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You have been a member of Wiki Project Med Foundation (WPMEDF) in the past. Your membership, however, appears to have expired. As such this is a friendly reminder encouraging you to officially rejoin WPMEDF. There are no associated costs. Membership gives you the right to vote in elections for the board. The current membership round ends in 2022.

Thanks again :-) The team at Wiki Project Med Foundation---Avicenno (talk), 2021.01

You're invited! NYC Earth Day 2022 Edit-a-thon! April 22nd!

Sure We Can and the Environment of New York City Task Force invite you to join us for: 2022 Earth Day Edit-a-thon 2pm - 4pm EST (April 22nd) online via Zoom and in person This Edit-a-Thon is part of a larger Earth Day celebration, hosted by Brooklyn based recycling and community center Sure We Can, that runs from 1PM-7PM and is open to the public! See this flyer for more information: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcGr4FyuqEa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

-- Environment of New York City Task Force

Urban heat island has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:37, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I noticed this edit from you. I want to make sure you understand that the definition of CDR is not the definition of "net negative greenhouse gas emissions", "net zero CO2 emissions" or "net zero greenhouse gas emissions". I fixed the error in Carbon dioxide removal but if you've carried this misunderstanding to other articles, they will also need to be fixed. Take care, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 11:01, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll reply to you on the talk page of Carbon dioxide removal. EMsmile (talk) 12:24, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I find your statement there to be dismissive. You say you "might not have done a good job"; you added serious misinformation to an article. And then you suggest "negative CO2 removal" which is another nonsensical phrase. Why are you doing this? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:17, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

?? Why do you insist on discussing this on my talk page? It belongs at carbon dioxide removal! So all your edits are always perfect, it seems, you never make any mistakes then? What are you implying with "why are you doing this?"?? Stop attacking me! EMsmile (talk) 17:16, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In that edit in question I had added "The same definition is commonly used for "net negative greenhouse gas emissions", "net zero CO2 emissions" and "net zero greenhouse gas emissions" but it should have been "The same definition is commonly used for "negative greenhouse gas emissions", and "negative CO2 emissions"". This was a mistake and an oversight. But for you to call it "you added serious misinformation to an article" here on my talk page (rather than on the article page) seems a bit over the top. And saying "why are you doing this?" is even worse. How about assuming good faith and moving on and not waste our time? EMsmile (talk) 17:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I did not point out your mistake on Talk:Carbon dioxide removal because I had already fixed the problem in Carbon dioxide removal. I didn't make my comment about your statement being dismissive at Talk:Carbon dioxide removal either because my comment was not about the article. My comment was about your attitude when your mistake was pointed out to you.

People can and do add misinformation in good faith - that is the whole point of the WP:Assume good faith policy. Misinformation added in good faith is still misinformation.

As editors we are all expected to try to learn from our past mistakes. When I asked "Why are you doing this?" I was asking you to try to understand why you made these two mistakes and to consider how to make fewer of them. Both of these mistakes involved adding and/or removing a word or two which screwed up the meaning. Since then you seem to have made a third mistake - fortunately not in mainspace - that involved removing a word which screwed up the meaning (I would say: "The term negative emissions technology is commonly used in the the same way as the term for carbon dioxide removal emissions."). Perhaps these mistakes indicate a pattern to watch out for. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:20, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think using the word error may be beneficial here rather than misinformation? I interpreted the "Why are you doing this?" initially the same as EMsmile.

That said, I've been mulling over how to breach this pattern for the last couple of days. Working on various articles in the CCI, I have noticed a pattern of mistakes at a rate that is uncomfortably high (see f.i. failed verification edit summaries here). We all make mistakes (just look for the word oops in my edit summaries). At some rate of mistakes however, looking at the underlying reason for those mistakes becomes important. You are editing very fast, often 50 edits a day. I asked you to consider slowing that down a couple of months ago. Have you taken that to heart? Does the project you work on have unrealistic KPIs? Are you given insufficient time to do background reading? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:40, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Femke. Yes, the time pressure in our project is very high. You can see here the long list of articles that we want to improve. We are a small team of people and we have funding from Formas, as detailed on our project page (and I also supplement this funding with my own volunteer hours). The hours that I have available work out as about 5 hours per week over a 2 year period. I don't have time in the budget for extensive background reading on each and every of the 100+ topics, unfortunately, even if I would love to (but to be fair, we do say to people "you don't have to be an expert to help improve Wikipedia"). So I try to focus on the type of work that can be done without being a content expert in each topic (e.g. re-arranging the structure of articles, moving content to sub-articles, removing content that shouldn't be there, improving readability; and when I can - and when they reply to me - working with external content experts like Tim Jickells who helped me on that effects of climate change on oceans and the ocean article).

When I make mistakes I am equally disappointed as you are. I'll try harder in future to rush less, not edit in the wee hours of the morning and probably stay away from adding new content that only an expert can suitably add.

