User:Cazort

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I'm Alexander Cazort Zorach. My girlfriend is perfect; she is my soulmate. I was born in 1980, and I graduated Oberlin College in 2002, and I also got a Master's in Mathematics from the University of Delaware in 2007. I'm currently a graduate student in statistics at Yale University, as of 2007-8. I think the snobbery of the ivy league sucks and I think Yale has disgustingly too much money.

In the past, I have worked in operations research for GCRTA, and I have run my own computer consulting company, called Sustainable Computing. I also have worked in and published one paper in the area of theoretical ecology, while working at UMCES.

My primary interest on this site is in articles related to systems theory and holism in science, especially as it relates to ecology. I'm also very interested in human sexuality. In practice...I tend to end up editing whatever pages are bad. There are a lot of terrible pages on wikipedia.

I apologize for the times that I screw up edits; this is something I do frequently.

I am also a Go player, and a birdwatcher. I use Gentoo linux almost exclusively on my computers.

Contents 1 Wikipedia Philosophy 1.1 Merging / Splitting 1.2 Audience * Accessibility 1.3 News & Current Events 1.4 Notability 1.5 Censorship 1.6 Grammar & Writing Style 1.7 Deletion 1.8 Medicine and medicalization 2 Project Membership 3 Userboxes

[edit] Wikipedia Philosophy

I tend to agree with most of wikipedia's policies and guidelines. This doesn't mean I always comply with them though:

• I am human and thus don't always realize when I am doing something that is counterproductive or against guidelines.
• A few policies I disagree with, and can be rather stubborn about.

[edit] Merging / Splitting

I tend to argue against merging articles when I think there is a possibility of pages being expanded. I notice I am often in the minority opposing merges and arguing for splits. I often see people propose merges just because pages don't contain enough material to warrant a full page--but they are not anticipating future growth of the page.

I also think that pages should be kept to a length of about 50kb max, and should be split when they go over this threshold, and in many cases, far before they even come close to this threshold. Most wikipedia users are not interested in reading that much material on one page, and breaking the page up into subtopics, giving short summaries on the main page, ultimately makes wikipedia easier to use.

[edit] Audience * Accessibility

Because Wikipedia is intended to be an encyclopedia and not a place for novel research, I think it should be accessible to a general audience. I recognize that the notion of a "general audience" varies from topic to topic. I feel very strongly against including highly technical details on a page, in the absence of more accessible material. I think technical details are only appropriate to add once an article has an accessible overview, or in the case that an article is written about a highly technical topic and links back to a fully developed article explaining more fundamental concepts. I think this is primarily a problem with articles in mathematics and the sciences, especially ones in Chemistry and Biochemistry.

• I believe strongly in wikifying. I often get in arguments about accessibility because I delete expanded explanations of technical terms and replace them with links to the respective terms' wikipedia pages. Please, do not interpret this as me trying to make pages inaccessible. Rather, I am trying to avoid duplication of material. I think that wikipedia would be most accessible if every technical term was wikified in its first occurrence on a page, and then that page had an accessible definition at the top of its page. This policy sometimes leads to circular links--I don't have a problem with this, because I think much of human knowledge is inherently circular, and to try to make it linear will ultimately make it wrong, inaccessible, or both. In my opinion, some things are best learned from context, rather than by definition.
• Except in extremely simple and clear-cut cases where universally-accepted simple proofs exist, I often object to inclusion of proofs in mathematical pages. Choices of a "best" proof to include are often highly subjective, and longer proofs can be very difficult to follow. I think a better option is to provide references to proofs in external sources.
• I think keeping pages short, breaking pages up into subtopics, and having short summaries on the main page for a topic, is one very good way to make wikipedia more accessible.

[edit] News & Current Events

Wikipedia is not a newspaper nor is it a place for synthesis of news sources. Therefore, I think it is good to exercise restraint when new news items come out, and wait a while before integrating them (slowly) into wikipedia pages. Rapid editing back and forth as events unfold is a huge waste of effort since it doesn't create a quality finished product--not only are most of the edits quickly overwritten, but such actions often lead to material being included in a page out of proportion to its long-term importance, so the page has to be continually revised later--such actions can actually make more work for later editors.

