User:AfadsBad/Archive1

Editing Wikipedia!

Editing day 1:

Clicked on suggestions for clean-up and was taken to a series of obscure, unreferenced articles, including an article apparently written by an author who is indefinitely blocked because the account was used for vandalism only. I am not sure if the article, Meninatherium, is vandalism or not. I left only material that can be referenced, added references, and deleted other material. I then edited an article about a Chinese bottom mine. I could not find any references other than the correct English name of one of the companies that manufacturers some of the components for the mine. The mine is part of a bottom/drift pair and should be written up as part of the pair, imo.

I tried to ask for help on the Meninatherium article, because I think it should be deleted. I found a help page, but it was for very specific types of help, and reporting a problem with an article was mostly about if the article was a problematic one about you or your company. At the bottom of the help page is a suggestion about the help desk and the Teahouse, especially for beginners. I went to the Teahouse to ask a question, clicked tediously through a number of links, then attempted to post my question, but, the form blocks you from posting unless you include four tildas, and I mistakenly followed the form under the form and put my tildas in parentheses, and I could not post, so I posted at the help desk. It appears that the beginner page requires more advanced knowledge for posting than the advanced page which simply has a add a new section link that properly puts your addition in the right place.

Editing day 2:

Blocked as a sock puppet of a very juvenile user who does not edit articles. Simultaneously accused of editing two well by adding "two very good" citations to an article.

Started exploring the basal angiosperm grades and clades. The basal family articles were written up around APG II, cleaned up a bit with APG III, then largely abandoned. Many do not have references, when they do, the references are not attached to their usage in the article, sections of the articles appear copied out of a couple of texts and articles. Some articles have not been cleared up about taxonomic relations. Some articles are about the taxonomy rather than the organism, having lengthy taxonomy sections and no description of the plant. On the plus side, except for certain higher level taxa, when the group is no longer considered a taxon, it often does not have at taxobox.

Editing day 3:

Continued editing basal angiosperm articles on my user talk page. Posted appeal to block. Found out I was blocked for quack and beans, meaning it was not necessary to give evidence. Examined edits of sock puppet I was accused of being. All edits were very juvenile, and no edits were to articles. It appeared there would be no way to remove the block. Found a help chat channel, spoke with a nice editor there who sounded willing to help me and eventually did. Could not relocate the chat place. Decided the post on my page requesting unblock would be ignored, since requirements for appealing the block required me to dispute evidence but none was offered. Read many different pages and found that sock puppet blocks should be appealed through BARC (or something), but accidentally sent in the request to UTRS (or something). All pages about appealing blocks warn that if you make a mistake that the appeal will be denied.

Editing day 4:

Unblocked by nice editor from chat room after a Checkuser confirmed from my internet information that I live in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from both civilization and non-civilized juvenile sock puppets.

I had added a ton of information about basal angiosperms, flowering plant families, citations, a few new articles, images to plant boxes, with enthusiasm, but I have lost that enthusiasm. It would have been more fun to just edit articles.

Editing day 5:

Created articles on Victoria cruziana and Charles Henry Dessalines d'Orbigny who named it, adding the latter to List of botanists by author abbreviation. Corrected redirects from a notice by a bot. Added Nymphaea gigantea article; the species is questioned by some authorities. Took a stab and posted a "barnstar" on a nice user's page as the user attempted to be a voice of reason; and I always consider reason to be the most civil of actions.

Creating small articles requires finding similar articles, cutting and pasting from those other articles. For example, there are other species of Nymphaea with articles, and one copies and pastes the taxonomy box, the categories, the references section, then changes the specific epithet and the authority. For d'Orbigny, I found another French botanist and copied his page, then changed the information.

For both articles, I copied and pasted from smaller articles. Larger articles will have too much intervening text to be convenient; you just want bones. For the Nymphaea gigantea I used Nymphaea candida. The N. candida article had a section called "Suggested Medicinal Uses" with no references, and it really was that, so I removed it, without comment. My contributions list gives this ominous tag about my removing a bad piece of nonsense from the encyclopedia, "17:19, 21 June 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-522)‎ . . Nymphaea candida ‎ (current) (Tag: section blanking)." This may mean trouble!

Added article on African geological formation, not particularly good article, but contains starting point references. Will enhance later. Added article on African plant that grows on soils formed by said geological formation. Plant is extinct. Someone started editing the Katanga Supergroup article while my slow browser was still thinking over the last sentence I added. Labelled the article an "orphan," then immediately went and changed the arc article so it wasn't an orphan, then removed the orphan label. My edit still went through without a problem.