Overall on Wikipedia (and in online communities in general), I think there is a natural tendency for people to "pounce" on someone else's mistakes rather than giving them also good feedback for what is going well. This is only natural (and the barn star idea or the "thank you" button is trying to counter-balance that a little bit). I try to use the thank you button often because it does give a good feeling. In fact, I wonder if I should use pinging less often (when I see a ping for me, especially if it's from you or Clayoquot, I nowadays often get an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach thinking "what have I done wrong now?"). EMsmile (talk) 12:24, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's an eye-opener for me to see that you're only paid for 5 hours a week. Your first paragraph explains pretty much everything - time pressure puts you in an impossible situation. Paid/organized editing efforts on Wikipedia are often very challenging for the volunteer community to respond to because our processes are designed for individual editors and often the issues with these efforts are structural. I think the structural issues really need to be addressed because I see three long-term editors at risk of burnout here (all of us women, what a coincidence!). I have no idea how to do that. In the meantime I will try to speak with more compassion. P.S. thanks Femke for your suggesting on terminology. I will do that. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 14:14, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ouch, 5 hours a week is definitely not enough for the ambitious goals of the project. I think you may need to quarter the ambition? You're trying to do more than our project at the GSI with less person-power. Just for reference, I've been spending about 5-10 hours per week on the CCI per week (this includes checking text-source integrity, if the source is readable to my long-COVID brain). I'm doing that voluntarily.

Would it be an idea to ping ASRASR into this conversation (not done it, as this may cause undue stress). Concretely, I would propose

• Bringing the work you're expected to do down by 75% (or 50%). To edit science on Wikipedia, you need time for background reading, and for source selection. For reference, before I start editing a new technical (sub)topic, I typically read about 100 pages. For an article like long COVID outside of my expertise, I read about 200 pages (10 papers). That's on the high side. For each source I add, I will typically have read about 3 others and discarded them as being too vague or otherwise not suitable.
• Instating a QA process, so that this isn't done by the volunteer community.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:10, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't systematically count my own background reading hours but Femke's numbers sound about right. I think both of Femke's ideas are good, and in addition may I suggest focusing on the articles you've already started working on and/or the topic areas you are most comfortable in. Climate articles cover an incredibly wide range of fields. IMHO that is too wide a range for any one person to be expected to understand. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:27, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I wish there were more people involved in WikiProject Climate Change who have time (paid or unpaid) for Wikipedia editing on climate change topics. I think there are far too few of us, hence the danger of us burning out or feeling under a lot of time pressure.

If we could get more people to edit Wikipedia as part of their day job, especially academics and other content experts, that would be great. I have been lucky to have worked with some content experts, e.g. on the ocean acidification article, who sent their proposed changes in a marked up Word document. Most content experts that we have contacted initially like the idea to help but later don’t manage to free up any time for it.

Perhaps the edit-a-thons that you are running as part of your project will help to bring in more people. I love edit-a-thons and would happily run more of them but editor retention is unfortunately rather low afterwards.

Coming back to my Formas-funded project, good idea to ping the other team members, I am doing that now: @User:ASRASR, @User:Jonathanlynn, @User:Dtetta (they each have varying amounts of funded hours per week for this; some same as me, some less).

When I say that we have over 100 articles on our list, I should point out that we have prioritized them internally and that we are not planning to bring any of them to GA or to FA status. Our focus is to bring articles – especially those with high pageviews – from e.g. start to C, from C to B, or from low B to a high B etc.

To assess article quality scores in a numerical way, we have developed a quality scoring system, see here (happy to discuss that further, too - perhaps in a separate section or page).

From the scoring system you can see that some of the work that we do for improvement does NOT require the person who does the edits to do much or even any detailed background reading. For example, one of our aims is to increase the length of the lead, make it a better summary or have a better image in the lead (and better images throughout the article). This, in my opinion, does not require hours of background reading but a rather superficial understanding of the topic (there are exceptions of course).

Likewise, for many of the articles, say two thirds, we will only spend about 5 hours on each article and make quite superficial improvements. These improvements, again, would not require one to be an expert on the topic. I think a good example is the work that I recently did on urban heat island and marine heatwave, carbon tax and carbon footprint. Often, my work involves deleting or moving superfluous/unsuitable content that had accumulated unnoticed over time, e.g. added by students.

So I think your Wikipedia editing ambition is - generally speaking - a bit different to our ambition for this project. We want to improve lots and lots of articles a little bit (say by 20% quality score improvement) whereas I think you are more interested in improving a few articles to a very high standard (like you did for climate change and sustainable energy).

We also try to work with content experts to give us those additional inputs (e.g. Tim Jickells helped me with ocean). An interesting case is the article on climate change adaptation where we have our team member User:Richarit on it who is a content expert and who has also learned how to edit (most of our other content experts don’t edit themselves but send us marked-up Word document).

So in summary, there are too few of us in the Wikipedia community, whether experts or non-experts who improve Wikipedia articles in the climate change area, whether the improvements are in-depth (for which one has to understand the topic really well) or more superficial (for which one does not need to do a ton of background reading).

To get more people into Wikipedia editing on climate change topics, it would be great if they could integrate it into their day jobs so that they get paid for their time (keeping in mind dangers of WP:COI of course) so it's not just done by volunteers - who end up feeling overwhelmed and burned out by all the work that needs doing.

