Cromis

Cromis: Thanks for recent edits to FEMA page. I noted some of the recent additions and wanted to remove them but I was unsure exactly how. I think you did a fine job. Thanks again. --SeanO 08:50, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Population Growth - Charts & Commentary

Hi Cromis. I notice you haven't as yet responded to my detailed comments (below).... I'd still welcome your thoughts if you get a chance? Also, I wanted to mention that I'd heard back from McSly and there's now a thread on the subject at McSly Talk.

In the meanwhile I've further enhanced my two charts ready to reinstate once I've had everyone's thoughts.

A graphical representation of data found in the above table entitled "Estimated world population at various dates (in billions)"

A graphical representation of data found in the above table, entitled "Estimated world population at various dates (in billions)"

Barryz1 (talk) 01:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The whole of the recently added short section previously entitled "Population Growth - Charts & Commentary" that appeared on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Population was first removed by McSly (23:56, 27 January 2009). The reasons given at that time were: “poorly source, duplicate from population growth, and personal opinion”. Notwithstanding McSly's comments the section was still considered of value and a useful contribution. After taking advice it was decided that perhaps McSly was mistaken for removing it and so the section was reinstated and a detailed explanation for doing so added to the relevant page (please see; McSly - talk)

The following day (22:53, 28 January 2009) the section was once again deleted, this time by Cromis, stating the removal was “for the same reason mcsly did earlier” though expressing the reasons in slightly different terms and in a different order; “POV, duplication, dubious sourcing” (as opposed to “poorly source, duplicate from population growth, and personal opinion”).

Significant time and effort had been committed to carefully preparing and uploading these charts so to have them deleted a second time was most frustrating.

The value and importance of these two charts cannot be over stated as they vividly present a clear picture of the tabulated numerical data appearing above them. Without these charts it is considerably more difficult for the average reader of Wikipedia to quickly and accurately visualise the unusual skewing of the data, and the various upward (and accelerating) movements in the rate of population change. The charts present all of this important information intuitively and at a single glance whilst at the same time affording the more astute reader with further insights.

The charts were based **entirely** on established data already appearing on the same page immediately above them (specifically in table entitled "Estimated world population at various dates (in thousands)" which is the larger of the three tables and the one immediately above the charts).

Therefore it is adamantly disputed that they are either inappropriate, “POV”, or “dubiously sourced”. Furthermore they do NOT duplicate anything in any other section as they do not appear anywhere else, relating as they do specifically to this page.

They have therefore once again been reinstated, though to avoid any further confusion with the new title "Population Figures - graphical presentation".

It takes only a moment for a moderator or other well intentioned person to quickly form an opinion and remove a section of work (large or small) from Wikipedia.

It took a considerably longer time to carefully prepare the two charts (with time and effort given to experimenting with different scales and methods of presentation in order to enhance and as far as possible optimise their clarity). The supporting text (or "commentary") was carefully written in accordance with the general principals of tone and style favoured for a Wikipedia article; in particular a neutral tone with copious sourcing or referencing of unusual words or phrases, justification to support key statements and citations of the source of specific facts. At the same time it was aimed at providing “readable” content in “approachable lay terms”.

It then took yet **further** time and editorial energy to prepare and enter this “refutation” of the criticisms (time which might have been better invested more productively for the site).

There is undoubtedly great merit in the self-regulating community of well intentioned people “policing” the endlessly evolving content of Wikipedia. It is however unfortunate when, as appears to be the case on this (and the previous related) occasion, members of that community nonchalantly delete demonstrably well thought out, qualified and properly researched contributions that should instead have been appreciated and recognised for their value to the site.

Barryz1 (talk) 00:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC) (and continued below in more detail)

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For completeness a fuller response is given below to each of Cromis's (Jacob Davies's) criticisms of the recently removed section "Population Growth - Charts & Commentary".

The section had previously been reinstated without modification (before being deleted again by Cromis) and so refutation of the repeated criticisms (previously by McSly) largely as before (though with a few minor corrections and enhancements, though admittedly with further room for improvement as always).

