier Wikipedia article, and in part from an external uncited source. On the other hand, the "Skyhooks and space elevators" external site is hosted as a Wordpress blog with only one entry, dated April 2015. Assuming that the publication date is genuine, this massive article must have come from somewhere else earlier as well.

The next step in the investigation is to check contributions of user Skyhook1. He was blocked as a sockmaster on 13 August 2014, but we can still see his sandbox containing a draft of the skyhook stuff which he had been gradually building up with hundreds of edits between 27 June 2014 and 9 August 2014. And on this very talk page, we see Skyhook1 saying After reading the instruction on original work, I agree with you, my entire article was original work. Every last word of it. but that was still earlier: 7 March 2014. In the following months, we see a whole lot of drama with IPs and sock accounts, until Skyhook1 was blocked and some editors salvaged what was considered encyclopedic in August 2014. The article was then relatively untouched until the 2015 events. Skyhook1 had earlier created the article Orbiting skyhook and developed it from 12 January to 24 February 2014, at which point it was merged with Skyhook (structure). The Martian bits were added on 27 February and 3 March 2014.

Our little enquiry wouldn't be complete without a trip to the web site of Mr. Eagle Sarmont at http://www.high-frontier.org/, which talks a lot about skyhooks as the way to conquer the Solar System, and promotes the idea of combination launch systems, involving launching stuff on a suborbital trajectory which would be intercepted by the skyhook. This other article is in the same style as Version A: essay-like and mostly unsourced. It looks likely that User:Skyhook1 was Mr. Sarmont himself, especially considering his comments in the August 2014 incident discussion : I am an aeronautical engineer, a rocket scientist, a former test pilot, and probably the largest single contributor to former President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration". I have 4 degrees. which is very similar in tone to his self-bio at http://www.high-frontier.org/about-the-author/. Given the context, I must reluctantly ask Jonah and the Whale: do you have any connection with Mr. Sarmont?

Finally, the question of authorship cannot be resolved easily. The wordpress site may indeed have been copied from Wikipedia, but we can't prove it. Lost of the material can be traced to User:Skyhook1 but his contributions have been criticized. I'd appreciate some input from the editors who were involved in this story earlier. — JFG ^talk 04:20, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: A lot of this probably could have been added to a SPI report. I've gone through the evidence above and found other editing similarities and blocked Jonah and the Whale as a sockpuppet. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 08:39, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks NeilN. Should I copy something into the Skyhook1 SPI for posterity? — JFG ^talk 10:42, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: Yes, please. Good idea. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:38, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done. — JFG ^talk 21:19, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I cleaned up a bunch of links to Combination launch system and to Space exploration technologies that had been spammed into the See also sections of many spaceflight articles. This had been a pet technique of Skyhook1 and his socks as well (see for example contribs of AmericanEagle2000), so I guess if it quacks like a duck… — JFG ^talk 10:52, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

JFG - It is not my understanding or lack of understanding of Wikipedia's policy that counts here but the rule of law. You have declared my contributions to be copyrighted material. I do not contest that, I totally accept it. That means all of my contributions as represented by the "Skyhooks and Space Elevators" article on Wordpress are copyrighted material that you do not have my permission to use and that you can not pick and choose the parts of that material that you want to keep. If you want to keep the current description of the non-rotating skyhook in the Skyhook (structure) article and all the other material that is recognizable as coming from that source throughout Wikipedia, you need to site the original source, put it in quotes, and include a working inline reference to that source. If not, you will need to rewrite the description as well as all the other parts, using your own words without using any of mine. It is my understanding that this is also Wikipedia's policy on this subject but it is the rule of law that takes precedence.

Now you can choose to comply with this or not. If not, I will take it to court. Wikipedia has deep pockets and according to my attorney they will end up paying for it. If you do not believe that, you should talk with Wikipedia's legal department. I have also been told that I have a good shot of making a case against Wikipedia for discrimination based on your and other Wikipedia administrators behavior towards my good faith contributions. You can also expect to have your identity made public if it should go that far.

Should you choose to delete this message like you did with the last one, and have the IP address I sent it from blocked like the last one, all that does is provide additional supporting evidence for a discrimination lawsuit and for showing lack of good faith on your part and on the part of Wikipedia towards my attempt to resolve this issue without going to court.

Skyhook1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.187.11.189 (talk) 09:16, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

• Hello Skyhook1, I am a Copyright Clerk here at WP (that doesn't mean I have any more authority, just that I choose to focus on that area). My comments here are completely in that capacity, with no opinion on the suitability of including any content here. That said, the copyrighted material was removed solely because we as regular editors can't verify that you are indeed the owner of that material. As the holder, I would hope you can appreciate the steps we take to protect your rights, and not believe anyone who might claim to be the owner. Now, if you do wish to privately verify ownership, you can do so by following the steps at WP:DCM. At that point, copyright is not an issue here, and it becomes an editorial matter among the page editors.
• If you do not wish to do so, that's fine as well. The copyrighted text has been removed: before:, and after:. The remaining "hits" are non-creative language and technical terms which are typically not in themselves copyrightable. If you wish, I can have that content expunged from the article's history so that it cannot be seen even by searching back.
• As far as taking legal action, you are of course free to do so. Do note however that in such a case if it is confirmed that you are the copyright holder, then by your original addition of the text, you irrevocably agreed to release it under a free license allowing WP and anyone else to freely use it, provided they credit you. That irrevocable release is fundamental to the Creative Commons license we publish under, and has been upheld numerous times (not involving WP, but in general). Regards, Crow^Caw 16:19, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Skyhook is blocked as a sockpuppet, so are a few of the people that started this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:29, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

"Vorbit" ?

This word appears in the first image/figure but is not explained. Even a google search in quotation marks does not yield a meaningful result. --Felix Tritschler (talk) 09:33, 9 April 2021 (UTC)