What makes Wikipedia editing in a community special is that we all bring different skills: some bring in-depth scientific knowledge and understanding, some bring skills in organising the structure of the article, even just improving the section headings, some bring skills in improving readability, or improving the illustrations of the article, or improving the formatting of the reference list, or by asking questions on talk pages and making people aware of gaps etc. We can all complement each other's efforts. It's a multi-authored, multi-lingual encyclopedia in the end. EMsmile (talk) 21:57, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do not feel like you're talking the concerns seriously. This is not a matter of sufficient vs perfect, but a matter of failing to cite sources, misrepresenting sources, and original research. This is below the expected standard, as evident from WP:Disruptive editing#2. I believe it's a pattern from the examples below. I should not be able to find this many examples from an experienced editor, especially not in a WP:Contentious topic. Please do start taking the time to accurately source what you're citing, as you're likely to make mistakes if you do not take sufficient time for background reading.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:45, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do take your allegations seriously and always try to do better. I could go through each of your examples and explain what happened and why but there is not much point in doing that.

Just one thing: With regards to the article on effects of climate change on oceans (which sadly only has low pageviews of about 100 per day, and not many involved editors), if you are wondering why I edited on it so much: I was actually working off a marked-up Word document with comments provided to me by professor Tim Jickells plus many e-mails with him (in October last year). He was very kind and generous with his time. He sent me new text, comments, changes and refs, I put them in (as I mentioned in some of the edit summaries). Often I asked him for suitable refs and he provided them to me. If some of them were not the right refs or page numbers that is indeed a problem. Most likely though, the content still holds, at least I would assume so, coming from a well-known expert in the field, so a "citation needed" tag might be more suitable then deletion of sentences.

For example this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1117368669&diffmode=source where you said the source was incorrect. The text that I added here came directly from Tim (in a Word document): “The oxygen content of the ocean is vital for the survival of most larger animals and plants and also serves a very long term role in controlling atmospheric oxygen upon which terrestrial life depends.” This also came from him “Modern observations, climate simulations and paleoclimate reconstructions suggest that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has weakened since the preindustrial etc. “.

Perhaps we can agree on one point: I would say that the version after my editing work is better than the version that I found when I started in June 2021 (I’ve done some work on this article on and off for nearly two years). The old version from June 2021 looked like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effects_of_climate_change_on_oceans&oldid=1029279220.

I am not planning to engage further on my talk page here, I think all the different points are on the table and we can all draw our own conclusions. I also have a holiday coming up, so don’t be surprised if I am silent on Wikipedia for two weeks. (Probably a good thing to take a Wikipedia break for a while anyhow.) All the best. EMsmile (talk) 21:18, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More examples[edit]

I hope you had a restful vacation. Unfortunately I feel I must resume this conversation which must be stressful for you. I don’t enjoy having this discussion either, but there are problems that need to be addressed. Below are more examples of the kinds of edits that I’m concerned about.

Your statement above emphasizes the superficial and low-risk improvements that you make to articles. I included the examples above to illustrate that you’re also making substantive changes to highly visible parts of articles and sometimes getting elementary facts completely wrong. Inclusion of BECCs as a CDR method is so basic that one-page overviews of the topic cover it.[17]

Your actions here don’t match the community’s expectation that if you lack the knowledge to make certain types of edits, you will avoid making them. This expectation protects articles from damage and it also protects volunteers from having to clean up after others. Your restructuring of the “Methods” section in the CDR article left it in such a disarray that it took me hours to figure out what you had done and then undo it. If I saw these kinds of edits from a new editor, you can bet I would be posting on their user talk page. It would be unfair to new editors if I were to accept the pattern of editing that I’ve described just because it is done by you and not them.

I imagine both your error rate and the overall quality of your edits would improve significantly if you were to spend more time learning the subject matter before making substantive edits. If you have a different idea for how to avoid making serious errors in the future that’s fine, but I am convinced that something needs to change. I would also like to see a response to Femke’s request that your project implement a QA process, so that this isn't done by the volunteer community. Best regards, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Clayoquot, you're right, this has been stressful and upsetting for me. On several levels. If this was a "normal" workplace, I would have preferred to have these conversations face to face or via direct e-mail and phone calls. But I also understand the need/desire to have this on-wiki. Having a complete 2 week break from Wikipedia has been good for me (for the first time ever I turned off all notifications from Wikipeida) and I am certainly questioning if my contributions on Wikipedia, including finding funding to set up this project, are as valuable as I thought they were, or if I am better off quitting and doing other work. Anyway, I try not to take any of this personally.

