You can quote my emails. Ethical fairness. Why would I write differently in private than public?
The technical side of AWE is what matters most. We have great wind experts that have advanced AWE knowledge. That’s the measure of merit.
You don’t have my permission.
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You have my permission. You did not need to ask.
Anyone who writes me about AWE must not expect secrecy.
So it is no wonder that what you write in public becomes private, unlisted to be precise.
I’ll close this topic temporarily.
This topic was automatically opened after 17 hours.
There is one thing going on here:
I caught Dave Santos making up a fake credential for his friend Wayne, to artificially enhance his own credibility (by association), to get people to believe his further false statements. I caught him, and he can’t admit it. That’s the only thing going on here. If the moderators here cared about truth on this forum, they would have told him to please stop lying.
If you google Boeing “Flight Research Institute” you find almost nothing. Mostly stuff out of Russia. Pages later, you may notice an occasional cut-paste-repeated statement of who the founder was, and this reference to Wayne German, on Dave Santos / Joe Faust’s own website, EnergyKiteSystems.net, citing Wayne German as a “project leader”:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/0/FRI/
(Note, the only “evidence” I’ve found of even this is from Wayne, Joe, and Dave themselves. Hmmm…)
So there you are Dave Santos, now arguing with your own website.
It’s been a tiresome 12 years of countering your seemingly daily false statements.
If these AWE conversations were a card game, you would be cheating, lose every hand, and never pay up. There is a lack of basic integrity required to HAVE a meaningful discussion. That integrity starts with not telling lies, and ends with the ability and humility to ever admit you were wrong about anything. This is stuff a 5-year-old should understand.
It is really aggravating that someone attempts to completely dominate a conversation for that many years and have so much trouble admitting they were ever wrong about anything, let alone that they just make up impressive-sounding untrue credentials for their friends claiming they are like Burt Rutan and Paul MacCready.
Let’s Google “Burt Rutan”: About 212,000 results (0.79 seconds)
Let’s Google “Paul MacCready”: About 45,600 results (0.41 seconds)
Let’s Google “Wayne German”: Well, plenty of results, but page after page, none pertain to the Wayne German we’re talking about here. Mostly funeral announcements of people named Wayne with some word “German” following, etc.
I guess if there are any actual, generally-recognized notable accomplishments from his friend, Dave Santos could provide the links for us, right? Rather than just making things up? Will he? I think you know the answer.
I disagree that Joe Faust was a good or impartial moderator: Being censored by Joe was not fun, and he was mostly just covering up facts. He was a very good archivist, let’s not try to take that away from him, but his moderation was often and consistently highly-biased against factual content, tilted strongly toward protecting Dave Santos from any post pointing out the untruth of Santos’ statements.
And Joe had his own problem with making untrue statements, like claiming that dragging a sheet of trash from the side of the road home, hanging it up in his backyard, and taking a nap under it was some “airborne wind energy” accomplishment. It seems no claim is too ridiculous for these two to hang their hats on.
And you guys here just seem to fall for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Moderator, you say “be better”. Well I stand up for the truth. Why don’t YOU “be better” and do something about the lying that is taking over your forum?
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Not to mention his propensity to lend others imaginary intentions to support his statements. An example:
Another example:
This statement is also purposely false.
And false statements like these can be found in spades. A mention like “factually untrue” by moderation on his messages would be desirable, even if that would lead to a significant work, but also to significant improvement for the reader.
I’ve thought of an inappropriate visual:
We all like to swim in the sea – this forum – but there are also killer whales swimming way over there. If you go over there you might get chomped. Nobody wants to get chomped. Fortunately, there were people kind enough to erect a barrier the killer whales generally won’t cross, if we’re lucky, so you’re safe swimming over here. There’s also lifeguards on duty. They tell the people not to cross the barrier please, or you might get chomped, and why they might get chomped. Keeping the lifeguards is expensive, and they get weary too if there are too many people that keep trying to cross the barrier, so at times they may leave and let people get chomped and won’t have the time to explain why they got chomped. A killer whale can chomp a person in a fraction of a second, the lifeguards explaining why they got chomped (because there are killer whales over there) are much much slower, and are volunteers anyway – they’re not very good. The lifeguards are the bottleneck. The veteran swimmers have been coming to swim in the sea for a long time already and the barrier has been here all that time, so one hopes that they are concerned for their own safety enough to keep well away from the barrier, even without a lifeguard present to warn them. The lifeguards would rather teach new people to swim and teach them about the dangers, and joys, of swimming in the sea and the dangers of killer whales.
Here’s the barrier, don’t cross that, try to keep your distance even, and you’re generally fine: https://forum.awesystems.info/faq
In reply to @dougselsam and @PierreB, the FAQ has recently been updated. See the bit under Productive Technical Discussion Now the burden of proof rests with the poster. We will try to enforce the new rule, where relevant. I don’t think it should be used to put every inconsequential claim under a microscope.