Responding therefore to each of Cromis’s objections in turn:

(1) “POV” (“point of view”).
Obviously the charts themselves could not possibly be “POV” as they are formally presenting in graphical form the numbers set out in the table presented immediately above them. It is assumed therefore that by “POV” Cromis is implying the commentary between the charts (rather than the charts themselves) expresses mere personal opinion rather than factual observations and information. This is disputed as the bulk of the commentary is descriptive explanation of the shape of the resulting curves guiding a reader through their meaning and drawing attention to the heavy and unusual skewing of the population to the extreme right-hand end, i.e. emphasising the sudden, recent and very dramatic change from stable or modest growth to demonstrably unprecedented and “alarming” growth. Clearly the unqualified use of the word “alarming” could be considered POV and whilst considerable time was spent researching and preparing the commentary it is conceded that – as with all Wikipedia content – it is in development and neither complete nor perfect. However the word was carefully and correctly used and when time permits it would be perfectly feasible to expand or enhance the commentary to cite a number of references to established independent experts and authorities around the world who are known to be “alarmed” by the extraordinary and “apparently unstoppable” recent growth in the aggregated world population. Perhaps such references have been acquired, verified and added that particular word should be withheld from the commentary? Nothing else in the commentary is “POV” either, and every point made is believed to be irrefutably factual and in any case general well researched and referenced.

(2) “Duplication”.
This is disputed as the section was specifically added to graphically present data appearing on the World Population and so has direct relevance to that page and that page only. Clearly when subsequently commenting on the resulting graphs some overlap with the related article arises which is why several direct references and links to were made, for example to “Population Growth”, "Overpopulation" and "Population Aging". Whilst the currently deleted section in question touched on those related topics it was not duplicating them as it dealt specifically with the two graphs resulting from data presented on the World Population page and their meaning. (Without doubt there are currently a number of articles on Wikipedia relating to various aspects of Population and as a result there is potential for some readers to become either confused or miss important information and so fail to see the “full picture”. Nonetheless “population” is a large and complex subject with many ramifications and so this isn’t perhaps therefore surprising. There is scope to tie all of these articles more closely together perhaps through careful re-editing and more fully cross-referencing them together (which was partially attempted in the currently deleted section, although ironically this has instead led some to believe there is an overlap rather than recognise good practice).

(3) “Dubious Sourcing” .
This is disputed because the primary source for the section (comprising two graphical charts with brief commentary on what they show) is the large table of data appearing immediately above it on the same page. It may well be the case that some of those numbers appearing on that chart have themselves not been correctly sourced (several have no specific citation for their source of origin and it’s not clear where they actually came from), however the table appears established and acceptable on Wikipedia (though subject to further improvement like everything else). Other than the data itself (which forms the bulk of this short section) several comments and observations were made to draw attention to the shape of the curves on the charts themselves and their wider significance in the context of the subject. Numerous reliable sources were cited in addition to the many other articles on Wikipedia articles (which themselves seem generally well sourced though all with great potential for improvement and further development) but also the BBC and a number of relevant and generally recognised “mainstream media” publications from around the world). Interestingly it should be noted that this short section, which has now twice been deleted for being allegedly “dubiously” or alternatively “poorly” sourced, contains at least as many if not more references and citations to reliable sources per word of text, than the majority of established articles on Wikipedia which are deemed appropriate.

Barryz1 (talk) 00:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I appreciate your good-faith effort to work on this, but I'm not sure I can help you. I've read your comments but I still see the graphs as duplicating others in the article, and the text far too POV without sources. If you want to find sources valid by Wikipedia's standards, then maybe you can use words like "alarming", but without a source they're completely POV. McSly is likely a more active editor than me and probably a better person to talk to this about. I edit infrequently, but I thought the material you posted didn't belong on the page. There are articles on overpopulation, population growth, and sustainability where it would fit better, I think. Cromis (talk) 02:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Cromis, thanks for your comments. I agreed a while back that unless I could quote a recognised authority as saying words like "alarming" in this context then it would not unreasonably be deemed POV (I'm learning the jargon now!) so I therefore happily removed all that text myself before reinstating the graphs.

McSly suggested that graphs in 'Rates of increase' were equivalent to my two contributions but if you look objectively at them they clearly aren't. For example the ‘World Population graph' shows projections to the year 2050 and has a logarithmic scale for population so is completely different.

‘Population Curve’ is similar to mine however apart from being small and in grey on white (so hard to study). More importantly it's 9 years out of date (total population just reaching 6 billion in 2000 whilst it’s now over 2.7 billion in 2009). Even more importantly my two charts together show breakdowns in colour by region and close-ups for date ranges where significant changes in the pattern occurred (which no other chart does for this data for this subject).

I put a great deal of thought and work into all this (then in addition have spent even more time and effort corresponding with yourself and McSly on the subject) and am confident my two charts make a really useful contribution to enhancing the article. It’s therefore really frustrating that you don’t feel comfortable with what I’ve done.