Back to the problem at hand: I think there are three issues here which we should separate out from each other: (1) content issues with certain articles, (2) my own performance as an editor (who is not an expert on these topics), (3) the configuration of our project and possible project-internal QA options for my edits. Let me briefly address them in turn:

(1) Content issues with certain articles:

• Thank you for giving the article on carbon dioxide removal the tender love and care that it deserved! I'm glad you were able to find the time. I only tackled it (started in May last year) because I felt it was bad and that someone had to try and improve it. (I often ask for help on the talk page of WikiProject Climate Change but usually don't get much response for the smaller sub-articles, only for the main climate change article. We simply do not have enough people in the WikiProject climate change yet).
• In the project, we also try to find content experts for all the articles that are on our list but a broad topic such as carbon dioxide removal is less interesting for content experts than a more specific topic such as ocean acidification. In addition, I don't like to ask an expert to review a Wikipedia article if even I - as a non-expert - can see that it's messy, its structure is flawed, it's outdated and so forth. So I tried to improve its structure and some of the content to make it more suitable for handing over to an expert for review.
• I also felt there was too much overlap with carbon sequestration content but the issue of overlap and repetition is something that you and I have talked about in the past and have different views on.
• Question: I would like to copy your table above to the talk page of carbon dioxide removal so that others can follow the deliberations and see where I went wrong (I can't remember now where I got the info from that BECCS is not CDR; I thought I had read it somewhere and that it's a point source but can't remember now). Is it OK by you if I do that?

(2) My own performance as an editor:

• I think this one I have already explained previously on this talk page and also a bit in Point 1: We don't have the time nor ambition to become a deep content expert in all of the 100+ articles but hopefully our general understanding and also background training (e.g. PhD in my case) should enable us to make some meaningful contributions. We try to work with content experts to provide the necessary guidance whenever we can get hold of one.
• In general, I follow WP:BOLD and explain in my edit summaries and on the talk pages what I am doing and why. I do get things wrong on occasions of course and love it when others can correct me, and I am hoping that my success rate is far higher than my failure rate. I do also tidy up other people's work, e.g. student edits, edits resulting from edit-a-thons with newbies so I know it's frustrating to "mop up" after other people.
• Another example could be my work with the bioenergy and biomass (energy) pages. I am not deeply into those topics but I think I've helped to clean up that mess a bit, by culling out content. Do you agree? I am frustrated though because I know those two articles still need more care but nobody is available to help (and I worry that if I worked on it further I would get it wrong).

(3) Possible project-internal QA options for my edits:

• I am discussing internally in our team how we could improve on the QA side. It's not easy though because none of us in the team are in-depth experts on this huge number of topics that we are tackling. So I can't really expect the other team members to review all of my edits with regards to content. I usually review theirs but only with regards to Wikipedia guidelines, not in depth. E.g. I looked at the edits that User:Jonathanlynn or User:Richarit made as they were still quite new but I don't review the edits that User:Dtetta made at carbon accounting or carbon offset because I am pretty sure that he did very good work there, and don't have the in-depth knowledge on those topics anyhow.
• We do try to work with content experts whenever we can. Recently, User:Jonathanlynn sent a bunch of e-mails out to authors from the IPCC AR6 report and some of them have promised to help in the coming weeks and months. E.g. I will soon embark on working with Vivienne Reiner from Sydney Uni to enter her suggestions to carbon footprint.
• If you or Femke have ideas on additional QA activities that we could integrate into our project, I would welcome to hear them. However, I am not sure if my talk page is the best place for that. I would prefer direct e-mail contact on that or a call. Or if not, could we put it on the project's talk page rather (here)? EMsmile (talk) 07:52, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello EMsmile. I was planning not to post here to avoid distracting from Femke's & Clayoquot's valid concerns. But as there was an unnecessary intervention on an article talk page where I said something +ve about how you contribute to article improvement, I'll allow myself to chime in. There's is no question that your "success rate is far higher than [your] failure rate", at least if we're considering the totality of your contributions, where you help with a lot more than just climate change. I'd go as far as to say I might find it unbearable to edit here without you. I've always felt near alone on the wider Dev TA. Even with an easy to improve item like our global hunger article, an issue that severely effects close to a billion people, Im almost the only person who has made substantial edits to it all the way back to 2008. Or you get incidents like leading global Dev figure Alaana Shaikh being successfully deleted. With even WiR project members making bizarre delete votes that compare her to porn actresses... So emotionally distressing when that sort of thing happens. So it's such a balm to know we have someone with your skill and sensitivity working in the wider dev TA, not just on SDG 13.

At least on climate we have a good and fairly large team. And even in the climate TA you've been a huge net +ve, at least from my perspective. It was thanks to your quality contributions to climate articles that I awarded you a barnstar two years back.