This is just more of Santos’ typical, desperate attempts to misrepresent what everyone has said, whether it is himself, Pierre, me, or anyone else. Pierre was making a sarcastic joke when he said “Windy Skies” is the greatest moderator. It was not a serious statement. Santos has shown multiple times he doesn’t understand humor. Obviously part of whatever syndrome afflicts him. Looks like he is trying for one more diversion to pretend someone else was lying, after his latest bunk was debunked.
You guys have too much time on your hands. There’s an obvious urge to post here by people who have nothing to say. They just want to post something.
The “killer whales” on the old forum were Joe and Dave themselves, although I think sneaky, stinging jellyfish would be a better analogy, and you guys here seem to have an almost identical problem not allowing anyone to express any opinion you do not agree with, just like Joe. So you have a forum dominated by The killer whale, stinging jellyfish, whatever sea-creature analogy you wish, for Dave Santos, who makes up his “facts” as he goes, even if they are refuted by his own previous writings or those of the person he refers to. Hey Mr. Moderator, if you don’t care if people lie here, what DO you care about? What is different about this forum? Nothing I can see. Same person most profusely posting, same exact problems. Really, I think the reason you allow the same big sneaky stinging jellyfish that was so problematic in the last forum here is, the rest of you really have nothing to say. There is a mental vacuum here. So in such a vacuum, you accept a daily blast of whatever trivia the stinging-jellyfish-in-chief offers - some rich guy mentions flying a kite, and wheeee… he’s off to the races! A new “topic”! One more pretense of relevance to AWE. I don’t see what the point is of all this back-and-forth over nothingness. If a moderator doesn’t care if someone lies, then lies about his lies, to try and make themselves or their associates into fake experts, well that is par for the course for AWE, and I would say one of wannabe-AWE’s hallmarks: Nobody sees or cares if everything they read is a lie. Nobody cares if someone spends all day arguing with themselves over whether a soft kite is soft, or can survive a hit with a hammer. There is no intelligent life here. I think I’ve wasted enough of my life trying to save you all from yourselves. Good luck.
And this was from a private mail. However that has something true compared to the “moderation” of the old forum.
Luke,
Why can’t I flag your post about betting on losers being 95% correct? Where is your proof, as Windy Skies demands of claims.
I can’t comment further either, as a “new user”, which is factually incorrect.
You really have not earned your top status here, nor is moderation under your leadership equitable to more knowledgeable experienced AWE voices.
If Wubbo himself was to show up, you would still be self-chosen as the top authority.
Compared to the original version where this rule was adapted from, the rule here is a little bit more relaxed. Only after someone asks for a clarification or further evidence of a (not trivial) claim and the poster deflecting or otherwise not addressing the clarifying request, is the claim regarded as suspect.
Regarding your link on forum moderation: Questions and complaints about moderation + unlisted, mostly unmoderated, free discussion - #297 by Windy_Skies
Stay well away from the line and your posts need never be moderated. If you willfully keep crossing the line (forum rules), or keep trying to figure out where the line is exactly, of course your posts need to be moderated.
When did transparency and free-speech become bad? No one has ever posted anything here that a normal newspaper could not print.
Key technical content, like kite knots, is lost, in favor of absolute moderation powers by self-selected authorities. One is even masked, as if power had a right to be anonymous.
A moderation clique is not a real community.
One would be 100% right that censorship in AWE is a failing effort.
“The line” for free-speech and transparency has not been crossed by you, Windy Skies, by assuming abusive anonymous authority, with only a beginner’s level of AWE domain knowledge.
Ok, lets go with you continuing to “moderate” as you do, and I’ll have do my best to continue sharing freely.
Its absolutely vital to have critical opposing voices on topics like Google’s role in AWE, EU insiders, failing technical ideas, and so on.
Netiquette is not the AWE challenge, technical creativity is. Moderation should nurture that above all else.
I would be happily sharing new work and news if the moderation had not started bombing.
There is big breaking news in AWE.
A heavily censored forum is not a worthy place to share that sort of thing.
Moderators should be chosen openly on merit, not be allowed to mismoderate abusively and anonymously. This crosses the line of Jeff Atwood’s intent in creating Discourse.
I guess the comment is skirting very close to the line or goes over it. Perhaps it can be left as an exercise to the reader to determine what might be wrong with it, to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Standing further away from the line avoids accidental chomps.
You edited the comments with the purpose to have them show up again, without removing the offending parts. To avoid that game of cat and mouse, I’ll delete the comments.
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No Windy Skies, your cat and mouse game is not avoided by hiding your identity while censoring comments that do not suit you. You exacerbate the complaints by escalating your censorship.
Moderation has failed to nurture a tolerant open forum where technical merit counts most. This topic itself is wrongly hidden. Let future scholars decide who was right about moderation here.
OK this is where I would like to stand up for facts again, and try to steer people away from accepting attempts to substitute fraud for facts.
I’d like to take you back to the first major AWE event, the 2009 High Altitude Wind Power Conference in Chico and Oroville, California, which was, to their credit, (as I understand it anyway) organized by Joe Faust and Dave Santos. So let’s give credit where it is due, if correct, with regard to that.
