User talk:Filll

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[edit] Lead

Thanks for the response. Here is the template {{LEAD}}. SlimVirgin made a very important point since slapping this tag on an article can scare new editors, and I think we should discuss the issue of the terms of its use fully. Articles tagged with this template fall into the. So far none of the articles I have tagged have recieved a negative reponse though some have been reverted. I propose to start a wikiproject to deal with the problem on the whole, please sign your support here [1]. I would also like to propose a comprehensive rewrite of WP:LEAD since the present draft is not very instructional the way it is organised now. Clear guidelines should be set out in the body. FrummerThanThou 15:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black

Thanks for the message. I do feel strongly that the actual "Black people" article should be inclusive. It really is not very clear how many people truly oppose this, since Editingoprah, Kobrakid and Whatdoyoudo all seem to be one individual with an obsssive POV. I know other identities have been created, e.g. "user:Outsideopinion" during an Arbitration dispute. Paul B 14:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black people

As I said before, I really appreciate your attempt to bring reason to the Black people article. It seems to me that you are one of the few that has even come close to bridging the dispute. I am optimistic, I believe that the article will one day in the near future become a good article. I don't think the disparity between my opinion and those of others is that different, but just that we misunderstanding each other. --Ezeu 21:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


Iagree, let's go for disruptive editing. What do you think? My patience is worn out. I don't know how to ay it in any other way. I have several times stated that they need to accept other POVs even if they don't agree with them. We have accepted their POV, but this doesn't seem to be enough for them. It's their POV or nothing. I am increasingly against a seperate article, we have a African diaspora article, they would just be replicating this one. User:Halaqah has already stated he will RfD any new pages created and I will support him in this. Lets have an RfC if you prefer, but I think there is enough evidence for a complaint about disruptive editing myself. I'm really angry at the moment, though I know losing my temper won't help. Alun 16:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like we have done everything on the list up to the "RFC" part. It might help if we would formulate something. I can set up a space where we won't have our draft hacked apart, I think. P0M 00:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caption

We need a title for the bird :)I'm liking the format and pictures. Can we move the picture of the bones from the below to the comparative anatomy section. It would be perfect at the bottom of that section. --Random Replicator 21:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC) No I take that back .... we need a picture of forelimbs ... cat dog whale whate ever ... we can change the ames in the text to match the picture!!! --Random Replicator 21:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

lol ... your more diplomatic than I; perhaps we are beneath their consideration. A list of 40 web links is not my idea of help; I was thinking that they may know some readable text introducing the general public to evolution. Oh well --Random Replicator 01:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black people (ethnicity)

Hi Fill. Thanks for your support. Perhaps it's my North American bias but I do feel that the African only definition of black is extremely prevalent and most certainly notable enough to be its own article. To me it's totally obvious that the label black has evolved to mean something far more than color, it now refers much more to a specific ancestry, an ethnicity, and this is a topic in its own right. But for reasons I do not fully understand, this opinion is extremely controversial among editors of all ethnicities and colors. Disagreement I can understand, but the depth and breadth of the opposition has been quite startling to me. There seems to be an effort to strip the word black of its ethnic meaning and reduce to it a simplistic "You either have dark skin or you have light skin" dichotomy that I find frankly boring. They'll allow a certain amount of quotes from those who equate Blackness with African ancestry, but they're not willing to legitimize this ethnicity with its own article, unique and separate from a broader oversimplified article on dark skinned people in general (unless we use a name other than black such as African people). But perhaps as a North American of African descent, I'm the one who is being biased. Perhaps Australian aboriginals and dark skinned Southern Asians have an enormous desire to be called black, perhaps it's a huge part of their culture too, and perhaps they feel people like me are kicking them out of the black category. But based on what editors reveal about their backgrounds, those aren't the people who are complaining the loudest. Maybe others feel the need to complain on their behalf (which is nice, but a bit presumptuous) and certainly some African-Americans would like to use the word black to bond with all dark skinned groups (not African descendents only). Fair enough, but never make the mistake of thinking the views that dominate wikipedia represent the world at large (or even a significant part of it). So many of the people these articles attract are those with very strong views, so just because the majority of wikipedia thinks I'm crazy to claim the term black excludes those of non-African descent, does not mean the majority of the world would disagree with me (though they might, haven't done a poll)

But editors like you give me faith that common sense and rationality can prevail in wikipedia. You don't have a strong opinion either way and are intelligent enough to argue both sides, and appear to have no agenda other than what's best for the article(s). Your smart enough to see the issue from everyone's perspective. It's very rare to have someone so objective, capable, and open-minded give so much of their time to promoting harmonious discourse, resolving disputes, and expressing good ideas. Timelist 08:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intro to evolution

Really pleased with the way this is working out. (1) It's turning into a good article. (2) It's a great example of cooperative effort. Keep up the good work! Snalwibma 09:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


ahhhhhhh 10:23 AM EST like the picture format at that moment in the morphology section. Perfect.