It's only if we narrow the focus to carbon market related articles that there's a question of mistakes out numbering your success rate. In fairness though, that sub TA is ultra challenging. Since Kyoto, there's been over 60 different major attempts to set global standards for carbon trading, several of them using conflicting definitions and terminology. There's been a near 1$billion /year operation to spread misinformation, resulting in many confusing sources. Granted, CDR itself is fairly well defined. Still, while agreeing with how Clayoquot has resolved this, it's quite legit to have different views as to whether something like sequestration is a broad class of CDR method, versus a follow on activity that (almost always) occurs regardless of which particular method was used. This relates to the two conflicting ways the term GHG 'sink' is used in the literature. I see there was some confusion about this over on the climate project page, I may post over there to clarify. Anyway, despite the valid concerns expressed above, I want you to know your contributions here are highly valued! FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:31, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello FeydHuxtable, thanks a lot for this detailed note. Very much appreciated!! And I have to return the compliment, I've always enjoyed interacting with you here on Wikipedia. And I agree with you that the content on Wikipedia on Global South, economic development and so forth is in dire need of more editor attention. With the abbreviation TA did you mean "topic area"? I take your point about the carbon market, and it being particularly complex, and promise to be more careful on topics related to that (maybe even completely stay away from them). If you have time, please also review work that I did a little while ago on the carbon sink article; I think I've made improvements there but perhaps I also made mistakes there. Likewise with carbon sequestration if you have time please review my work there. Often times, I focus on restructuring, moving things from A to B within the article, or from A to B across two related articles, I try to remove repetition or excessive overlap, or outdated/tangential info and essay-like text blocks. But if I got myself confused and made things worse then I apologise. EMsmile (talk) 15:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're most welcome. Yep, by TA I meant topic area. Happy to offer a brief review. Only tentatively though. Not being as clever or quick as Femke & Clayquot, it can take me 300 hours + to read the 100+ papers and books I like to consult before I'm confident I can judge due weight & NPOV issues on a big scope global topic, and I don't have time for that at present.

But tentatively, IMO you've done a great job on those two articles, you've made them nicer to read and easier for the reader to learn from. Several dozen of your edits look like definite improvements. E.g where you trimmed excessive US focus content after having moved it to a US specific sub article. Or when you added important info about Peatlands & improved the structure by placing the Peat section under wetlands. I also like how you checked checked that the main active editor involved had no objection to your plan before you got stuck in.

A few edits might be questionable. Some might make a case that it would have been better just to trim and move the Kyoto mention down the page, rather than delete it totally. But on balance probably for the best.

Im not sure I'd have added the IPCC definition of sink - it defines the word purely as a process not as a storage receptor. It would be very useful for an article about non CO2 GHG. But possibly confusing in the case of carbon sinks. Many sources these days equate 'carbon sink' with carbon storage, almost the opposite of the IPPC definition. Still, it's a matter of opinion. As a general rule its always a good thing to add relevant info sourced to AR6.

While your contribs to those two articles look great, I'd not want to take anything away from the earlier feedback here. In general, the "efficiency first, low hanging fruit" approach of your project seems ideal for the wider dev TA as there's so much room for improvement there. Whereas in the climate TA, there's a project with many talented amateurs and several who have decades of relevant professional experience. So article quality tends to be much higher, and it's far easier for hasty changes to cause issues. As Clayoquot clearly identified in the case of CDR, even relatively safe edits like trimming & restructuring can sometimes be harmful if done by someone who doesnt have a good understanding of the subject. So lots of reasons for being extra careful in the SDG 13 TA. Hope this has been helpful. I'd prefer not to say much more now as I dont want to be a distraction. Once the CCI is out of the way, you'd be very welcome to ping me back if you wanted me to further review some of your work, or perhaps collaborate in some other way. PS, sorry not to be pitching in with the CCI, I'm not v good at that sort of detailed work. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, great feedback! Much appreciated. Have responded to one of the aspects in a separate thread below. EMsmile (talk) 10:11, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As a heads up, COI edits should be requested on talk pages even if a COI editor has seemed to have "established their credentials" as you mentioned here. The links I provided in my reply there have useful information. Best, Spencer^T•C 04:24, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. I have replied on the talk page of GoodLeap. EMsmile (talk) 07:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I started environment.wiki https://environment.wiki/index.php/Main_Page to help all types of people answer: "Who is doing What, Where" regarding climate change and protecting the environment. You have edited similar here - so thought it might be easy for you to help. It very is different than Wikipedia and I do not want to take away from it. Different in that I do want people to talk about their own projects and quickly add accounts of environmental doing, jobs, projects, etc...

I would love your help. Any help :). Will you take even a moment and even feedback or tips ? I need to make forms and templates so that entries are easier for project owners who are not wiki people. This should be radically crowdsourced and accessible.

Environment.wiki should be very useful for finding climate jobs or starting climate projects. Google and wiki searches do not work. I've made a decent start even though I do not code ( thanks Chatgpt3). I have the general mission clear, but now its time to do the real work and make nice data so that this can be massively helpful furthering climate action.

If you read this, thank you! Contact me thorugh environment.wiki if you can help even a few minutes. Cheers TheFeels (talk) 08:17, 20 April 2023 (UTC) TheFeels (talk) 08:30, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck with your project, TheFeels. Unfortunately I don't have time to comment at this stage. EMsmile (talk) 10:07, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

NO Worries. The site is there, and hopefully more useful every day. Would enjoy your feedback if you ever do visit the site. TheFeels (talk) 13:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:FeydHuxtable, thanks a lot for your comments from 20 April 2023 (e.g. I wasn't aware about that carbon sink terminology problematic, only that I found it all rather confusing when I got working on the carbon sink article...). I just wanted to react to a statement you made above: Whereas in the climate TA, there's a project with many talented amateurs and several who have decades of relevant professional experience. So article quality tends to be much higher, and it's far easier for hasty changes to cause issues. I respectfully disagree on this with regards to numbers. :-) I think only a handful of CC articles are very high quality, the climate change article being one of them. But many many sub-articles are in a very poor state which is doubly sad as many of them have rather high pageviews (several hundred per day). As part of the project that I am working on we have listed important climate change articles with their quality ratings and page views here in our project page. We've also developed a methodology for a more nuanced quality scoring here which we are applying to compare before and after scores (before tackling an article and after having spent say 20 hours on improving it).

