User:DGG

DGG's Licensing Policy    Help from WP: /general /policies /codes /templates /copyright /links /databases

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what I know

I'm a librarian, among other things, and I claim the traditional ability of librarians to help users in subjects they know only a little about.
But what I think I do really know something about is

• scientific publishing, and libraries and higher education in general.
  • science librarianship, especially serials librarianship--I was responsible for the coordination of online journals for a major university library for about 10 years (before that I was responsible for the paper serials lists) -- and I have kept up with this field, and I am on some of the relevant international committees.
  • open access (as a reasonable development from the previous item). Here I am mainly an advocate and commentator, making postings and writing reviews. No two advocates agree completely on anything, but I'm on speaking terms with most of them, and a good many of the publishers. To do this effectively, I keep up with the detail, & what the major scientific societies and publishers are doing.
    • Once upon a time I also knew something about molecular biology and about evolution.
      • As hobbies, printing history, medieval history (mainly western Europe), 18th century English literature, (especially the 2nd half of the century), history of religions (mainly the Christian religion), history of biology, (particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries).

My professional bent has been to look for lack of clarity, nonsense, or contradiction, whether in contracts, advertisement, alleged facts, or argumentation. I've found my destined home in WP, for I see more than I would have imagined. Not all of it seems curable, but I expect to upgrade some of the librarianship pages, and some of the higher education ones, and perhaps all of the publishing ones. Plus, as all of the WP people do, whatever I happen to come across. Lately, I've also been interested in in the less likely possibliity of increasesing the clarity, reasonableness, and consistency of WP processes and standards.

How I communicate

I post my email address, and prefer that you use it, because I think it's better to argue in private. It's easier to reach compromise, and I'd prefer to do things that way. But I'll use the article talk pages like everyone else seems to do, with the user talk pages if subsequently needed. I think it simpler to respond on the page that the question was asked, and keep article discussions in article space.

How I work

On a page new to me, I'll ask before I edit to any significant degree--if nobody responds, then I will go ahead. I generally wait a week. If nobody there accepts this, I go elsewhere. I believe in WP:Snowball.

If anyone who knows less than I tries to lecture to me, I know a good many of ways of responding, (or not responding), and I have no hesitancy in using them. But when someone knows more, I want to be taught. If I'm wrong, I say so. I'd rather get things right, than get them my way & wrong. For some things, there are several alternative right ways, but there will also be several altenative wrong ways.
If I adopt too much of a lecturing tone to others, I hope they alert me, because it usually wasn't intended. I've taught biology, and librarianship, and the manner stays with you.

I have never been able to spell; I now rely on Firefox 2.0, which seems to have improved matters. If I've made a typo, just fix it, please--don't lecture me about it, for it won't do any good. Other people make typos too, and if I notice them, I fix them quietly.

biases

• (Irrelevant because I can fairly present all positions, as I think the other side , although wrong, may be intelligent): very strong political views, and very definite religious ones,
• (relevant because I have difficulty keeping an open attitude as I think the other side is generally not intelligent, and is determined to remain untaught), and I therefore usually avoid on WP: a distaste for quack anything: medicine, science, psychology,... This has been changing recently, as I usually vote to keep such articles, because the deletionsists involved often seem to be even less intelligent than the quacks.
• (relevant because it will affect what I say here, but only on the talk and WP pages) a very strong dislike for deciding matters by technicalities, and reasonable definitions of "sources" and "notability"

current projects

1. rescuing worthy speedies
2. upgrading "list of journals in .." and "...open accesss journals"
3. adding articles for major ref. sources.

future projects

1. adding refs to old articles, & marking part that was in PD

i do not attempt to convert my opponents--I aim at converting their audience.

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information I find particularly useful:

List of geneticists

You asked: "Where are you getting them from? categories? .... it may serve as a example for the other such lists."

