User talk:Paleorthid/Archive 4

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archives
2004 2005 2006a

Contents 1 Re-categorising 2 Environmental science template 3 Riparian zone 4 Soil chemistry 5 Permeability (soil science) 6 Soil Classifications 6.1 soil science 7 Welcome to VandalProof! 8 Thanks for the welcome 9 polaroid edit 10 why did you revert it this time? 11 VandalProof 1.2 Now Available 12 ECW FTW Heavyweight Championship 13 erroneous email from you 14 Re: 207.156.196.242 15 5/25/06 What are you talking about editing?64.12.116.5 23:57, 25 May 2006 (UTC) 16 Thanks 17 DB-owner tagging 18 Cite web test 19 Unblock request 20 Hello 21 definition of soil 21.1 Notes 22 removing the links 23 rai music 24 Re: Thanks for Reverting 25 Re: Thanks for Reverting 26 immigration bill 27 immigration bill 28 209.202.75.74 report on WP:RFI 29 TfD nomination of Template:Secref 30 Soil 31 207.156.196.242 report on WP:RFI 32 Soil project 33 Why? 34 WPCD 35 What's your problem? 36 Humphry Davy -- soil scientist?? 37 Organic matter clarifications 38 blanking IP talkpages 39 Soil crust

Re-categorising

Excellent work on assigning categories for soil sciences articles. As a favour, could you mark these as minor edits please ? It allows me to skip over them without having to give each one a careful look. Thanks

Velela 21:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I will do that.Paleorthid 21:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

and just a foot-note, I am English , living and working in Wales so my spellings will always be in what is engagingly called Commonwealth English in Wikipedia (I had always thought it was just English, but, ho hum, who I am to know such things !). So I do catgorise rather than categorize, I have defences rather than defenses , I talk about foetus rather fetus and I might even call them socks rather than sox if I was ever on the subject. Regards Velela 07:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I find the z vs s and o vs ou and the rest of it infectious. A fellow consulting soil scientist came over to work with me from NZ for 2 or 3 field seasons. My spelling has never been the same since. I now have to consciously use a z in categorize: categorise is my unconscious default. sulphur vs sulfur, the list goes on... 15:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Environmental science template

hello. i am glad to see someone of your background contributing to wikipedia. regarding the environmental science template, there has been a somewhat lengthy discussion, generally trying to winnow down the topline of this template. if we add soil science, we should probably add acoustical science, limnology, and at least a dozen others. i think there was general consensus to remove oceanography as well. i am a fan of soil science and recently wrote the article soil conservation.let me know your thoughts on this matter and i look forward to working with you on wikipedia. regards Anlace 04:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Riparian zone

your vote might be useful on a proposed merger. by the way it looks like you did a great job pulling together the environmental soil science category. and yes its raining here. Anlace 20:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Soil chemistry

Just noticed that article going blue on my to-do list, and as you look vastly more qualified than me to write about the subject I wanted to say thanks! Petros471 10:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Permeability (soil science)

Hi, noticed you had requested some references for this article. I posted a few, but this article really needs help. I am coming from an irrigation perspective and I see that you have a better soils background on this topic. It has been a few years since I took soils. In irrigation, we always called it infiltration rate, but in my old Soil Survey book of Lubbock County (1979), it's listed as permeability. I see that as of 2003 NRCS is calling it saturated hydraulic conductivity, but it seems (to me) that that term probably encompasses more than what would be included in infiltration rate. Also, when looking into this I found two other WP articles on the same subject infiltration (hydrology) and infiltration capacity. I don't know whether it would be better to call the new article infiltration rate or saturated hydraulic conductivity. I would appreciate whatever you could do to help clean this up. H2O 07:28, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help - this stuff needs somebody with more expertise than I have. We had a nice rain Thurs. night, about 0.6 inch. Was very welcome. H2O 19:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Soil Classifications

Hello Paleorthid, and many thanks for your friendly welcome! I was amazed to find people noticing my contributions so quickly, as there does not seem to be a lot on soil classification categories. I am aware that my stuff is biassed towards Britain (Wales in particular) - but will rely on others to edit it. It's a bit fazing to find feet and inches in scientific stuff, but presumably fahrenheit is acceptable. I will check for guidelines.