Lots of Central African mining article of variable quality and content:

Mines of the Katanga Supergroup

Democratic Republic of Congo
Zambia

Mawson West Limited

Editing day 6/7:

Started sourcing botanical authorities from APG III. Will use other sources for the new in this paper. Asked about the Solanales authority, got some good feedback, but no botanical taxonomists. The one feedback is correct, that botanists are able to figure this out without Taxon directly stating the outcome. But when there are no taxonomists it is tricky, so I added three sources to Solanales for the authority that will cover the issue.

Added authorities to list of authors by botanical abbreviation, a cumbersome and difficult to search for article title. Got solid feedback from a hardcore editor. I thanked him for the edit, and I love the little second guess box, "Are you sure you want to thank him?"

Another editor asked a confusing question about common versus scientific names. The question appeared more designed to provoke heated debate, and it appears from the archives that this happens, both the provocation and heated debate. However, Wikipedia has a policy called "Assume Good Faith," that could go a long way in reducing friction here. And, Wikipedia editing is confusing, so I spent a little time and effort to try to give a constructive and helpful answer.

The article on hyperaccumulators is just a list, so I did spend time over the weekend putting the redirect to the list into article shape; it needs a lot of work, as it could be a full length article on the topic. I "wikilinked" hyperaccumulator where I could find it. When you enter a search term in to the box, you see a pop up below that says "article containing ...," and if you click on this instead you get a full list of articles with the term in it. I did this, and found a bunch of articles with either "hyperaccumulator," or "list of hyperaccumulators," and I wikilinked (added a link to an internal article) the former, and changed the wikilink from the list to the topic on the latter.

Hyperaccumulators:
- genetics
- biology
- modes of sequestration, leaf cells, vacuoles, roots
- modes of transportation
- toxicity
- metals
- plant families with hyperaccumulators
- find out how to make categories

Got a barnstar for fixing an article that needed ex pert attention. The plants project has a place that takes editors where they can help on articles, and I found a list of articles, or maybe a category, that need expert attention, and this included a familiar central African hyperaccumulator article that did not mention it is a hyperaccumulator. There is some information in French and lots of research about the plant because of its very high concentrations of copper. Adding this information made the article more useful, because it is probably the only reason anyone would look it up.

This would be better for the new user interface than the random articles which got me into trouble, some way of offering new editors articles in their areas of expertise.

Editing day 8/9 etc.:

Continued sourcing authorities in plant family articles. Proposed adding date to authorities. Did not go over well. However, proposal may result in clearing up a few issues. Wikipedia editors engage in repeat discussions, with no new input, on contentious issues. Frequently. Read plant talk archives. Have been looking at editors' contributions; some only participate in discussions and enforcement, no article editing. Other editors only edit articles. Many discussions sidetrack into giving nasty personal opinions about other editors. It seems that the goal of the encyclopedia is lost in the noise.

I see edits using autowikibrowser, it works off Wikipedia and could speed up adding citations, only the copy and paste part, but I could review dozens of articles for adding a citation, then use the AWB to quickly add the citations. It would cut my time at least in half, much more, possibly, depending on whether I am editing remote or urban. An editor has to have 500 edits to qualify for it, or can specially request permission for it, which I did. I have only 200+ article edits according to a tool that shows edits by space, article, talk, user. I have a lot of user talk edits from editing my talk page while blocked. Other editors are discussing whether this tool should show edits sorted by month into type of edit.

Editing day 10/11 etc.:

Created "stubs" (one sentence articles with almost no content, but copied taxonomy information from AlgaeBase) about some dinoflagellates from an article on carnivorous algae.

Articles started on Wikipedia:

All articles need more general information, for species and families general descriptions, ecology, geographical distributions, toxicology of dinoflagellates, which ones produce red tides, which ones eat red tide organisms, for families, the taxonomic systems they are accepted in, placement under APG III, secondary sources, biographies need academic credentials, honors, publications.

Editing tasks: Asked for help (again) on Meninatherium. The genus needs to be explained in the context of other rhino genera, as the rhino article omits the European species (offspring of the Asian rhinos, I guess). The article would be more useful with context, but cannot be deleted, and I am not qualified to rewrite within the rhino article.

Editing day 12

Added an article on the Ten Standard Firefighting Orders and linked it in some other articles. When I saw it was missing, I rushed to write it. Silly. But fun. Created redirects (so block me!) to it from variants of the name. There had not been an article on the Blackwater fire of 1937 until just a few days ago. I awarded its creator and a helper barnstars; impressive article done in a short amount of time, very informative.

There is not much notable that is missing at least a basic article on Wikipedia; strange to have the Blackwater fire of 1937 missing an article. I was surprised that the orders were missing, also. Searched for it under many names, but could not find anything.

