User talk:Dikstr

Welcome!

Hello, Dikstr! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! - Eldereft (cont.) 02:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General • Spam • Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Solar Cycles and Citations

Thank you for working on Solar variation and inserting updated references. When you make edits, please use <ref></ref> tags and full citations; look at the pre-existing citations for examples, and spend some time reading Wikipedia to see how proper citations are used; if you look at the Global Warming section, you'll see that it flows better with the proper footnotes instead of the names inserted in the middle; the footnotes also provide additional important information about the reference.

On the talk page, I was also putting forward an idea of a re-structuring of the section: as it stands, I feel like it is too much of a peanut gallery of statements of scientists. I was hoping that it could go into each of the 3 major reasons (basic blackbody, UV, and cosmic rays/cloud nucleation) in a way that shows the whys. On that note, I read the JGR GRL paper you linked, and I'm skeptical right now, but my skepticism is based on the fact that I've never seen the empirical relationships that they cite; do you have those papers?

We can continue this conversation here or (maybe better) on the talk page, but thanks for your additions, and I'd like to hear any information that you have on the solar cycles; feel free to copy/paste what I say onto the talk page to keep it in context.

Thanks.

Awickert (talk) 01:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Glad to contribute to the solar variation article. My motivation is to make sure a balanced view on these and related topics are presented. Which specific articles are you interestted in? --Dikstr (talk) 21:33, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for adding full citations. If you want to make it easier, you can just add the DOI, and I or you can use an automated citation bot to fill in the rest. Also, I just learned that in your "preferences-->gadgets", you can turn on a citation template automatic generator; I always used to type the template by hand, but no longer.

I might be making some change to the structure of the section (as per the talk page) and add some info.

As for me, I mostly work on geology and geophysics, though I've been putting out NPOV fires in climate recently. This is, I think, the first time I've tried to do something more than damage control with climate.

Awickert (talk) 01:14, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help in editing contributions and the tips on entering citations especially - doing them manually is a bit tedious. What does NPOV stand for?

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a core policy. Global warming articles tend to attract questionable or poorly sourced edits. - Eldereft (cont.) 19:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Right - and I forgot to add, the way to cite things by hand and then use the citation bot is to type {{cite journal|doi=12345bla}} or {{cite book|ISBN=isbnthing}}. I usually just do that and run User:Citation bot for the rest. The full listing for full reference citing is at Citation templates. Awickert (talk) 00:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Slow revert war at Solar variation

In general, if you find yourself being reverted by multiple editors, it's a good idea to explain your position on the talk page so that the issues can be resolved. As for this edit summary, let me assure you that I am not a part of any "subset" of editors with the others who have reverted you (if you don't believe me check the global warming talk page archives or this), it's just that your sources don't currently meet the bar for inclusion IMO. Also, "automatically mark edits as minor" is an option you can turn off in your settings. Oren0 (talk) 04:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

To everyone involved in editing this section:

Glad to hear that you are not a member of that group Oren0. In any case, as it stands, Foukal's literature survey of 2006 is affected by both his historical bias re solar variability and the fact that it doesn't include important new work that's occurred since the research he reviewed. The 'cut and paste' comment results from my 'newbie Wikipedic ignorance' - I used it to 'revert' the paragraph I had constructed and another editor had removed. As far as the quality of the references, I must ask you to be more specific. Most of the references are refereed journals. Perhaps the verbiage of the paragraph in question could be improved, but it shouldn't be eliminated. I'm always prepared to respond to objective criticism and recommendations for improving my input but I expect it to be a straightforward process with specific critique. Otherwise it has the appearance of oblique excuses to keep information out of the section that conflicts with someone's politically correct view regarding solar forcing of climate. I have assumed, and hope I'm right, that Wikipedia is supposed to be a source of useful information with a balanced view - not a politically correct propaganda propagator.--Dikstr (talk) 18:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)--Dikstr (talk) 18:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me explain what I mean by WP:WEIGHT in regards to these references. Lots of articles are published in scientific journals. What makes these important enough to cover in what must be a relatively brief summary of the topic? Can you demonstrate, for example, that news organizations have deemed this article to be important by reporting on it? Has this article been cited by many others? These types of considerations must be used when determining whether an article should be mentioned. Without applying these sorts of metrics, we're bound to have an edit war any time one editor decides that one paper should be mentioned in an article. We cannot decide which papers are important, only reliable sources can. If you can demonstrate that this article has received significant press coverage, cites, etc. then its inclusion will be better received. Oren0 (talk) 03:47, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

OK - that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I'll work on that aspect.--Dikstr (talk) 08:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

A study on how to cover scientific uncertainties/controversies

Hi. I would like to ask whether you would agree to participate in a short survey on how to cover scientific uncertainties/controversies in articles pertaining to global warming and climate change (survey described here). If interested, please get in touch via my talkpage or email me Encyclopaedia21 (talk) 16:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Filled out your form but couldn't send it to the e_mail site.

Hi. Thank you very much for coming back to me. Do you want to try sending the form again at encyclopaedia@educ.gla.ac.uk. I just checked my mail settings and it is working fine Encyclopaedia21 (talk) 10:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Solar forcing

I think you have some good points on solar forcing in the GW article. But -- in a somewhat controversial article like this one it would be best to introduce new ideas piece by piece instead of by sweeping changes. Also be aware that using junk sources like NIPCC tends to put people off; try to use the best quality source material you can (no offense intended, you presumably don't know it's not a serious scientific doucment). Regards - Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Its all about balance and the original version of this section had NONE! Although the NIPCC was assembled by dedicated climate change sleptics it references a lot of good solid (and refereed) work. You have to sort the wheat from the chaff (as any harvester knows!).

Your comment missed my point

I find myself insulted by this. Clearly you didn't read my continued attempts to contact the user, to no avail. The issue was the continued edit-war style reposting of a list of issues with the topic, with no direct proposal of how to improve the article. I wanted the user to post a single actionable item, but he/she didn't. The user had already violated 3RR, but I continued to warn instead of reporting until roughly 10 reverts, 3 times as many as would be required had I simply wanted to request a block. I am happy to entertain discussion, but I leave postings of theses to Martin Luther.

Please take up issues with my editing with me in the future, instead of leaving remarks elsewhere for me to find. Awickert (talk) 06:14, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You deserved the criticism. The old boy network approach to editing these areas of the Wikipedia is a disservice to it as an information source. There needs to be a balance of views on all topics, especially those that are controversial. The young minds reading Wikipedia to learn about various subjects need to know that questioning the status quo or 'consensus view' is an important part of finding new insight into our knowledge of any subject Dikstr (talk) 16:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)