User talk:Vdubbs

Careful about COI

If you are doing your PhD on olefin metathesis, then you want to be super careful about WP:COI, citing yourself, your pals, etc. The PhD experience has a way of distorting one's perception of neutrality, even though it is nice to have experts upgrade articles. If you feel compelled or are only able to edit in your area of expertise, one idea is to stick to WP:SECONDARY, relying on books and reviews for your citations. Its trivial to cite primary journals (JACS, Chem Comm etc), but Wikipedia is not trying to become Chem Reviews or Org Rxns. Citing reviews/books is admittedly more demanding but doing gives the perspective generally sought for an encyclopedia. Anyway, with a PhD on the way, you should be able to take a broader perspective. Best wishes, --Smokefoot (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Smokefoot, it was not my intention to only add references to my friends. I've actually not added any citations of anybody I personally know, just people I know of in the field. I will try to use secondary sources whenever possible and stick to general points, not specific applications. In the future, however, please assume the best intentions of other users and keep your comments to the content itself. The content of the pages I am working on mean a great deal to me. Vdubbs (talk) 17:43, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

not not vandalize wikipedia

Please do not vandalize wikipedia. Do not delete valid content from articles. I have reverted one of your edits in the olefin metathesis article. I will check for more damage done in the near future. Thanks! V8rik (talk) 16:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern, V8rik. Those edits were not intended to be vandalism, many of them were fixing up my own previous edits. In the future please go through the edits carefully and don't simply undo all changes. Many of those changes were to fix typos, others were to rearrange sections, and only one or two were to remove extraneous content. Thanks! Vdubbs (talk) 17:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Vdubbs, two suggestions: make your changes incrementally and leave more detailed edit summaries. If you see the need for a major overhaul, announce your ideas on the talk page to collect comments. We are still hoping that you will edit more broadly because other parts of Wikipedia are more needful than this rather decent article, which also presents a CoI. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:11, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, Smokefoot. I'll make sure my edits are incremental, well-described and well-organized. I do plan to continue to edit it, however, because I don't agree completely with you that the page is decent yet. It's still not possible to see which catalysts are actually used (I looked them up on Strem and SigmaAldrich, I'll edit the figures accordingly) and what types of reactions they are typically used in. As far as the talk page goes, I'll start using it but I was staying away from it because nobody has used it in the last 2 years, and only sparingly in the past 5 years. I'll propose my broad edits in the talk page and see how it goes.

As far as making edits outside this topic, I will get to that. I'm trying to carefully learn about constructing a worthwhile page here before I jump into other pages. That's why I appreciate the tips!

Also, thanks for making the ethenolysis page, I really am glad others are following these topics as well. Vdubbs (talk) 19:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Editors rely heavily on the Talk pages. Olefin metathesis talk page might be quiet because we (often V8rik) have been adding content from nothing to something, which is noncontroversial. In terms of improvement, new editors often decide to improve one or two articles to a high standard. Laudable completely. But, doing so is a form of denial because that Wikipedia is inherently messy and untidy. Super-polishing articles in my opinion can in fact be unhelpful because articles are healthier with many contributors vs a "master contributor" who imposes their world view. It took me a while to appreciate that aspect. For this reason, I am trying to get you to look at other articles. Just surveying articles for egregious errors of omission or of fact keeps most editors fully occupied. For example, V8rik started a whole series of article on the "organo[your element here]". Many of these articles are thin, and need help from others. Like organoruthenium chemistry. The catch is that you need to be able to take a broad perspective (i.e. talk about something more than Grubbs I and II).

Good luck.--Smokefoot (talk) 00:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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