Incidentally, though only peripherally relevant you may be very interested in reading the following recent Independent article my wife kindly forwarded to me as she was getting fed-up with the amount of time I’ve be “squandering” (her POV) in trying, though apparently failing, to contribute some of my energy and expertise to the “World Population” article on Wikipedia! Anyhow, no problem: I'll take it up further with McSly as you suggested. Depending on the outcome I'll perhaps move on to making further contributions, investigate the Dispute Resolution process or else abandon interest in Wikipedia and go back to spending my time working on more productive things!

Anyhow, thanks again - it's been interesting. Barryz1 (talk) 22:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I certainly understand that Wikipedia can be a time suck, which is why I make a limited number of edits myself, since at this stage of the project making substantial edits usually means dealing with the ensuing edit war and discussion... I hope you stick around to contribute longer, and I hope you aren't discouraged by the way this incident has progressed, though, because this is a normal part of the process.

I think you got off on the wrong foot here by the tone of the writing that accompanied the graphs, and that's because - and I am not saying this describes you, and your willingness to engage says it likely does not - a lot of editors have experience with tendentious and highly-POV editors who insist that material representing their opinions be included on a given page despite pretty good reasons that it does not belong. So, the reaction is often a swift and broad excision of material. Duplicate material is also suspect, largely because it makes the page confusing and hard to read, which isn't the goal here. And again, I appreciate your reasons why your graphs don't duplicate existing ones, but I still don't think I agree :)

I think you would be better off working on the overpopulation page or other pages that deal with the consequences of population growth and various scenarios for how growth might progress. You'll have the same kind of discussions there, but the basic appropriateness of the material to the subject won't be in question in the same way. There is certainly a good case to be made that overpopulation represents a threat, but it is far from a universal consensus or a scientific proof, so the discussion of it in the encyclopedia needs to reflect all generally accepted points of view and provide appropriate sourcing. You'll find that the tone needed here is a little less sharp and to the point than you might personally want to phrase things, but that's a consequence of the policies of the encyclopedia, which are intended to provide accurate, readable, and neutral information on any given subject. Your own opinions in your own tone have outlets in blogs, articles in the media, podcasts, self-published articles or any number of other places.

As a final word, graphs that are out of date should indeed be updated. Generally the best thing to do is to take the existing graph and try to duplicate the style as closely as possible, but incorporating new data. Incremental change is the most likely way for new content to be accepted. Graphs that show truly novel information are absolutely welcome, and nobody wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Regional breakdowns could well be useful if not already present. They're much more likely to be incorporated if they are put in existing sections and without highly-POV text attached, though! That doesn't mean you shouldn't be bold in editing, but we all have to compromise, too.

Anyway, good luck, and I hope you continue to contribute here since you seem informed and willing to engage. Cromis (talk) 23:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Cromis, it was kind of you to take the time to reply in such detail. Thanks too for the compliments. I've carefully read your advice and it makes perfect sense; I'll do as you've suggested and take a look at adding my material to one of the other related articles such as Overpopulation (but perhaps with links back, as World Population holds the source data). Maybe I'll also have a go at updating ‘Population Curve’ sometime (unless someone else saves me the trouble by updating it first) - if I do I'll be sure now to try and retain it's somewhat drab and unexciting (and hard to grasp) style! Actually that won't be so hard for me as luckily I'm an expert at Photoshop (no exaggeration - when between jobs a few years back I ended up presenting training courses in Photoshop, amongst other things, for a while. It was fun though I certainly don't have the time or patience for stuff like that for now).

Thanks again, and thanks for encouraging me to persevere with the Wikipedia project! Incidentally I must have been quite keen as I created a whole new article a few weeks back (based on around 2 years of occasional thought and background research), see Sydney_Selwyn. I've got several ideas for other new contributions too but they can wait.... just trying to add these couple of graphs to World_Population has proved an exhausting enough experience for now! Barryz1 (talk) 00:27, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Move to Overpopulation

Hi Cromis, just a quick comment... following your advice I've re-written my piece about commenting on the two graphs, tweaked the graphs a bit whilst at it and added the whole thing to Overpopulation#Historical_Context as you suggested (it took some thought to decide exactly how best, logically speaking, to include it - in the end I created the new sub-section).

Anyhow, thanks again and let's see what - if anything - happens to it now. If it survives a few weeks I'll make the effort to add all the relevant cross-references to related articles. Then maybe also find some time to take a look at updating the rather dull and slightly misleading ‘Population Curve’ as previously discussed.

All the best, Barryz1 (talk) 11:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)