[edit] Notability

I have found that I tend to have weaker standards for notability than others on wikipedia. I have put a great deal of thought into this subject before coming to the conclusions I have on this topic. I may create pages that others suggest for deletion, and I may fuss when people delete them. I may be in the minority of people claiming to keep a page.

A piece of advice: if I seem irrational in discussions about deletion, you may be missing the main point. The main point is that I don't agree with wikipedia's guidelines for notability: I think they're too strict and I think they exclude topics that ought to be included in wikipedia. This is not because I disagree with other policies of wikipedia but because I simply think that there are some topics that ought to be in wikipedia but that cannot necessarily fit all the criteria on the standards page for notability. Accordingly, I'm going to advocate and vote to keep things and I may seem irrational or frustrating when you try to reason with me. Of course, there are also times when I think people simply are applying the official standards too strictly.

That said, I still believe that the current standards are enforced too strictly. Under my interpretation of the standards, a page should not be deleted just because it is not adequately sourced, but only if it cannot adequately be sourced. I see a lot of people propose pages for deletion that can be adequately sourced, but simply are not, even when it's easy to find sources, such as by a google search or google scholar search. I also see people propose pages for deletion on highly subjective bases and without offering explanation. Why not err on the side of caution and keep pages, especially when they have sources? In my opinion, much is gained and little lost by keeping pages, especially when they are adequately sourced.

[edit] Censorship

I think wikipedia has a number users who attempt to censor wikipedia by excluding certain topics or attempting to tone them down. For example, I have noticed that extremely sexually explicit topics tend to be deleted or suggested for deletion more readily than other topics which have stronger ground for deletion. I also notice that the pages of many corporations and large organizations seem to have lots of people watching them and attempting to sanitize the pages by removing material that is negative towards the institution. I also feel that people shy away from words like "criticisms", "limitations", "drawbacks", "controversies" etc, making claims of NPOV when in reality they are taking highly controversial or negative material and making it seem bland or neutral, when it is not. I have little tolerance for any of these types of censorship and will gladly revert edits.

[edit] Grammar & Writing Style

I get very bent out of shape when people make edits that introduce grammatical errors, are ambiguously worded, or have very poor writing style. I recognize that I don't have the best writing style, so I think I'm in a pretty good position to say that if you edit a page and your writing style comes out worse than mine, you've done some serious damage to the article! Don't be mad if I revert your edit; instead, if you really want to get the ideas out there or make an important change, do it again, and do it carefully. I'm much more likely to take an edit seriously if it's well-worded and grammatically correct--and I think other editors are too. Sloppy edits will often get reverted by me without much thought, because it can take a lot more work to integrate the ideas from poorly worded prose into the article than to simply flip it back to where it was. It also makes it seem like you didn't put much effort or thought into the edit!

[edit] Deletion

I have a problem with the wikipedia deletion process, which does not make the material from deleted pages available to users of the site. I think this could be argued to be a form of censorship. The only time I believe such permanent deletion to be justified is in the case of copyrighted material, where there are legal issues involved. Whenever I encounter a deleted page, I find myself questioning the deletion process because I cannot see the material that was on the deleted page. Often, being able to see that material would make me understand why it was deleted. I see no good reason for the current policies.

Merging+redirect is often a good alternative to the deletion process, because it allows the history to be viewed and it preserves whatever worthwhile material there was on the page. Even if there was no material, I still think conducting a "merge"/redirect is a better way of preserving the history of the situation.

[edit] Medicine and medicalization

I object very strongly to the medicalization of topics on wikipedia. I notice a pattern on many pages of people using the standards of western medicine alone to determine whether or not to include material on a page. I think this introduces many problems, including:

• Inaccessibility -- making a page hyper-medical often involves introducing long, specialized medical terms
• Bias towards western culture and western science
• Shutting out of alternative perspectives, including non-western medicine and so-called "alternative" medicine, and also anthropological and historical perspectives. This happens when people start (without discussion) using the standards of western medicine to judge what material is appropriate for inclusion on the page. The standards of western medicine are not the standards of wikipedia.

When possible I think that only the most basic, accessible medical information should be included on the main page for a given topic, and all specialized medical information be relegated to sub-pages. I think that the material on a main page for any topic should include a balance of material from western medicine, non-western and "alternative" medicine, and also non-medical perspectives.

[edit] Project Membership

[edit] Userboxes