• Thank you for contacting me. I will try to relate my method (or methods) for developing the list of geneticists that I am in the process of assembling:
• First, I am checking all the names on the automatic category listing of geneticists for suitabilty of inclusion in the list of geneticists.
• Second, I am going through the online archives of genetics journals in search of obituaries of prominent geneticists. (An example is the American Journal of Human Genetics.)
• Third, I am looking for geneticists of renown in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. (This is an extraordinarily useful source of online biographical material for scientists of all kinds from around the world.)
• Fourth, I network from one geneticist to the next. Networking is of critical importance. (To take an oversimplified example, I go from James Watson to Francis Crick and then to Maurice Wilkins who shared the Nobel Prize with them.)
• Fifth, I google for missing information such as birth and death dates, nationality, achievements, etc. and try to fit all the information about one person on one line, if feasible.
• I do have some personal acquaintance with the world of genetics (see my user page), and that helps, too.

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[User:DGG|DGG]] 09:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

my view of WP
my view of general WP editing difficulties
my view of biographies in WP

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useful things to remember

Sequence

1. Quotations (deprecated)
2. See also
3. Notes
4. References (or combined with "Notes" into Notes and references)
5. Further reading (or Bibliography)
6. External links

For adding new items, by adding "{{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PageName}}" to the top of the list below (replace PageName with the name of the page to be deleted)

Prod

WP:PROD, to find: Articles currently tagged {{prod}} are in Category:Proposed deletion CAT:PROD and WP:APD "articles proposed for deletion"). or WP:PRODSUM for a table of tagged articles, and reason given.

1. Add {{subst:prod|reason}} to the top of the main article page. Use an informative edit summary
2. Add to watchlist & inform creator with {{subst:PRODWarning|Article title}} ~~~~
3. If you don't agree, Remove the {{dated prod}} tag , noting this in the edit summary, and explain why in the talk.

• The page you have edited has been listed for proposed deletion. I have removed the deletion tag in order that there can be a full discussion., It will undoubtedly be listed on AfD within the next day or two. I take no position on the issue; I de-prod any page where I think may involve religious or political controversy to avoid possible bias by having a fuller discussion.DGG 00:59, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Speedy

find at: CAT:CSD

• To mark Adding any deletion tag, such as {{d}}, to an article will list it here automatically. Usually, though, you would use {{db|YOUR REASON HERE}} to explain why it should be deleted. (or the tags at WP:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion

• To contest

If you are not the one who created the page and it does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, or you intend to fix it, you can remove the tag, leaving an edit summary explaining why you are doing so. If you are the one who created . Instead, add {{hangon}} below the speedy tag, then explain on the article's...timrem 23:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC) on Category_talk:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion

Re: usage of full journal names

Wondering if you had gotten a chance to look at some of the responses from science editors to your suggestion on the the FAC nomination for proteasome. In particular, it would be helpful to know how and where you are searching for articles or journals that the use of abbreviations is an impediment to successfully locating a reference. If you really think this is something that's worth pursuing as a proposed style standard for scientific articles, I believe a larger venue than an obscure FAC nomination is needed, as this would affect a large number of editors and articles; I'd suggest starting a thread on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources or Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines for wider visibility. Since the suggestion of using full journal names does not currently have the consensus of editors in the sciences, I'm going to leave it alone for now, and will make the changes later if it's agreed that this is a useful proposal. Opabinia regalis 01:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

(Speaking only about journals in the sciences), I think that full journal names are essential for WP users, particularly for older material. The abbreviations are enough for experts. WP articles are not written for experts. WP is written for a range of users, ranging from the beginner to the near expert; judging from user pages and user comments, this may correspond from junior high school students to graduate students in allied fields. Journal references serve several roles: even without looking them up, they give some idea of the nature of the evidence--and this is probably as far as many users get. To serve this function for new or for old, the title must be understood, and all users not graduate students in the field are more likely to make sense of the full title.

Or they serve as a route to further information. For material that is open access, the link (which should always be given in a WP article if there is an OA version) gives the access directly. For online material that is not, the link (which should be given even though not OA) will normally lead to at least the abstract of the article, which can be sufficient information in many cases.