[edit] Intro to genetics

Ah, now I understand. Sounds like a good idea! DMacks 21:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Hello,

Thank you for your stub submission. You may wish to note that it is preferable to use a stub template from Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types instead of using simply {{stub}}, if you can.

Thanks! --Vox Causa 22:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I kind of like this separate-intro idea for the evolution article, but do you really think gene and genetics need it? Neither article is (or should be) particularly technical to begin with, so I'm afraid that providing yet another intro veers into the realm of making us a textbook rather than a reference work. I've done some reorganization of gene lately as part of the science collaboration, but haven't done much on the lead; maybe it would be better to rework the lead of that article instead. Opabinia regalis 02:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think you're giving the 'average reader' enough credit here - I think most people have at least a simplistic understanding of what a gene is, what DNA is, etc. These are the people gene should already be targeted to - those who know what the words mean but don't know the details. Most of these are explained in the text anyway, and there are wikilinks for more information. I understand that evolution could use a simplified introduction since it is a rather detailed article on a very commonly misunderstood topic, but this scheme seems unnecessary for a subject whose article is already targeting an audience with little prior knowledge of the subject. It just seems like an unnecessary duplication of effort, and extra work to keep the two consistent. Opabinia regalis 05:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm agreeing with you that the articles absolutely should be accessible; I'm questioning the implementation. Gene and genetics do not have the same problems confronting evolution or any of the physics articles that have corresponding introductions - gene and genetics aren't already so long that adding more introductory material is problematic, they aren't trying to be technical articles, and they aren't in nearly as polished a state as the main body of any of the others. If gene and genetics are unreadable to educated non-biologists, then those articles need editing (well, they both need editing for a lot of other reasons too); having to maintain an additional fork is just... more to maintain. These two articles certainly ought to be accessible to a high school student in a biology class, much less a professional physicist. In particular, there's no need in these cases to cover such a broad base; it's fair to assume that nearly all of the readers will be newcomers to the subject, and write for that level. Bio postdocs don't read Wikipedia articles on genes. If you really want to do this, more power to you, but having two half-finished articles on the same subject isn't as good as one that's been solidly edited for accessibility and clarity - my suggestion is still to work on fixing gene and genetics themselves instead.
(As an aside, I entirely share your sentiments regarding pre-med students attempting to do math :) But I disagree that biologists are obfuscating their subject with unnecessary jargon out of some kind of physics envy; if anything, the current practice of biology is not quantitative enough, and too easily satisfied with poor statistics.) Opabinia regalis 08:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I tend to think in terms of "textbook". Which may be a weakness in the Wikipedia world. In regards to the Genetics article, in general. It seems to be so multi-directional, as to be nearly useless. Personally, I would have followed the classic textbook lead and "taught" tools for calculating probabilities, use of the Punnet square, mathematical alternatives, various types of gene "problems" such as sex-linked, dihybrid, pleotrophy, epistasis, ect ect ect ... Themes typical of a course in Genetics as opposed to devoting two or three paragraphs to covering the history of the term "Genetics". I guess my point is, if you wrote a synopsis of what you thought the readers should go away with after reading an article on Genetics ... what would it say? a mission statement? I'm inclined to agree that an alternative intro article similar to evo intro, may not be the best solution in this case, rather, more focus in the main article would better serve. Is there a strong sense of ownership to this one as clearly is the case on the evolution entry? --Random Replicator 15:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you see wikepedia as tool for information or a tool for instruction? This is not a challenge question, but an honest effort to understand the editors role. There is a difference between the two in regards to the style of writing. At first it may seem subtle, but in fact it may be the root of the problem in the editing wars. I'm thinking in terms of how would /should one go about attacking the Genetics Entry.--Random Replicator 19:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

RR - both genetics and gene have been dormant and un-maintained for a long time now, and are desperately in need of reworking. So no, there's no existing polished text, and no one defending it. (Evolution is already an FA, and requires constant maintenance to keep it from filling up with nonsense, hence the challenge in making substantial changes.) Having just looked at it, genetics is abominable, and gene is only somewhat better (I like to think it's at least better than it was last week, but it's certainly unfinished.)
On textbooks - that's what wikibooks is for. (See also the related wikiversity project.) IMO, we're a reference work first. Obviously, articles should be readable by people who are not already experts in their subjects (otherwise what are they for?) but should not be overly didactic. Things like instructional examples and deliberately pedagogical writing should go on one of those projects - both of which are newer than Wikipedia itself and could use more contributors dedicated to the production of educational material. Opabinia regalis 05:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Genetics glossary?