I have recently been on a course on the World Reference Base - European soil classification, so may put some stuff in regarding their categories - have you seen the beautiful Soil Atlas of Europe edited by Arwyn Jones, Luca Montnarella & Robert Jones? I think you would enjoy it. Bob Jones is one of my ex-colleagues in the Soil Survey.

Having checked, I see that SI units are advised for science based articles - so will feel free to edit.

Best wishes, Soilsrus 10:52, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Paleorthid, I'm glad to see your project on soils and I will try to monitor it. However, it's unlikely that I'll be able to be a major contributer. I've used soil maps almost all my life and have great interest in the subject, but am, by no means, an expert. Thanks for the invite. Pollinator 06:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Dokuchaev/Dokuchaiev

The latter seems to be the most common spelling in English, so when I looked for it, I didn't find it, and made a new entry, as I thought there wasn't one. Can you make a link, or otherwise sort this one out. No worries if you delete my entry! Soilsrus 16:26, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

soil science

thank you for your remark, but I'm not at all a specialist, I 'm just working at "coherence" in the organic categories in agriculture, and perhaps exceeding "zele". Is it a subtility in english but I don't understand why category:soil science is subcategory of category:gardening and not subcategory of category:agriculture. for me, all the structure looks a little complicated, can be simplified. good work. I will make a little change to help in your excellent (it seems, my english is poor) traduction of Olivier de Serres. Jamet Métayer is the name of the publisher, no need to translate. a+ --Ayanoa 13:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to VandalProof!

Thank you for your interest in VandalProof, Paleorthid/Archive 4! You have now been added to the list of authorized users, so if you haven't already, simply download and install VandalProof from our main page. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other moderator, or you can post a message on the discussion page. Eagle talk 22:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

Hi Paleorthid, just dropping a line to say thanks for the welcome message. I've been around for a little while; I just don't edit a lot. =) Perhaps I will when I feel I have more to contribute.

Thanks again, Alphatango 14:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

polaroid edit

Sorry for not using an edit summary to verify my changes. This is the first time I have come across what I know to be an error in wikipedia, and am yet unfamiliar with the change/verification process. However, I believe my changes were accurate, based on 2 different sources:

Hecht, Eugene. Optics. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley, 2002. 333.

Pedrotti, Frank L., and Leno S. Pedrotti. Introduction to Optics. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993. 299-300.

Please let me know if there is anything else needed to verify the accuracy of my edit, and what needs to be done differently in the future should the need again arise. Thank you.

-DJB-

why did you revert it this time?

is this how you send messages? i'm guessing so. Anyways, this time i did provide an edit summary with explanation. YOU, on the other hand, have not explained your actions. So why did you delete it again?

VandalProof 1.2 Now Available

ECW FTW Heavyweight Championship

The edits made by the anonymous user seem to be fairly blatant vandalism. Thanks for catching it and reverting. McPhail 23:10, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

erroneous email from you

appeared in my messages

Re: 207.156.196.242

If you would like, you could take this case to Requests for CheckUser to see whether your suspicions about sockpuppetry from this IP is correct or not. CheckUser is a special software function that can determine the IP address(es) used by registered accounts for editing. The IP can then be checked with Whois to determine geographical origin. Editor88 22:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for directing my attention to this process. After reading the guidelines, will hold this in reserve should the accounts I suspect have more activity. -- Paleorthid 23:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

5/25/06 What are you talking about editing?64.12.116.5 23:57, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

What are all these edit things? I am the only user on this comp and never intentionaly made edits...I didn't even know it was possible to edit. I promise if I don't get a reason why I am getting these warnings an threats I will indefinetly "edit" these pages in wrong way...and if i'm blocked for doing it i'll use someone else's comp or s.n so please answer me what all this about.

Thanks

for removing vandalism from my user page. Dietwald 05:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

DB-owner tagging

RE: User:Henge's pages. If possible, could you nominate these under the account they are owned by? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:51, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. -- Paleorthid 00:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Cite web test

Hello Msikma. I noticed that in your scratchpad / draft / alternative article User:Msikma/Cite web test you have the categories still activated, so it's showing up in Category:Citation templates and in several others. Could I suggest that you deactivate the category links (by putting a colon before 'Category' in the link) until such time as the article is in the mainspace rather than the userspace? (As per WP:CG, "If you copy an article to your user namespace (for example, as a temporary draft or in response to an edit war) you should decategorize it".) Cheers! -- Henge 21:27, 27 May 2006 (UTC) (Preceding comment was posted on Msikma's talk page.)

