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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream, and shout!
(
For those who wonder, especially those more used to
outing, whether on- or off-wiki. In this case I am making an exception. Beall edits under his own name (Jeffrey Beall
) and I am not him.
Editing interests
My editing interests are rather broad, but I currently spend most of my time editing articles on academic journals. A secondary interest are biographies of scientists, especially neuroscientists. I also regularly spend some time on new page patrol (and there, of course, encounter a wider variety of articles). If your interests are similar, you may find some potentially useful links below.
Editing philosophy
Notability: Not everything that is worthy is also notable, and the other way around. If there exist no
list
.
Be brief. Don't use 300 words if you can say the same thing in 30. This is not about removing information, this is about presenting information.
Not everything that can be sourced merits inclusion. Don't include trivial stuff, this is an encyclopedia, not
Einstein
preferred his coffee with two lumps of sugar, that is not encyclopedic information that in any way increases our understanding of him. This means that existing text often needs pruning and rewriting.
Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promoting your company/journal/band/etc. Articles should be encyclopedic, meaning that articles should be presented in a
neutral way
. Words such as "famous", "renowned", "foremost", etc. rarely have a place in an encyclopedic article. Hence, our Einstein article starts with "Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist", not "Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist ever", even though one certainly will be able to find reliable sources saying so.
Deletion/Inclusion. I don't see myself as an inclusionist or a deletionist. Everything depends on the sources. If there are good sources, then an article should be written, even if our personal feeling would be that the subject is utterly trivial. If there are no good sources, then an article should be deleted (or, even better, should never even be created), even if our personal feeling would be that this is a subject of the utmost importance. We report what sources find notable, not what we find notable.
Academic journals. Some thoughts on the notability of academic journals can be found here.
My Ph.D. supervisor often remarked that only very few people are capable of "clean thinking", meaning applying logic uncontaminated by emotions and preconceived notions. I think he was right and, as in Real Life, this is often demonstrated during discussions on WP.
If I am in disagreement with an editor about including some trivial stuff in an article, the sooner they accuse me of being biased or pushing a certain POV, the more likely they are to be pushing a POV themselves. My POV is sourcing, sourcing, sourcing (and I hope that it is not necessary to specify that this sourcing should be independent of the subject).
A useful definition of
discretionary sanctions is holy 'thou shall nots' issued on high by ARBCOM to deal with the worst shit shows of Wikipedia, giving licenses to admins to rain down holy fire on offenders without remorse. (Thanks, Headbomb
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