For material that is not available online, all users must go through a library. Experts will recognize the journal, will usually have access to a research library, and will get the aticle if owned or ask for it if not, and any university library ILL department can deal with standard abbreviations. For all other users, they must look for the material in an online catalog. It is unfortunately not the practice in standard cataloging to make added entries for abbreviations as a routine practice, although they are sometimes made if they appear on the cover of a journal. It is not possible in many cases to guess the right title, especially if one is unfamiliar with the sort of titles that exist. The less experienced user will be much more likely to find the material by full title. If the user must go through an ILL service in a school or public library, the librarian there will probably be much more comfortable with the full title as well.

I say this on the basis of my experience. First, as a biology librarian at a major university. I know the mistakes that get made. They depend on subject; in biology--there are many standards, especially with older material, especially ewith UK and other European material. After 20 years of doing this, I know how to figure out anything in a latin or cyrillic alphabet, from 1800 on, and I know the places to check for anything older; as a beginner, with only a MLS and a molecular biology doctorate, I relied on persistence and study of journal lists, especially for anything out of the way to a molecular biologist. Second, as a teacher of librarianship. The ability of present-day incoming librarians, even science specialists, to find printed material is deplorable. For newer material, they can acquire the patience to keep trying things on Google until they find something. For print material, it will soon be a specialty, like manuscrip[t librarianship is now. Third, I have been responsible for organizing lists of print and then online journals; the peak was a computer-assisted but manually input list of 10,000 print titles. I and others always did these lists by full title. Although it startled some of the catalog librarians, we did add some abbreviations to help those who did know them.

There are 3 ways of doing this. One is to always use the full title. WP is not paper, but it does make for longer reference lists. The other is to have an abbreviation matching database and do a link. The third is to use ISSN's, the 8 digit serial code. This isn't as simple as it was last year, because there are now two codes for each journal, one for print and one for online--all the vendors are still rewriting their systems--I've advised some of them about it. The ISSN works in all online catalogs, but only if the user knows enough to enter it, which they don't until you teach them.

The simplest way to start is with full titles. The matching database is also underway, as something call the Missing Journals Wikiproject, aiming at entering all 12 or so titles into a WP article, complete with all codes. I'm in touch with the people doing it . They estimate 10 years, but if everyone listened to my instructions I think it could be done in a shorter time (smile). Using the entrez database would help in biomedicine, but not elsewhere.

• EdJohnston's experience with entrez is useful, but it doesn't work outside biomedicine. In biomed, a mass conversion could be done, but getting it entered from some of the nonstandard references people have used will require some work. If I had to sustitute full titles throughout the WP database by myself, I'd do them one at a time with a bot, and then look for non-matches. But it could be done more ambitiously, and if we ever want to undertake such a transformation I would help as well. There are some interface problems in the conversion--the length of articles and tables especially would be affected. I think we would want to try a number of careful trials and we would want help from some of the WP programmers.

For a particular article with say 100 or so refs, i would do them by hand. Since in any one article the journal titles will repeat, I'd copy and paste. I suppose if I had to do more than one article I'd copy the lists into BBEdit and use a grep search and replace, and then paste them back, for all the common titles. I am a great believer in patient manual entry.

Other comments

• I notice that O.r. has said she recognizes the abbreviations better, and so do I. But we are not the average users.
• &There's another problem, which is the use of full article titles. This really helps the beginner. In biomed, they could be linked through PubMed IDs, and some WP editors already use them. DGG 06:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

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Opabinia, where do you stand on that Object? If you need help converting them in order to address the Object, I can help. Am I missing something, or would we actually have to do every one by hand? I can't find a database that can be used to automate it - if you feel it has to be done, we can divide up the work. I still resist the idea, since it would take a lot of manual work, and the PMID should suffice, but if you need help, I'll dig in. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

