User:SamuelRiv/Archive

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The archive currently holds any information I feel is relevant, for reasons I will outline below.

I think we all agree that as editors, staying neutral and reporting the facts is important. But sometimes we have to make judgements on what constitutes fact, importance, and all the stupid WP:abbreviations. That's why I think it's important for users to have a page that puts these judgements into context and plainly states their views and biases, because we all have them.

Finally, if you are following this page, you may be interested in verifying my credentials. I do not endorse this practice, although the first thing I look for when approached with an opinion or edit is whether or not the person knows what they are talking about.

Contents

[edit] Userboxes

Background
Academic
Competency
Athletic
Fun stuff

This hosts userboxes that I may cycle around my userpage. I agree with certain people that frontpage userboxes should be information that reflects on oneself as an editor, but that doesn't stop me from having enough of an ego to have this page in reserve. For icons, I stick to Wikipedia open-liscence images or, if possible, icons, especially sports pictograms.

[edit] Biases

Here I will report my biases, general and scientific. Note that I usually avoid debates or edit wars pertaining to these, although I believe scientific biases take precedence over WP:NPOV on WP, as they should.

  • I am a WP inclusionist, and further believe that the encylcopedia can be an excellent tracker of current scientific research. However, I work mostly from primary sources (journal articles), and WP should not simply be a database their information.
  • Instead, the place of WP in current research is to make information about recent discovery and investigation available to a more general audience in a non-sensationalist manner. Essentially, it is a place for responsible popularization.
  • In general, anything is better if it has math in it. This goes for history, philosophy, politics, and economics especially.
  • I am a theorist, but I do not put faith in that which has not been observed experimentally (i.e., existence of the black hole event horizon). However, I think it is fair to talk about pre-inflation cosmology and models of the brain in a factual sense, because every mathematically-based theory contains a truth (though this last statement is only an induction).
  • I am not religious, but I make room the possibility of spiritual existence. However, I believe this existence is not unknowable, that like everything else it can be mathematically modelled. I am a true materialist in this sense.
  • I generally am a Libertarian politically, but I support socialization in many cases. I consider myself a political realist.
  • Finally, I generally support self-determination in morality, and I think that basic rights extend to all creatures capable of making such determination.

[edit] Questions

  • To what extent can algorithms, equations, etc. be synthesized by an editor? Many papers skip math steps that are important for a non-expert reader to comprehend the information. To what extent does adding original steps conflict with current proposals?
  • Should bias be listed on userpages? Is this practice productive?

[edit] Debates

I hope to restore the following articles in a NPOV, factual manner:

I hope to delete the following pages

[edit] Essays I endorse

[edit] Sandbox

[[Gymnastics|a]]

About this image
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\mathrm{\scriptstyle L\!\!^{{}_{\scriptscriptstyle \Alpha}} \!\!\!\!\!\;\; \scriptstyle \Tau\!_{\scriptstyle \Epsilon} \! \scriptstyle \Chi}
\begin{smallmatrix} reg-~ \\ ~~ exp\end{smallmatrix}
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