Oh, I'm sorry about that. I completely forgot to remove the categories. I've done so now. Thanks for reminding me. —Michiel Sikma, 10:38, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Unblock request

{{unblock|My account has been autoblocked because my IP address (64.233.172.37) has been recently used by "WGHayes". The reason given for WGHayes's block is: "sockpuppet". Paleorthid is not a sockpuppet.}}

• The block message indicated "autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "WGHayes"." -- Paleorthid 04:48, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
• The IP specified was 64.233.172.37 -- Paleorthid 04:48, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
• My current IP address is in this sig > -- 67.185.75.97 04:46, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

See Unblock request section. I am curious about something. -- Paleorthid 23:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

A strange thing has been happening today. For relatively brief periods, Paleorthid is blocked due to concern that the IP I am currently using (64.233.172.37) has been recently used by a sockpuppet "WGHayes". I don't understand the intermittent aspect. -- Paleorthid 22:56, 28 May 2006 (UTC) Log of status

I can edit articles again now but unblock request still up. -- 23:03, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the history file for WGHayes. It indicates that admin Kilo-Lima, consistent with the blocked message I was getting. It also indicated that the block was put in place on the 27th. I have been getting these intermittent blocked from editing messages over the last two days, so it seems to be related. -- 02:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Unblocked. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 11:25, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about all of this, I had no idea it would cause this much damage. Are you able to currently edit just now? I know you are not a sockpuppet; the sockpuppet was User:WGHayes and User:Wghayes. This most likely happened beacuse your IP is 64.233.172.37; Wghayes is 64.233.172.18. Please let me know if there are any other problems. Kilo-Lima|^(talk) 13:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello

Actually I am near you, Vancouver BC. I'm also very confused as to why this WGHayes is prompting me to be blocked. I have been having almost the exact same problems as you have been having. It is quite intermittent, but it seems to allow me to edit after a couple clicks. Vihrea 02:53, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

definition of soil

Hi there, I have noticed you have edited the definition of soil. Why do you assciate soil with the words "earthy material" What about peat soils or litter horizons?

Thanks Holger

hke@bgs.ac.uk

(I am new to Wikipedia and am not registered yet) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.79.160.94 (talk • contribs) May 30, 2006.

Hello Holger. I fully appreciate your interest. Earthy material is a broad term which comfortably encompasses both organic and mineral materials. Similar to peat, coal is an earthy material which has no mineral component. Said another way, earthy material is not restricted to mineral dominated materials. This is a longstanding definition. The 1881 Household Cyclopedia has the phrase:

Thin clays and peat earths are more friendly to the growth of oats than of other grains.^[1]

Organic soil material is handled in an interesting way in USA soil taxonomy. If the "O" horizon is thin (litter, or thin fibric material, like at the edge of a peat bog or sedge fen), we measure soil depth from the surface of the mineral soil and you would communicate horizon depths like this: An "O" horizon from 12 to 0 inches, "A" horizon from 0 to 12 inches, "B", from 12 to 25, and so on. You measure in both directions, as it were. If instead you have a thick layer of organic material (as within a peat bog) the reference surface is the material surface. This approach serves a purpose for order, suborder, etc. soil classification purposes, but not for a common definition of soil.

Defining soil is an interesting endeavor when done from an encyclopedic (neutral) point of view. Soil scientists like myself have commonly required a living component to consider a material soil. "Soil without life is just dirt" is one point of view, but not the common point of view.

Common use of the term, soil, is broad. For example, it extends to "moon soil", "soil on Mars" and soiled clothing. Even soil scientists have difficulty being consistently narrow, referring easily to sterilized lab samples as soil, simply because it is what it is. Whenever possible in Wikipedia we need to emphasize the commonly understood meaning of terms. Tying the definition to soil to earthy materials has helped greatly to bridge the differences between the definitions used by soil scientists, civil engineers and newscasters. But in the end, that is currently just one opinion. The soils article has had very few significant editors, and that means that currently, the article is weak. As is any article with less than five significant editors. But its a start.

