Request for Carbon-14 Dating explanation

(Sylas puts on his Admin hat) The forum guidelines prohibit you from downloading large slabs of material (guideline 10), and prohibit you from quoting material without giving the source (guideline 6).You've built up a certain amount of credibilty here with your approach, so I'm not proposing to throw the book at you... yet.Could you please declare your source? Where did you download from? Note that if you use a secondary source which then quoted "Awake" and the other material, you should cite the secondary source that you used yourself.What I find odd in the the structure of the post is an extract from Awake 1986, then an extract from Awake 1972, and then without warning a switch to text quoted from Science in 1986. Where did those last two paragraphs come from? Are they part of the original Awake 1986 article? How did it all get mixed up like this?Thanks -- SylasThis message has been edited by AdminSylas, 05-11-2004 01:58 PM

Hi rick. I am one of the moderators on the board here, and also a long time contributor under the name "Sylas", before I joining the admin team. I juggle two roles; I'm both a poster and a moderator. I have accounts for each one. You can look for more information in my on-line profile. When I use the AdminSylas account I am usually taking some kind of official or semi-official action.All posters, however, are part of the community and may comment on such things as violations of guidelines. Admins are the only ones who can take direct actions.I think I understand what you are saying here... but what about the 1972 article? Where does that start, and finish? Was it repeated in the 1986 article? Also, you spoke of "downloading". I guess that means this is on-line somewhere? A link would be good. You could then quote the extracts you really want to focus upon, and give a link for the rest.Once I understand how your quote relates to the two Awake article mentioned, and/or other sources on-line or off, I'll clear the edits made to your original article.For future reference, the forum is intended for people to make their own arguments. These can be backed up with reference or citation to other sources -- in fact we encourage this. But you can't just transcribe entire articles. The idea is to make your own contributions, and then reference your sources and quote selected extracts to defend the position you are arguing.Cheers -- AdminSylasAdded in edit. PS. My apologies for the remark about unnamed sources. I think I understand what is going on here. The 1986 article must be making a brief one sentence reference to the 1972 article. I had thought it was a second extract.Thus your sources are named. The problem is only with the use of long extracts.This message has been edited by AdminSylas, 05-11-2004 02:33 PM