Editing day 13

Finished Angiosperm families. Created some grass subfamily articles. I was planning to add the sources for the author citations to Wikidata, but Wikidata is a badly designed database with contorted references. Rather than source the data, the data are just said to be source from "Germany Wikipedia." Essentially, it is a collection of everything that is on the various language Wikipedias; it is not a database. I found a user who appeared to be attempting to correct this, but got a surprisingly picky argumentative response; I don't see other users who want the database to be anything other than an elaborate collection of internal connections to other Wikipedias, yet each page already has all the other language links. I have no idea what is going on there.

Started looking at Fig horticulture; lots of possible articles to write there, and a lot of missing information.

Also added missing articles on the Austrlian supplejacks, only including the taxonomy box and the most basic information, plus created redirects (my God! how amazing) from the common names. The articles were compsoed by copying and pasting another supplejack article that already existed, then finding a few sources for the common name, plus the genus article arleady had the author citations in it. The taxonomy boxes are useful for people looking up information about a plant as a starting point.

Discussed/argued about editors directly interpreting the ICN for the benefit of readers. If it is so easy to interpret, then quote it, but don't lead the reader to your conclusion, or cite an article that quotes it. Original research beyond the duties of an encyclopedia.

Editing day 14

I want to edit some instrument articles that appear to be written, badly, by the companies that make the various instruments. They give too many specs, helpful if buying, but omit the physics behind the instrumentation, and are dense, badly organized prose, missing needed wikilinks that would help a general reader understand the machine. I almost asked for help to understand the limits of how much I could change parts of the article, before I remembered that asking for help is a blockable offense. This is one of many frustrations that interfere with writing and improving articles. I looked at some editor retention discussions on Wikipedia, why experts don't edit, and they basically say that experts don't know how to and don't want to add verifiable information to articles. I can't stop laughing.

There are too many raodblocks to editing, too many personal agendas, and the social trumps the good editing.

Recognize editors in my watchlist, faster now, so many edits can be ignored. Many plant articles are watched by non plant editors, particularly crop plants, and bad edits are quickly reverted, usually without comment.

Editing day 15

Wasted time requesting autopatrolled status. Bureaucratic rigid nonsense. There are 12,000 unpatrolled articles on Wikipedia. Glancing at the end of the unpatrolled list, which goes back only one month, there are unpatrolled BLPs, unpatrolled hoaxes, unpatrolled nonsense, unpatrolled selfies by teenie-boppers. Although the editor or whatever admitted that there were no problems with my articles, they must be put in the list, and they must waste the time of the limited number of people who patrol articles, while bad and disreputable articles added to Wikipedia are ignored.

Make sense? No. It's a waste of time. But it establishes who is not in charge--editors creating notable, accurate, researched, verifiable content.

Editing day 16

One more editing interaction disaster.

Created a number of surprising missing articles, Wheat mosaic virus, a major agricultural pest of North American cereal crops that has spread to the rest of the world, but researching and writing viral articles is tough, may do only one more, a tomato virus. One of the viral synonyms was a redirect to the disease, and I will have to look at major viral articles to see how pathogen/disease combos are done; in this case, probably more useful to the audience to have one article.

Wrote another grass article, on the PACMAD clade, need to create the BEP clade article, and write up the basal grass subfamilies and the two clades in the taxonomy section of the Poaceae article.

Wrote Glucosinolate–myrosinase complex and would like to add a lot more to it, but my biochemistry is weak!

Added a couple of coccolithophorid taxa, and the Zamites article, still some major missing extinct plants. Zamites is a form taxon, and I could not figure out how to to get the age to read across the Mesozoic to the Oligocene. Instructions on templates are often too dense. Just show an example and tell me what goes where, stop talking about it!

Created Botanical expedition, delighted to find it absent, and I wish I had more time to put into it.

Editing day 17

Looked at WP:COMMONSENSE, and, like Assume Good Faith, it is terribly underused. Additional tools to make editing about creating an encyclopedia, rather than about social networking, are also available, I am guessing, but are underutilized, also.

Participated in some Articles for Deletion discussions. A lot of things on Wikipedia appear to be about scoring points, and this may be what is meant by hats. One deletion discussion appeared to be a hoax posted by an editor who appears to have joined Wikipedia for the purpose of nominating articles for deletion. A couple of other appear to be requests for redirects or something. I think this area will prove a waste of time.

Started looking at some Russian articles, many could simply be copy-edited into English. Russian Wikipedia articles are written by Russians. A lot of biographies here appear to be translations of the Russian articles and some translations that amount to copyright violations of Russian websites and books. This makes them florid in English. They would sound okay in Russian. Translations are not so easy.

Want to go back and work on older articles I started, clean them up, before adding more, but adding missing articles is easier in many ways.

Editing day 18

Checked out a user's list of missing geology articles, also. Many big, important, oil-bearing sedimentary basins missing. Created a start on piggyback basins.