Regarding the number of people active in WikiProject Climate Change on paper it's 90 people but in actual fact it's perhaps 10 people who edit actively and regularly (many of those being indeed awesome with far greater depth of knowledge than I have on these topics). Because there are so few of us this can easily lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed and burned out (not being able to respond to help requests in a timely manner etc.).

I think we need more Wikipedia editors on climate change topics, not less, and not just volunteers. If people can edit as part of their day jobs (like PhD students, academics or people who work at NOAA or whatever) that could free up many extra hours of time. I am currently thinking of trying to acquire another project like the one that I am currently working under. Just need to find a suitable funding agency and working model for such a project (always looking for collaborators and collaborating institutions).

You might also be interested in this related discussion I am having with User:InformationToKnowledge who also lamented the poor state of affairs for many climate and environment topics here. EMsmile (talk) 10:09, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this info. I didn't know there were only 10 active & regular editors on the CC project. I'm still of the opinion that CC articles tend to be of much higher quality than in other Dev related TAs. Of course you're right there remains much room for improvement. Best of luck with further expert recruitment initiatives! FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:16, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi -- I saw your note at Talk:Carbon accounting/GA1 and had a question. Are you referring to labelled section transclusion? I had a quick look in the climate change article and couldn't see where it was used if so. I agree that would be a reason to keep citations in the lead; another argument I've heard is that if you're not going to transclude a section, having the citations is helpful when you want to use a lead as the basis of text in another article. However, I think most of the time when an editor cites the lead it's not for those reasons; it's just because they don't realize it's optional, so I usually mention it in GA reviews, particularly if it's a user without much GA experience. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:04, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mike Christie, no I meant this kind of transclusion from the lead of an article to another article: You can see it quite well in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change#Oceans . Whenever someone transcribes the lead of Article A to Article B, it's useful if the lead of Article A has its sources visible. I actually think the guidance for the leads in the MOS should be adapted accordingly and strongly encourage inclusion of sources in leads. - Thanks for doing that particular GA review by the way. Very important work! EMsmile (talk) 10:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! You deleted, pardon, removed two new sections I wrote ("Magma ocean" and "Earth's outer core") because you are "not convinced this content is needed here. We don't need to mention any kind of term that has the word "ocean" in it, when the core topic of this article is clearly spelled out in the first sentence: salty water on Earth.". Then, what the section "Extraterrestrial oceans", which are obviously not on Earth, is doing in this article? Will you delete that section as well? Your argument contradicts to this very article. "Extraterrestrial ocean" means "ocean that is not on Earth". And "two types of oceans" is not equal to "any kind of term that has the word "ocean" in it". You are not convinced, well, sorry, but I am convinced. There is a whole article about the magma ocean, and it needs to be mentioned here for readers, as a link to the "Magma ocean" article, so readers can get more info about the magma oceans by clicking the link in the "Magma ocean" section. And yes, a magma ocean is an ocean, read the "Magma ocean" article, readers must be informed that other types of oceans exist, not only those of "salty water on Earth", no matter of your personal opinion.Bernardirfan (talk) 17:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bernardirfan, this doesn't belong on my talk page but on the talk page of ocean. I will copy it to there and reply there. EMsmile (talk) 19:27, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ThanksBernardirfan (talk) 20:00, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

	You are fire
	Thanks for the much-needed cleanup at Wildfire. It seems like you have experience with improving and narrowing the focus of broad-topic articles—thanks for all your hard work! Wracking talk! 02:45, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, User:Wracking your message made my day!! I haven't had an uplifting messages like yours on my talk page for a while, so thank you. :-) More work still needs to be done with that Wildfire article - I ran out of steam and brain power towards the last quarter of the article. Hoping someone else will assist or I will get back to it next week. EMsmile (talk) 07:33, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

hi EMsmile

I am a student at Rice University and I have an assignment for my poverty, justice, and human capabilities course to edit a Wikipedia page related to class. I was hoping to edit the Climate migrant page but it looks like you are in the works of editing that page. Are you still working on that page? It looks like it has been a while since your last edit. I wouldn't want any of my work on that page to be erased.

I am interested in the topic and wanted to research more and make the wiki page more accessible for other readers. Please see my talk page posting about it. User:Squinn10

Do you think we can take a collaborative approach to editing this page?

