User:B.d.mills

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am an occasional wikipedia contributor living in Australia.

If you need to contact me, please use my talk page. --  B.d.mills  (Talk) 07:37, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Editing preferences 2 Constellation cleanup 2.1 Layout 2.2 Other tasks 3 Northern hemisphere bias 3.1 Quotations that illustrate northern hemisphere bias 3.2 Recent changes made to remove northern hemisphere bias

[edit] Editing preferences

• This user prefers to make minor corrections to articles.
• This user will usually correct typographical errors when he finds them.
• This user will sometimes correct articles for grammar, spelling and punctuation.
• This user generally avoids substituting US English for Commonwealth English and vice versa, but may choose to do so in articles where such usage is mixed.
• This user usually corrects articles written from a boreocentric point of view if more accurate information can be obtained from other sources. The user may also add choice examples of this bias to the blooper collection.
• This user may occasionally contribute new material to articles on topics where he has good knowledge.

[edit] Constellation cleanup

The entries on the 88 constellations need some work, so I think I will have a go at making them more consistent in layout and content. It's a shame that some popular constellations are fully fledged entries with copious illustrations, and other entries are little more than stubs (particularly constellations in the southern sky).

If you are reading this and would like to help out with that project please contact me on my talk page.

I am using Dorado as a prototype article.

[edit] Layout

The general layout for the constellations shall be:

1. Brief description and notable features. This section won't have a heading. Disambiguation links must be on the first line.
2. Notable stars. Others have provided good copy here already, so all that is needed is merging and cleanup.
3. Notable deep sky objects. I shall use my trusty 1973 edition of Norton's Star Atlas here because this allows me to provide a consistent base for all 88 constellations.
4. History - A history of who created the constellation and when. Because the modern constellations are derived from a European perspective, this section will have a European slant.
5. Mythology - What the constellation represents.
   1. Western mythology
   2. Other mythologies
6. See also - Various links to the other constellations.
7. References - This must be completed.
8. External links - Links to other information about this constellation.

[edit] Other tasks

• Complete the constellation template for all 88 constellations.
• Replace any seasonal references encountered with references to specific months.
• Correct the {{ConstellationsByBayer}} template with more precise information about the creators. See Dorado for an example. Completed 2005 June 21
• Add {{astro-stub}} to the end of the first section of all constellation articles that have one or more blank sections other than References and External Links.
• Add Preoria link to External links section for all 88 constellations.

[edit] Northern hemisphere bias

I have recently begun a low-key campaign to raise awareness of northern hemisphere bias as a specific case of systemic bias. I plan to post a few choice quotations here that illustrate the problem. These quotes won't necessarily be from Wikipedia.

[edit] Quotations that illustrate northern hemisphere bias

• "Just to think that it's springtime back on Earth!" — Attributed to an unnamed science fiction story, where astronauts voyaging to a distant star were getting homesick. Perhaps they had mastered the control of Earth's weather so that spring started in September all over the Earth?

• "From the frozen wastes to the north and the hellish jungles of the south come brave, even reckless warriors." — Dungeons and Dragons Player's [sic] Handbook (third edition), in the introduction to the Barbarian class. Evidently the northern hemisphere in D&D games worlds have a monopoly on barbarians. I guess the southern hemisphere in D&D is the origin of all civilising influences.

• "By spring 1945, following the Solomon Islands campaign and Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, the once imposing Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet was reduced to just a handful of operational warships and a few remaining aircraft and aircrew." — Wikipedia's page on Operation_Ten-Go, on the day it was a featured article. Evidently the war in the northern hemisphere continued for six months longer than it did in the southern, because by Spring 1945 Warld War II was well and truly over.

• "The comet was much less impressive to Southern Hemisphere observers than it had been in the Northern Hemisphere, but southerners were able to see the comet gradually fade from view during the summer and autumn of 1997." — Wikipedia's page on Comet Hale-Bopp before I made revisions. This was an insidious example of Northern Hemisphere bias because it described Southern hemisphere visibility using Northern hemisphere seasons. The use of such wording throughout Wikipedia does make me wonder at the quality of Wikipedia in general.

[edit] Recent changes made to remove northern hemisphere bias

• Comet Hale-Bopp - included a real howler: describing the visibility of the Comet from the Southern Hemisphere using Northern Hemisphere seasons! Other northern-only wording in the article - particularly the careless use of seasons as time periods - showed that the article was written with an exclusively boreocentric perspective. The removal of such wording has improved the article greatly.
• Orion Nebula - described the nebula as being visible below Orion's Belt. This is not correct when seen from the Southern Hemisphere; from there the nebula appears above the Belt, not below. Changed this to the unambiguous statement of being visible south of the Belt.