User talk:Looie496

If you leave a message for me here, I'll respond here. If I leave a message on your talk page, I'll look there for a response (but of course you can respond here if you want to).

Broad topics

Hi -- I thought I'd move the conversation here as it was drifting off topic for WT:FAC, though perhaps it can go back if we make any progress on the point. The phrase you used there rings true to me: that "the only way to write well on a broad topic is to start with a draft based on your knowledge, and then consult sources to fact-check and refine the draft: trying to write directly from sources is a recipe for incoherence". Is this what you did for brain, and did that lead to problems? I'd like to get some specific examples. I do think that it might be possible to divide the editing labour to resolve this, but I'd rather look at real issues that arose for you than waste your time by theorizing.

A separate comment: for the narrow topics which I typically work on, I have found that it works well to have a general outline of the article in mind -- a structure, at a minimum, and preferably a good sense of the narrative that will be followed -- and then work very directly from the sources to paint in the information step by step. I suspect the problem with trying to replicate this with a broad topic is that it would not be possible to work from the sources in this direct way for the broad overview commentary that would form the skeleton of the narrative. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:32, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Reading your essay and TCO's and the discussion that followed makes my heart ache and my head spin. I thought I was an indigenous wikipedian but now I feel alienated. Anyhow: Would it help to pose a rather strict limitation on length on FA's? The narrow topic articles are very consistently shorter, often very much shorter. Writing very concisely is of course difficult in itself. But fewer facts would be needed and there would be fewer citations to check and mend and it would be more difficult to say that something is missing. The opponent would need to explain why the supposedly missing stuff is more important then what is already there. My intuition is that the number of readers falls very quickly down the text, so a shorter format would make it more likely that the important parts are read. This does (of course) not entail a limit on what is included in Wikipedia. It is just a suggested constraint on how it is structured.--Ettrig (talk) 17:58, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool newsletter

Hey, all! A quick update on how version 5 of the Article Feedback Tool is developing. I'm sending this to both newsletter recipients and regular participants, because I appreciate we've been a bit quiet :).

So, we're just wrapping up the first round of user contributions. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed ideas (a full list of which can be found at the top of the page); thanks almost entirely to contributions by editors, the tool looks totally different to how it did two months ago when we were starting out. Big ideas that have made it in include a comment voting system, courtesy of User:Bensin, an idea for a more available way of deploying the feedback box, suggested by User:Utar, and the eventual integration of both oversight and the existing spam filtering tools into the new version, courtesy of..well, everyone, really :).

For now, the devs are building the first prototypes, and all the features specifications have been finalised. That doesn't mean you can't help out, however; we'll have a big pile of shiny prototypes to play around with quite soon. If you're interested in testing those, we'll be unveiling it all at this week's office hours session, which will be held on Friday 2 December at 19:00 UTC. If you can't make it, just sign up here. After that, we have a glorious round of testing to undertake; we'll be finding out what form works the best, what wording works the best, and pretty much everything else under the sun. As part of that, we need editors - people who know just what to look for - to review some sample reader comments, and make calls on which ones are useful, which ones are spam, so on and so forth. If that's something you'd be interested in doing, drop an email to okeyes@wikimedia.org.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions so far. We're making good headway, and moving forward pretty quickly :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Article Feedback

Hi, I am currently working on the Vestibulospinal tract article for a neuroscience class at Boston College, User:NeuroJoe/BI481 Fall 2011. We were wondering if you had time and were willing, if you could take a look at the article and give us feedback. We look forward to hearing your comments. Thanks --Lorenzes (talk) 22:15, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Looie. Saw you dropped the capital F in Dendritic Filopodia. Wasn't sure how to do that. Thanks so Much! Clemsonwhale (talk) 25:54, 11 December 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.127.255.226 (talk)

Quote for Signpost

I'm writing an op ed for the Signpost and would like to use this post of yours to illustrate a point I want to make about subject matter experts who may be asked for citations on material that is, to the SME, too obvious to need citing. Is that OK with you? I'd quote it as "For topics with a large literature, where most of the statements synthesize dozens if not hundreds of sources ... it is simply futile to demand that readers with no subject matter knowledge be able to verify articles on large topics -- only an expert reviewer can properly do it. I seek [...] an acknowledgement that referencing requirements should be tuned to the breadth of a topic -- the larger a topic, the lesser the need for detailed page-referencing of every line, and the greater the need for reviewers with enough expertise to have a good sense of whether an article is accurate and comprehensive without having to consult sources regarding every line." and I'd link to that diff. Let me know if that would be OK with you. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:09, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Um, I do think there are sometimes issues about things being too obvious to need citing, but that's not what I was saying there -- actually more like the opposite: that when broad generalizations need to be made, it often takes expertise to tell whether a given statement is adequately sourced. But in any case I am comfortable with being quoted if you quote that passage in the form you did above. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 00:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction (and permission). I've added it here (footnote 4); please let me know if I've mischaracterized it. (And of course if you have any other comments I'd be glad of those too.) Thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Office Hours

Hey Looie496; another Article Feedback Tool office hours session! This is going to be immediately after we start trialing the software publicly, so it's a pretty important one. If any of you want to attend, it will be held in #wikimedia-office on Friday 16th December at 19:00 UTC. As always, if you can't attend, drop me a line and I'm happy to link you to the logs when we're done. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

	Happy new year!
	we wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year! Pass a Method talk 20:23, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I've put back my two different sub-questions you had deleted from the Math Reference Desk

My main question was about any proposition. The other two sub-questions (you had deleted) are about a consistent proposition and about an incosistent proposition. Note that those sub-questions had appeared (as they appear now) as sub-chapters of the main chapter about my main question mentioned above. 77.127.87.159 (talk) 20:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)