Squinn10 (talk) 01:12, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Squinn10, thanks for reaching out. I am no longer active on that article, so no problem with regards to stepping on my toes. There is by the way a very useful add-on tool called "Who wrote that?" where you can easily check which content was added when and by whom. See here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Who_Wrote_That%3F. I am in principle open for collaboration and can give you some guidance/feedback along the way. I'll be honest with you: my experience with working with students on Wikipedia editing is a mixed bag. Very often, the students end up doing very little useful work on the Wikipedia article, and a lot of it has to be reverted later. Occasionally, a student does amazing work. There is no way of telling in advance which student will end up in which category. ;-) You reaching out to other Wikipedians is a great start. Having a mentor on Wikipedia is also useful. - All the best! EMsmile (talk) 07:05, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I saw you moved some information from deforestation to Meitei culture recently. I was expecting about a discussion (regarding that if you wish) with the wikipedia community before doing such a massive change. I was pretty saddened by such a hasty personal decision. Well, btw, if you want to move, Meitei culture itself is a vast place, and I don't think it's an appropriate target. Better move it to a more specified target like Meitei mythology or Meitei folklore. And if the topic might have been about the Greek or Roman or Egyptian or other popular cultures, I don't think anyone would have such an idea to remove it from there. 🥲😔 Haoreima (talk) 21:30, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:Haoreima, yes I removed it, together with a lot of other content that needed removal. Sorry that I didn't start a discussion about it first but I didn't think it would be overly controversial. In my opinion it was not WP:DUE, e.g. having that long poem there. This is a high level overview article which had ballooned into an article that was digressing into all sorts of detailed side stories. Sure, no problem if you want to move that content from meitei culture back to Meitei mythology, or elsewhere. I had moved it to meitei culture because that article had been linked from that section as "main" or "further". - And if there is content that is overly Europe-centric I'd have no problem removing that either; please suggest which section should be removed. EMsmile (talk) 07:34, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. This shouldn't be on my user page but on the talk page of deforestation, so I'll move it to there. EMsmile (talk) 07:35, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Several months ago I volunteered to under take a review of Bioenergy. I think that I managed a single edit before the real world, in all its wonderful ways, took charge and my editing rate went down to below one edit a day. I am still on a long slow path of recovery but it looks increasingly unlikely that I shall be able to contribute anything other a few house-elf edits until mid March 2024 at the earliest. Apologies to you and to all the other editors who may have been holding back awaiting a major review. I really hope that I will be able to make a significant contribution in due course but at present I need to continue fighting off the virion hordes. Many apologies  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   23:50, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:Velella thank you for letting me know and sorry to hear that real life events have had a negative impact on you! Wishing you all the best. Could you (or should I) also leave a short note on the talk page of bioenergy so that the other editors there know not to wait for you for now? It's quite possible that nobody would progress it for another half a year anyhow but you never know. The theme complex of bioenergy, biomass (energy), biofuel is difficult to tackle but would be so important to get right. EMsmile (talk) 09:59, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Hey EMsmile, before I open a sockpuppet investigation is there are legitimate reason it would look like this account and Chidgk1 are run by the same individual or otherwise engaged in coordinated or tag-team editing? You're both older accounts so I am extending this as a courtesy, I generally just open the investigation and see what people have to say. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:34, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, what makes you think that I and User:Chidgk1 are the same person? We are not. What do you want me to do to prove this to you? I find it a very strange proposition actually. What could have caused this suspicion, I wonder? We often edit the same articles because we are both active on WikiProject Climate Change, just like others in this project, e.g. User:RCraig09, User:InformationToKnowledge, User:Clayoquot etc. EMsmile (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Both accounts spend a lot of time editing the same pages at the same time. I grant that the spread of pages could be explained by an interest in the same core topic area but here's what the editor interaction analyzer looks like [18], are you familiar with how to read one? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:44, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also active in the Climate Change area, and I don't see many similarities in the style or intent between these two editors. EMsmile is probably the single most active editor in this area in terms of number of edits, and probably many of us would have somewhat high interaction correlations with EMsmile's edits because our discussions often involve mostly the same people. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:05, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• @EMsmile:@Chidgk1: thank you both for the additional context, nothing wrong with any of that and looking at it with the additional context it does look like more a walled garden of scholars writing the same books situation than anything nefarious. Please accept my apologies and feel free to point anyone in the future who brings up the same question my way. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for reconsidering. They certainly seem like different people to me. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:42, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading File:Time series of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa.jpg. I noticed that this file is being used under a claim of non-free use. However, I think that the way it is being used fails the first non-free content criterion. This criterion states that files used under claims of non-free use may have no free equivalent; in other words, if the file could be adequately covered by a freely-licensed file or by text alone, then it may not be used on Wikipedia. If you believe this file is not replaceable, please:

1. Go to the file description page and add the text {{Di-replaceable non-free use disputed|<your reason>}} below the original replaceable non-free use template, replacing <your reason> with a short explanation of why the file is not replaceable.
2. On the file discussion page, write a full explanation of why you believe the file is not replaceable.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media item by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by creating new media yourself (for example, by taking your own photograph of the subject).

