User talk:FourViolas

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My edit was to reference countries not targeted, which was mentioned in the article

My edit was to reference countries not targeted, which was mentioned in the article--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 09:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@Kintetsubuffalo: Thanks for getting in touch about my reversion of your edit. I've responded on the talk page. We usually consider mainstream sources like the NYT article to be gold-standard references already, but in a hotly contested issue like this, you might be right that it's appropriate to include the original source. FourViolas (talk) 09:28, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Ethics article

Hi FourViolas, I do not believe your sources reliably support the claim you found. Both sources are "generally reliable", as independent peer-reviewed journal articles, however reliable sources are deemed depending on what they support. In this case they make the claim that "most of the world uses battery cages" only as a passing mention in their abstracts, with no mention in the actual study. As well, no statistics, evidence, or sources are given in either paper to support these claims.

This is often how misinformation and vague generalities are spread; they are stopped by methodologies, statistics, and other forms of hard evidence, which appears to be necessary here. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 05:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I went for the most recent papers I could find discussing global laying hen housing systems, and they demonstrate that this is common knowledge among experts; that's the standard demanded by WP:V. However, since there are a lot of misconceptions out there, from advertisements and children's books and so on, I agree that it's a good idea to show the primary sources, too.

The most authoritative data available seem to be those of the International Egg Commission, an industry group. Their annual reports are only accessible to members, but their 2007 report was summarized in Horne and Achterbach 2008; p. 46 has The majority of all commercial layers in the world are kept in confined housing systems with light control, power ventilation and mechanical feeding. The space per hen in conventional cages is very limited making it impossible to express natural behaviours like sand bathing and wing flapping..., and p. 47 shows a figure summarizing the data, clearly supporting the statement. I'll add H&A to the articles in question. FourViolas (talk) 05:58, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes I like the graph given by Horne and Achterbach. I wonder if this data has changed since its publication in 2007, but I don't think significant changes are likely. Please add this source to both articles, and thanks for following through! ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 06:04, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to check the sources and point out what was missing! What with the State of Things These Days, WP is one of the few places which gives me hope that people can build consensus around some version of fact-based reality. FourViolas (talk) 06:12, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Precious two years!

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:43, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

An update from the Sustainability Initiative

Thank you for supporting the Sustainability Initiative!

Hi, FourViolas! Thank you again for supporting the Sustainability Initiative, which aims at reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement. Over the past two years, more than 200 Wikipedians from all over the world have come together to push the Wikimedia movement towards greater sustainability.

What's new?

We are writing you this message because there is great news: The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has finally passed a resolution stating that the Foundation is committed to seeking ways to reduce the impact of its activities on the environment. Also, we have created a cool logo and found a nice name for the project which you can see on the right :-)

What's next?

Currently, we are working with Wikimedia Foundation staff to make sustainability a key priority for the selection of a new location for Wikimedia servers in Singapore. Also, we have presented the Wikimedia Foundation with a green energy roadmap to have all Wikimedia servers run on renewable energy by 2019.

Please help!

Let's keep this project moving forward – and there are several ways in which you can help:

• Ask other Wikipedians to sign the project page as well – this way we can show the Wikimedia Foundation that this is an issue that the community really cares about.
• Talk to Wikimedians you know about the importance of reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement.
• Improve and translate the project page on Meta.

If you have any questions, you can contact us on on Meta. Again, thank you very much for your support! --Aubrey und Gnom, 2 April 2017 —Preceding undated comment added 21:28, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Unnecessary and incorrect change made to Owl Club (Harvard) page

FourViolas,

You recently deleted Kevin Rex from Owl Club Notable Alumni, commenting: "Undid revision 790168735 by 216.165.95.75: Good for him, but this is a technical meaning of "WP:Notable": it means "at least two independent reliable sources have written about him", which is not true here." but the wikipedia guideline page you cite explicitly states: "Wikipedia articles cover notable topics—those that have gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time, and are not outside the scope of Wikipedia. We consider evidence from reliable independent sources to gauge this attention. The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article." In fact, a section of the notable topics guideline page is entitled "Notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article."

Please undo your changes to Owl Club (Harvard) and refrain from making the same mistake in the future.

Thank you.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.