Thanks for tracking me down using the history page. The article talk page is also a good place to discuss this, I am sure you are not the only person pondering ways to improve the article. I am considering editing the definition again, removing "lithosphere", which is unnecessary, not particularly common, and even confusing. Any thoughts? -- Paleorthid 21:32, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

According to the NRCS site, ^[2] this definition is from Soil Taxonomy, second edition.

Soil is a natural body comprised of solids (minerals and organic matter), liquid, and gases that occurs on the land surface, (emphasis added) occupies space, and is characterized by one or both of the following: horizons, or layers, that are distinguishable from the initial material as a result of additions, losses, transfers, and transformations of energy and matter or the ability to support rooted plants in a natural environment.^[3]-- Paleorthid 04:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Soils, the different forms of earth on the surface of the rocks, formed by the breaking down or weathering of rocks. ^[4] -- Paleorthid 05:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Notes

1. ^ Information on Soil. Household Cyclopedia of General Information (1881). Retrieved on 2006-05-30.
2. ^ What is soil?. Soil Education. United States Department of Agriculture - Natural Resources Conservation Service. Retrieved on 2006-05-30.
3. ^ Soil Survey Staff (1999). Chapter 1: The Soils That We Classify (pdf). Soil Taxonomy, A Basic System of Soil Classification for Making and Interpreting Soil Surveys (2nd edition). United States Department of Agriculture - Natural Resources Conservation Service. Retrieved on 2006-05-30. (Agricultural Handbook 486)
4. ^ Soils. The New Student's Reference Work. F. E. Compton and Company (1914). Retrieved on 2006-05-30.

removing the links

according to wikipedia policies, i am not in violation in removing the links. we have already spoke with someone in wikipedia's main office about this issue. they do not pertain to the subject matter and will continue to be removed.

I see what you mean! You've reverted the same changes 5 times in the last 2 days. I count 3two (2) separate violations of the three revert rule.

3RR issues aside, blanking controversial content needs to be politely explained and patiently discussed on the article talk page and is more effective when using edit summaries. Inexplicably blanking content anonymously is indistiguishable from vandalism. Justifying apparent vandalism by claiming the backing of unreferenced policy and the encouragement of unamed authorities makes it look more like vandalism, not less. And removing [[nl:Repent America]] was constructive - - how? Seperately, it is just plain disturbing to see an unsigned message on a talk page, especially when a signature is clearly requested at the top of said talk page. -- Paleorthid 06:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

rai music

how about that change.

it's arabic culture and we don't mention the person by name directly. instead of the (pbuh) i used the propeht muhammad. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.229.134.140 (talk • contribs) June 1, 2006.

Thanks for taking the time to educate me. pbuh stands for "praise be upon him". [1]. and is used by devout English-speaking Muslims. When they write the name of the prophet Muhammad, they follow it with (p.b.u.h.). -- Paleorthid 02:51, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Thanks for Reverting

No problem. --tomf688 (talk - email) 01:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Thanks for Reverting

You're welcome. Happened to be in the Patty Murray article when the H1-B spam came through it looks like the user was attempting to make an update to every person that voted in favor of the bill. It looks like they hit the other half of the Senators using 206.173.170.67.--Bobblehead 02:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

immigration bill

So, what's the problem with stating the fact that Specter introduced an immigration bill? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.123.40.76 (talk • contribs) 2 June 2006.

Trivial current event (bill hasn't become law). POV wording. Targetted near identical info to dozens of bios of elected official who voted in favor. Edits incl links to ext POV sites. See talk at 71.123.40.76 and 206.173.170.67. -- Paleorthid 13:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

immigration bill

It's trivial that a Senator introduces a bill? What action by a senator is non-trivial? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.173.170.67 (talk • contribs) June 2, 2006.

Don't get me started. -- Paleorthid 17:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I reworded to state: "On May 25, 2006 the senate passed S. 2611, an immigration bill drafted by Specter." Is this a POV?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.173.170.67 (talk • contribs) June 2, 2006.

No, but being NPOV doesn't mean it is automatically constructive in an encyclopedic context. -- Paleorthid 17:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't you think people should be informed of what their senator is up to? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.173.170.67 (talk • contribs) June 2, 2006.