I had this idea this morning - since the main point of the introduction to genetics article so far, and the biggest reason for its existence, is the excess of jargon/definitions in gene and genetics, maybe what we really need is a genetics glossary along the lines of the topology glossary or the glossary of ballet. Though what I'm envisioning has fewer terms than either of these two, with more explication of each. That would cut down on the need to click through multiple wikilinks to define an unfamiliar term without introducing large amounts of extraneous text to maintain. The default could even be to open the glossary in a separate small window for easy reference (something I've done before with similar web content, though I'm not sure it's possible to enforce within MediaWiki.) Opabinia regalis 05:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Brilliant idea! :D Perhaps one could put a link to it in the lead, which by default would open a new window? IIRC, you can set that behavior in the HTML itself, although I forget how exactly. If it works, we could add analogous glossaries throughout molecular biology and biochemistry, and other fields fraught with technical terms. You could even imagine a special glossary page for each article, perhaps stored as a sub-page; that way, readers might not have to fish as much for terms in fields with lots of terminology. :) Willow 15:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I'll try to seed the genetics glossary with some basic terms tomorrow. Filll, maybe you want to copy the definitions you wrote in the intro as starting material? It would be useful if someone had a textbook on hand written for high schoolers, which could give some good clues about how best to explain certain interrelationships.
I think having a glossary for each page would start the same unmaintainability problem that comes up with the intro article - the glossary corresponding to molecular genetics would get out of sync with the one for genetics, someone would make a change to the one on DNA, the evolution one would get vandalized... etc. The genetics glossary could be linked to from a large number of these articles, though - certainly helpful from gene, genetics, genome, molecular genetics, Mendelian inheritance, etc. One central page also has the advantage of being able to retarget a reader from a page that's almost what he's looking for to a more appropriate one (eg, someone looking for genetics who found himself at gene instead, or who confused RNA and DNA).
On the popup thing - in html it's just the attribute "target=new" or "target=blank" in the href tag, but obviously that doesn't work with wikilinks, and static-linking another wiki page is asking for trouble. Since accessibility is such a goal in the MediaWiki design, forcing a new window may not actually be possible. I think I've seen a template system somewhere around that put useful info about a link in the corresponding tooltip (the yellow box that pops up if you hover the mouse over a wikilink, by default displays just the title of the target page), but that may not be optimal either, since you can't put additional wikilinks there. Maybe the best bet is just some text with the glossary link suggesting that the best way to use it is to open it in a new window. Opabinia regalis 06:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I see the problem, but how about this idea? There could be one master glossary file, but individual terms could be transcluded from it so that only the relevant definitions appear on the local subpage? That way, only one file of teminology definitions would have to be maintained, but the local glossary could be focused for each article. The code for doing that might not exist now, but do you think it's even worth striving for? Willow 17:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I thought when writing the previous reply about storing each definition as its own template and only transcluding the ones you want on a series of glossary pages, but that just moves the maintainability problem to dozens (hundreds?) of individual templates... Willow, your idea makes me think of a glossary file that is itself a template, which takes as parameters the terms you want to include on a given page, and which is transcluded on the local page. Does that sound something like what you had in mind? I think you're more knowledgeable about template specifics than I am.
See genetics glossary for a short mockup with a few basic terms. The format was pretty much stolen from topology glossary, with the addition of the internal linking. Once the glossary has a little more content, maybe we can play around with the formatting/template arrangement more. Even with the above master list idea, I'm not sure how to implement an article-specific glossary without articlespace subpages, unless there's a way to capture the referer article on the glossary page and adjust the content accordingly. (That might be too complex; I can't think of a good way to do that either. But I'm at least a year out of date on cool MediaWiki features.) Opabinia regalis 02:45, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolution

Filll, with all respect, have you read the introduction I replaced? I quoted a bit of it on the talk page. Adam Cuerden talk 00:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Quite. Point taken. Perhaps we could lose the unchanged paragraphs from the old Introduction secion, particularly the one dealing with the history from Darwin to the modern synthesis - knowledge of that isn't actually all that important to understanding evolution. Adam Cuerden talk 01:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fact vs. Theory

I'm confused by your edits. It seems like Section 3 is a repeat of Section 1, just with a different word order.