In the short term, my plan is to do nothing, since Circeus hasn't responded to the subsequent comments on his suggestion. I left him a note about opening this for wider discussion; a substantial change in style recommendations affecting as many articles as this one would deserves a wider discussion than a thread in an obscure FAC nomination. IMO it would be a bad precedent for future science-related FACs to make that change in response to one user's opinion without collecting some wider input. I don't know of an intelligent automated way to get this information, other than clicking through PubMed's journals link and screen-scraping the equivalents of pages like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Journals&term=%22Dev+Cell%22[Title+Abbreviation] sorry, can't get the link with brackets to parse right. If there's a larger discussion I'll certainly oppose this on practicality and text-clutter grounds, unless someone finds a common way of searching for references that requires the full names. FAC doesn't need more shrubberies. Opabinia regalis 01:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Without raising the long-term policy question, I don't think it would be that hard to convert the journal names in Proteasome. Assuming the reference uses a journal in the NLM list, you should be able to look up its journal name at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Journals. This screen has a search box, where you can type in the standard journal abbreviation, and hit 'Search'. You then get back the full name of the journal. I also managed to download (by ftp) a plain text file called J_Entrez.txt (4 megabytes in size) that has both the abbreviation and the full name for every journal I checked. You could do a 'Find' on the abbreviation, and get the answer. So if you need help converting those references, I'd be available. EdJohnston 02:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Don't you think our readers would put up with the 'clutter' that would be caused by spelling out these not totally self-explanatory abbreviations? EMBO J, Cell Death Differ (my favorite), Mol Cell, FEBS Lett, PLoS Biol. I know that 'J Biol Chem' looks easy but not all of them are. EdJohnston 02:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Thanks for the offer. I doubt it would take long to convert this article - anybody who's done biology work probably knows 80% of them anyway - but I'm strongly inclined not to set that as a standard for future articles, not least because there are screen-scraper scripts for importing PubMed references that would need to be extensively modified. I realize they're not all intuitive (my personal favorite official "abbreviation" is J Phys Chem B Condens Matter Mater Surf Interfaces Biophys) but as far as I've ever known, it's actually better for searching to have the abbreviation than the full name, because almost every database uses the abbreviations. Do you know of any common databases or search methods where that's not the case? I asked Circeus on the FAC page to elaborate why/where he had had trouble, but he hasn't responded yet. Opabinia regalis 03:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Right - the problem is not *this* article (which I'll help do, if that what it takes to get rid of the object) rather the sheer volume of manual work that would be required across all Wiki articles, with little benefit. I would also strenuously object to the change in policy, since it requires manual intervention for every journal, to replace the info PubMed provides. Just wanted you to know I could help if needed, but agree it should not be needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Also: how about making the standard ISBN link produce a latent OpenURL like this: <a name='isbn=0-120345678-9' rel='alternate' title='OpenURL'>? Users with suitable browser plugins could then bypass the Wikipedia ISBN page and be directed to their home library's link resolver. --Helperzoom 17:23, 26 May 2005 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Book sources already has a latent OpenURL in the form of an ISBN COinS tag, right under the Notes heading. I've just added them to {{cite book}}: Empty citation (help), as well, so you can use OpenURL tools on the references section of articles. I'll expand it to other citation templates if it goes over well, and add it to the "Cite this article" page, too, as soon as they figure out which format would be appropriate for Wikipedia articles... — Omegatron 01:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

RE: speedy of Firestone

Thanks for your hard work, and keeping the redirect. Best wishes, Travb (talk) 02:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

User:DGG, User_talk:DGG, /edits to ck, /pages to revisit, /people, /priorities. /std talk pp, /std art text, /to insert, /sandbox, savedAfD, /sd, /sd1
/projects, /AfDs, /WP Projects, /other wikis, /tech notes User:DGG/sandboxOA, User:DGG/sandboxOAJ, User:DGG/sandboxOAPublisher

THANKS!!!!!!!!!! DR PIOTR BLASS