Don't you think it is time you got an account, start providing informative edit summaries, start discussing controversial edits on the article talk pages, and start signing your talk pages edits? -- Paleorthid 17:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

If I might interject, it would be unwieldy to list each and every bill a particular senator has introduced or voted for. Wikipedia is not a news service. Besides, these numerous insertions weren't meant to neutrally "inform people" - they were POV. --mtz206 (talk) 17:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Paleorthid is making some valid points here. Just because an edit calls itself NPOV does not make that edit encyclopedic (or for that matter even attest to its accuracy}. Bravo to Paleorthid for standing up to absurdity. Anlace 13:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

209.202.75.74 report on WP:RFI

Hi Paleorthid. Please note that I've archived or removed your recent request for investigation. That page is only for very specific cases, as described by the page's guidelines. Your alert would be better placed on Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV), where it will usually be processed within minutes. Many alerts that are incorrectly placed on Requests for investigation are never dealt with, simply because they become old before an administrator gets to them. Thanks for your efforts. :) Petros471 18:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Secref

Template:Secref has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -Quiddity 04:03, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Soil

I don't know anywhere near as much about it as I'd probably like to, but thanks for letting me know about the project. I'll see if I can help out at all. Petros471 19:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

207.156.196.242 report on WP:RFI

I've been mulling over what to do about that one for little while. I think being a school IP (and therefore shared) it probably just has to be treated like any other. The usual revert, warn, report to WP:AIV cycle. However, if you do notice the edits being very similar (i.e. a strong indication that it's the same user behind the computer) point that out when reporting to WP:AIV. The accounts just need to be blocked if they are vandal only, otherwise treated as above. To save me having to go through all the accounts you listed on User:Paleorthid/RfI 207.156.196.242, are there any that are vandal only that aren't yet blocked? Petros471 20:25, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Those sock-like accounts are just sitting there with no history of contribution. Thus no vandalism to respond to. I review them periodically (yay popups!) but its been a no-news-is-good-news situation ever since they flashed across my radar. -- Paleorthid 20:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, send them to WP:AIV if needed. Hopefully this is another vandal who's given up :) Petros471 20:47, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Soil project

You started a hard topic. Congratulations and good work! Try to improve start-rated articles, and nominate then them to Version 0.5 when they reach at least B-class. :) NCurse _work 17:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Why?

Why do you care if I blank my user talk page? Those are messages to me, and I have no further use for them. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.170.224.208 (talk • contribs) 11 June 2006.

Several reasons: One, it's not your page, it's Wikipedia's. Two, again, it's not your page, it is an IP/anon user page that could potentially be used by any number of people - other's coming in on that that IP deserve to see what has been posted there. Three, those messages record a history of interaction that informs others as to the level of experience of the account user. The welcom message, for instance, let's others know that the editor is not as likely to be a complete newcomer, that they can be reasonably likely to be aware of the most fundamental aspects of interacting on Wikipedia. -- Paleorthid 18:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

It's a page of messages TO ME. My ISP provides me a with a fixed IP address. I am the only person who uses this IP number, unless someone has managed to crack my network. Now, quit reverting my attempts to clear out my old messages, or I'll take it up with a moderator. You're the one getting very close to the 3RR.

WPCD

Hi, thanks for the message. In principle the WPCD tag is that the article subject is a top 5000 school related topic. Current quality as prepublication or whatever gets screened out later in the process. The tag is an encouragement to improve the quality. 30 or so soil related topics (given that GCSE geography has quite a lot of soil science in it) seems about right --BozMo talk 19:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

What's your problem?

Why do you object to me removing the clutter on my user talk page? I prefer not to have to scroll through a pile of old material anytime someone wants to leave me a message. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.170.224.208 (talk • contribs) June 11, 2006.

Archiving stale content I don't object to. Vandalising a user talk page entrusted to one's care is always objectionable. Removing warnings is a form of vandalism. -- Paleorthid 22:35, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

You're not even reading what you're reverting, are you? Fine, have it your way. I won't bother contributing any more content to this massive waste of time.