Do you think we could take the gist of Section 3 and combine it into 1? OrangeMarlin 00:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

We must be editing over each other. OrangeMarlin 01:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I"m having an odd problem. What I see in the edit page is NOT what I see in the saved page. What am I doing wrong?OrangeMarlin 01:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Slow servers? And this message system sucks!!!OrangeMarlin 01:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes they also have IRC but I have never managed to make IRC work properly. So I do not bother.--Filll 01:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm continuing to have an editing problem. When I click on the edit button, what shows up in the edit field is not what I'm seeing on the final page. Is there some coding that I'm missing?OrangeMarlin 18:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, what you're seeing results from the page not being updated by the time it is displayed to you. A reload of the page will fix this. Some kinds of changes require a hard reload, which is Ctl+Shift+R. Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
My color choice would be red or blue on white.OrangeMarlin 19:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cusack

The article is now at User:Filll/Peter Cusack. Please let me know when you think the article has been improved and sourced enough for move into mainspace. KillerChihuahua?!? 11:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your difficulties with deletion

I read on Puppy's page where you had a problem with understanding all the complexities of deletion. I'm trying to write an article to explain the whole process better to new users, and the article can be found here. Keeping in mind your recent problems, would you be willing to read it and give me a little feedback, please? Even if you don't, maybe reading it will help clear up some issues for you. Thanks. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 04:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I actually planned a second article covering undeletion. The length is unfortunate, since deletion is a complex topic. I wonder if shortening it would be useful. I will go ahead and start the undeletion article today as well, I think. Thank you so much for your comments! They were very useful. If you did wish to work on this yourself, I would be pleased. :) --ElaragirlTalk|Count 13:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fact vs. Theory

Frankly, given what's there (I don't like sections that are just quotes from other people), I'd support any of them. However, a shortened version seems more appropriate for the main articles, with a link to the full-length one. The Gravity vs. Evolution table would make a nice addendum. Adam Cuerden talk 04:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I've also added a bit more commentary on your lead for Evolution. I deconstructed a bit of it to show why I disliked it, but please don't take it personally. Adam Cuerden talk 04:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest citing the Gould (and anyone else you care to) to show it's not a meta analysis. By citing Gould, you show that you aren't just combining things, which removes the calls for deletion. Adam Cuerden talk 05:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Aye, but the reason they put that proposed deletion up was because they didn't realise there were so many articles like that. Methinks this article is one that almost needs fairly strong citation from the start, to prove our right to do it. On the other hand, it's a very well done article, so with the citations you're going to have a nice quick GA =) Adam Cuerden talk 11:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Caucasian vs. white

In response your comment on my talk page: I'm not sure why Caucasian would be considered more politically correct that white people in the United States, but it is certainly factually incorrect, out of date, and is rarely used outside of the USA as a term for white people. In Europe, it is mostly used to describe people from the Caucasus region. Spylab 16:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolution article

When Adam changed the article I was in disbelief there was not a call for revert. After a month of arguing for minor changes with little success, I was surprised with the silence. I didn't like Adams intro (nothing against Adam, just my preference), but I really do like many of your suggestions. I think the original article was probably graduate level so I think high school is more appropriate. I just don't know what that is now. I am concerned you seem angry. I hope I didn't provoke any anger (not my intentions), but I also like lots of editors to contribute to discussions to get a better feel for changes. Go back into the archives to see the lengthy and highly referenced discussions I made to appeal for some changes. I like your table and it would be good in an addendum or link, but I still want to see this article shortened. It would seem a compromise could be found to address all concerns. GetAgrippa 17:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I am trying to reign in some of the more troublesome aspects of that previous introduction of AC. I have been working on a direct comparison of the suggested introductions and styles. And I want people to look at them directly; their length, their readability scores, etc. And decide what direction they want to go. Perhaps you did not read the version of the "fact and theory" section that I and about 5 collaborators produced, and compare it to Slrubinstein's. If you truly believe that his is clearer and more advantageous and shorter, then I do not know what more to say. I think that I have said all that can be said.--Filll 17:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biological laws

Where did you see natural selection discussed as a law? I think that might be controversial even amongst scientist, although I would be interested to be corrected. David D. (Talk) 20:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I am positive I have heard that phrase before. If you do a google search, it is clear that are over 26,000 hits, so some people use the phrase. If you look at the talk page for scientific law I have put some sites I found about biological scientific laws. There are probably more. --Filll 20:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
This might be due to ignorance? This is Ernst Mayr's view on the subject: "In evolutionary biology, however theories are largely based on concepts such as competition, female choice, selection, succession and dominance. These biological concepts, and the theories based on them, cannot be reduced to the laws and theories of the physical sciences. "[2] David D. (Talk) 20:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
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