Silly me, I thought it might also be “a fly-in”, as Santos always talks about, so I brought a working AWE system I had built at the request of Popular Science Magazine in 2008.
My Sky Serpent system ran unattended outside the window during the two-day part of the conference that took place near Oroville, California Airport. Like the regular wind turbine visible in the distance, it was mostly ignored.
My impression of the attendees, especially Dave Santos, Joe Faust, and Wayne German, was they were enthusiastic but without the slightest clue about wind energy.
I thought “these people are just kite enthusiasts (kite-freaks?), and their real interest is just flying kites. Flying kites is all they will ever do.”.
I would just like to ask whomever might be reading this, have you ever met Wayne? My impression at the conference was he kept interrupting people trying to speak, insisting that the only idea worth considering was his own: two kites, tethered together, flying against each other, with at least one at high altitude, capturing wind energy by, if I remember correctly, at least one onboard kite-reeling system, whose vast power would be beamed to a ground station by microwave.
Wayne seemed so convinced, that he would not stop repeating this idea. That was 12 years ago, so maybe there was supposed to be a Makani-style propeller involved, but my possibly-flawed recollection was it was a fully-airborne, free-flying kite-reeling concept.
Now, this is not meant to pick on Santos’ friend Wayne, because I don’t see Wayne himself claiming to have been “The Director of” "Boeing’s Flight Research Institute”. I did find, through google, however, what looks like him claiming to be (and I’m paraphrasing) the guy at Intel to whom all problems were ultimately sent. Wait, here’s the quote: “I was also the one person at Intel to whom all questions were eventually escalated to”.
A reader who did not, as Windy Skies says, put such “inconsequential claims” under a microscope, might believe Wayne was also the top analytical person at Intel. Was he? Like what, the director of research at both Intel and Boeing? Anything else? Did he win a Nobel prize too? No microscope needed, just a minute or two of googling.
By the time I saw what looked like Wayne’s claim to have been a liaison from Intel to “The Bausch Motor Company”, sorry but I had to google “The Bausch Motor Company” (which I do not think exists) and came up with only ONE (1) return: https://www.airlinereporter.com/2012/07/ge-aviation-highways-in-the-sky/
which is the comment that says it is from Wayne German, under an unrelated article, where Wayne (if it is really him) seems to be trying mainly to impress people with a partially inaccurate set of credentials. Why do these guys feel the need to keep injecting false credentials into conversations?
The anonymous “Windy Skies” seems to want to categorize that (bizarre?) claim of Santos as “inconsequential”. Santos himself seems to also imply a “What’s the difference?” tone, after the fact, while saying he has removed the post.
Maybe everything he says, or everything on this forum is inconsequential then.
Well I will tell you why this (apparently, to me) false claim is consequential and important to squelch:
To me, there is huge difference between being the top mind at the top Aerospace company, and volunteering at a museum. But if people don’t check, they may just believe anything Santos types into his computer. Is that supposed to be the idea here?
First, most people reading such a claim are likely to interpret it as something like “Wayne was the top aircraft design research mind at Boeing”.
Well here’s what the comment / post by Wayne says:
“I was a project leader at the flight research institute when it was a non-profit offshoot of Boeing at the Museum of Flight in Seattle Washington.”
So if these are Wayne’s own words, to me, they mean Wayne showed up at a publicly-aaccessible, non-profit museum, and in his insistent way, probably started asking why they didn’t have a section for kites, whereupon at some point the people running the nonprofit museum told him “fine, you are hereby in charge of your requested kite section.” I’m guessing there was no funding involved, nothing built, no papers published, but more just a way to solve the “geez how can we shut this highly-insistent guy up?” challenge they found themselves facing.
Where can we read about the “project” he was the “leader” of? Who did he “lead”? Himself? Anyone else? Any evidence of that anywhere? What did they accomplish? Any papers published? Any recognition by anyone besides Joe, Dave, and Wayne?
Anyway, in light of the fact that Santos probably has posted on this forum more than anyone else, with artificially-constructed credibility based on (what I interpret as) such highly-fake “credentials”, I just thought it was important to point out my observations, so people reading this stuff know a little more info.
While I, as well as others, have protested what we have believed were false statements, they seemed to continue unabated. It seems to me these ongoing false statements, intended as credibility-enhancing for people who would just skim the material and believe the possible top mind at Boeing, at Intel, the “Burt Rutan” and “Paul MacCready” associations claimed of his friend by Santos, before these claims get repeated so many times people start believing them, I just thought the contrast of a few facts was warranted. Sorry, I know many here do not like facts. If I have any wrong I apologize.
If you don’t care about facts and believe all false claims do not matter, well, that might explain why after over a billion dollars have been spent, we’re still at ground-zero in AWE. Please, ignore whatever you wish, but ignore facts at your own peril. I think falsifying credibility does matter. As some people say, the only thing you really have is your word. If your word is no good, you have nothing.
So check into this yourself if you want, but I think people should understand the nature of what they are reading in some cases.