Strike the comment above about giving up on Wikipedia.. I've realized that you're not a moderator, you're just a some guy who doesn't bother to check up on what his scripts are doing. Try actually READING the page before you revert it.

I read the blanking of User talk:67.170.224.208 as 3 warn messages deleted by 67.170.224.208. Two warn messages are test-1 warnings, one is a test-3 warning, subsequently and apologetically striken (but not deleted - there is a difference) by the editor who originated the test-3 warning. The warning status is indicated in commented out text, which starts with <!-- and ends with -->. I don't mean to upset you, but the content you removed means something different to the rest of us than it does to you, and you need to come to terms with that. -- Paleorthid 06:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Humphry Davy -- soil scientist??

Just ran across this list. I admire Davy very much, but don't think that the initial production of elemental potassium (or calcium or magnesium) qualify him as a soil scientist. I suggest removing him.

That's fine. -- Paleorthid 19:44, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I note also that there is a List of soil scientists and Category:Soil_scientists, which seems redundant... don't know which is more WP-standard.

I'd like to consider adding Emil Truog and M.L. Jackson to the mix...what do you think? -- PBarak 18:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be a convention established and, personally, I see value in the redundancy. If that doesn't make sense to you, please feel free to eliminate one or the other. On Truog and Jackson: looking forward to it. -- Paleorthid 19:44, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

p.s.: Bravo, for your efforts to pull this together and into the public view. I've tried to get SSSA hq to take an interest, at the very least in the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA entries, but have not received any feedback except that they'll look into it.

It'll happen,no rush. Besides, I think organizational-stubs are ideally built by editors from outside the leadership of the subject organization. I am pretty tuned in to the WP policy of not writing about your self or your own organization. Otherwise I'd have long ago written a lengthy article about the NSCSS. I'd have no qualms about maintaining factual bits in an NSCSS article, but the structure and descriptors needs to be laid out by someone beyond reproach.

It is going to be some time before soil science organizations embrace WP. And it is no different than in the other scientific and technical professions.

If you ever get a chance, read Jane Jacobs' "Systems of Survival". "Survival" lays out differences between the trader/commercial/scientific moral syndrome versus the guardianship/institutional/political moral syndrome. In my opinion, WP will benefit from the 1st but is a threat to the 2nd, which sees issues in terms of zero-sum-balances and engages in turf battles. Much the same conflict is occuring between the open-access movement and traditional scientific publishers. Publishers like SSSA.

Jacobs makes the argument that commerce and science, at their core, will not formulate issues in friend-or-foe terms, and does best with a free exchange and advance of knowledge. My experience says that there is considerable truth in Jacobs' observations. In my opinion, scientific content in WP is going to advance almost solely on the efforts of individual scientists. We can expect no encouragement from our professional organizations, except in the subject areas that promote their narrowest competitive and self-promotional interests. Not that that's a bad thing, its simply a predictable thing.-- Paleorthid 19:44, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Organic matter clarifications

Thanks for the invite and for noticing the work I'd done on clarifying terms (I have to admit I created some of the mess in the first place). However, I know very little about soil, and started just by wanting to sort out the organic disambig page, but got suckered into sorting out a few other pages surrounding it too. All the best.—Pengo 06:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

blanking IP talkpages

G'day Paleorthid,

thanks for your question. IP talkpages are tricky, because of the high likelihood that any message is inapplicable to the user currently editing under that IP. We need to try to keep a healthy balance — don't flood a talkpage with irrelevant warnings meant for someone who used that computer years ago, but don't let vandals inexpertly attempt to hide their misdeeds from RC patrollers, either. As a general rule, I view warnings a month older or more as being almost certainly inapplicable to anyone who will come along and try to edit, so there's nothing wrong with blanking them (indeed, sometimes I'll be, ahem, "proactive" and blank them myself to save confusion). If a user who is obviously making good contributions wants to make good contributions and doesn't want the talkpage cluttered with warnings intended for other people from long ago, good luck to him. Cheers, fuddlemark (befuddle me!) 12:01, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Soil crust

I actually made the redirect, cryptogammic soil because I heard it referenced in a film. The subtitles had it spelled with the extra "M". After a looking for the article, I found out it was a misspelling. I'm not a soil expert, I just made the redirect as a common messpelling of a not-so-common term. Calicore 23:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.