Participated in some AFDs, as above. Seems to be more social than real, a handful of kinda like pretend AFDs with other than interest in deletion as motivation; not really understood. Found a notable topic that was deleted because the article was created by a sockpuppet. Sockpuppets rule Wikipedia! I wonder if it is as bad on other-language Wikipedias, if non-English speakers are baited so easily?

Looked over some creationist articles. There are a lot of personal agendas on Wikipedia, hiding creationist agendas appears to be a major one, but it seems to be monitored by a few good editors, the area. The Pakistani articles are full of anti-Pakistani racism for some reason. The articles are so heated, and so well-developed in their one-sided anti-Pakistani stance, that I don't think it would be safe to venture over there. Shameful. Many Pakistani geology articles on major topics are missing. I suspect that editing anything about Pakistan could prove dangerous. I did not look at a lot of articles, though, and hopefully it is a minor problem.

Geology editors are even more on top of new articles with helpful edits than botany editors are.

A lot of editors have user boxes all over their user page. The boxes say silly things, poking fun at user boxes, "This editor has over 1 edit on Wikipedia", or give useful information about the editor, languages, degrees, bragging information about number of articles, other levels of recognition, or areas of interest such as project membership. Some user pages are quite elaborate. This is my user page, and these edits are my user boxes.

Editing day 19

One of the most disappointing aspects of Wikipedia being primarily social, rather than being primarily about writing the encyclopedia, is that good content, ideas and contributors are ignored while the socializing is primary.

This largely means that outsiders' contributions are ignored. Completely ignored for the most part.

I have been reading featured articles lately. Many of them are surprisingly well written, and, an extra surprise is that, when I look at the history of the articles, they have sometimes been edited by a diverse group of editors, while others have a primary editor. The biology articles can be fun and easy to read, although they tend to fall in certain areas, like some Australian editors dominate plant articles. Some of the biology articles, however, have bad evolutionary biology in them, with material on evolution and taxonomy coming from 40 year old books.

I did attempt to participate in a FA discussion about Botany. It would be a great read for the main page of Wikipedia because the topic is so major. However, the topic is difficult to generalize, and it seems that interested and well-established editors could not do so, while simultaneously being unwilling to listen to outsiders' contributions at all. I did provide some expert input from books I have about a specific area, but the editors, in spite of requesting expert input, decided to ignore my input completely. It is very frustrating to spend a lot of time on information, backed by sources, after having expert input requested, then be ignored.

There are some copyright violations in all of the geology articles on cratons, etc., and I suggested, from reading a few of the articles and being very familiar with the material, that almost 100% of the added material is copied directly from technical literature. Some copied out of context. It should all be deleted. I think this could be discussed, but my input was entirely ignored.

I think the inability to work with experts is detrimental to Wikipedia. As I mentioned above, there is a Wikipedia essay in which Wikipedia editors blame the inability to work with experts on the experts, as I was blamed for the editors not following my input on the botany article: I failed to yell, so no one bothered to listen. In the general case, Wikipedia blames experts for the failure to follow Wikipedia community standards of requiring sources, because, for some reason, Wikipedia editors are convinced that experts aren't required to use and cite sources.

There are some fundamental inabilities to communicate associated with editing Wikipedia. Expert input is needed. Articles should not be using 1970s biology to cite taxonomy and evolutionary biology of organisms. Experts should be able to provide input without being then blamed for their failure to have screamed it. Wikipedia editors need to understand how experts in the sciences work and stop blaming the experts for not participating in Wikipedia when editors clearing don't want expert input, since asking for it is merely a show.

Wikipedia could be a lot better.

However, one problem with being new here, in addition to not being an accepted member of the social network, is that it is easy to get bothered by the small things that are wrong, and the larger things contributing to making the wrongs, while missing the major point that the encyclopedia does contribute a lot of usable information to its readers.

Plant families -- cite authorities to APGIII, where possible

<ref name=APGIII2009>{{Cite journal |last=Angiosperm Phylogeny Group |year=2009 |title=An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III |journal=Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society |volume=161 |issue=2 |pages=105–121 |url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1095-8339.2003.t01-1-00158.x/pdf | format= PDF |accessdate=2013–07–06 |doi=10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.00996.x }}</ref>

<ref name=APGII2003>Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2003). [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1095-8339.2003.t01-1-00158.x/abstract An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG II.] ''[[Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society]]'' 141(4): 399-436. [[doi: 10.1046/j.1095-8339.2003.t01-1-00158.x]]</ref>

finished O

<ref name=Christenhusz>{{cite journal|last=Christenhusz|first=Maarten J.M.|coauthors=James L. Reveal, Aljos Farjon, , Martin F. Gardner, Robert R. Mill & Mark W. Chase|title=A new classification and linear sequence of extant gymnosperms|journal=Phytotaxa|year=2011|volume=19|pages=55–70}}</ref>