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification, per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Wcam (talk) 04:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Wcam, it's been a while since I uploaded that file but at the time I had convinced myself that it's compatible. Finding another graph for the CO2 content is probably easy, but it's those pH value curves that are less easy to come by; and especially not in this combination (pH and CO2 in the same graph). I'll add this to the file description page now. I'll also ping User:RCraig09 and User:Efbrazil who are far better with graphs on Wikipedia than I am. EMsmile (talk) 21:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Chart is 15 years outdated, and on first inspection I don't see a clear or credible assertion of implied licensing or fair use, and I'm surprised this chart has survived over a year.

However, charting atmospheric CO2 growth and ocean acidification may be a worthwhile goal. I don't think it would be prohibited WP:SYNTHESIS to get data from two sources and simply plot them together. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:58, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. At first glance, Fig. 13.4 at https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/13/ is a US Government publication (generally free use) that's only five years outdated (NCA4). There may be more recent graphics. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PPs: At second glance: https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Quality+of+pH+Measurements+in+the+NODC+Data+Archives is even more recent. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:11, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this image can be used as the replacement and tagged with {{PD-USGov-DOC-NOAA}}. Wcam (talk) 02:09, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good solution, thanks RCraig09 for finding this newer graph! But I don't quite understand this tag {{PD-USGov-DOC-NOAA}}: wouldn't the same tag also have "worked" for the previous image which was also from NOAA and is basically identical but not with the most recent data (so not a licence infringement either)? EMsmile (talk) 10:54, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I looked into the previous a bit and found this article to be the original source which has a CC BY 4.0 License. I'll update the info page accordingly but I'd still prefer to use the updated one. Wcam (talk) 11:26, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New images uploaded as File:Co2 time series aloha 08-09-2023.jpg. Wcam (talk) 11:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome, thanks Wcam! I've replaced this graph at ocean acidification. It's an important graph so I've also added it to effects of climate change. Anywhere else where it should sensibly be added? Maybe at pH? EMsmile (talk) 11:53, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

~ ~ ~ Merry Christmas! ~ ~ ~

Hello EMsmile: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:23, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks User:Dustfreeworld and likewise back to you! EMsmile (talk) 18:30, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Water supply and sanitation in the United States has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Hog Farm _Talk 02:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi just to say I suspect wiki articles are behind the curve on this, if you were seeking leading edge areas to add value. Thanks for all you do. Asto77 (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello EMsmile!

• The New Pages Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles needing review. We could use a few extra hands to help.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:20, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per your ping on Flowering plant, please not that it is not acceptable to solicit inputs from specific editors to support some point of view. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:45, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I can ping another editor to alert them to a talk page with a discussion that they may wish to contribute to. Please point me to the Wikipedia guideline that forbids that. I you are thinking of WP:CANVASSING, that is different. EMsmile (talk) 09:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from WP:CAN: "In general, it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus." This is all I did. EMsmile (talk) 09:49, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution.

Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you!

^ Just something I am apparently supposed to do now that we are going this route with the Climate change article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:33, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Preventive chemotherapy has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 26 § Preventive chemotherapy until a consensus is reached. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 20:34, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Considering this event has been done since September 28, 2020, I don't see the use for Hemingway or other apps being linked there. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 21:04, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what you mean, LilianaUwU? As the event is over 3 years ago, I think we should just leave the description as is. Nowadays, I don't use the Hemingway App anymore. I use Chat-GPT to suggest simpler wording to me when I need it. EMsmile (talk) 21:07, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. SchroCat, any thoughts? LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 21:09, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And I don't understand why you User talk:LilianaUwU reverted my edit here and called it spam? The Hemingway App is not spam but a legitimate tool. Maybe it's outdated now (I haven't used it for a while) but what's the harm in having it mentioned there? EMsmile (talk) 21:10, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because it’s second rate rubbish that is completely inappropriate for any form of writing. It’s spam rubbish. It’s also based only on a narrow set of criteria that’s only relevant to one country and ignores the standards of the majority of the English speaking world. Such narrow parochialism is not a constructive step in building good content. - SchroCat (talk) 21:14, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is not true. Are we talking about the same app? I mean this one: https://hemingwayapp.com/ . It's not spam. It helps people to identify difficult to understand sentences; that's all. Similar to the tool that Wikipedia has now included in the tools section, called "readability". I don't think it's up to you to decide and tell me what I can and cannot use for working on readability. This event was in September 2020 and some of us used that website at the time. So what? Why do you want to alter the project description now, three years later. I think that is completely uncalled for and a waste of time. If I want to use that website and if I want to recommend it to participants at an edit-a-thon, I can. But it's over 3 years ago, so why does it bother you? EMsmile (talk) 21:18, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you read what I have just written. - SchroCat (talk) 21:21, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstand what the app is trying to do. It points me to sentences that are potentially difficult to understand. That's all. Same as the readability tool that Wikipedia now offers. Anyway, nobody is forcing you to use it. But if I want to use it I can. Let's just agree to disagree and move on. EMsmile (talk) 21:26, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is no misunderstanding on my account. I think you are missing the point about advertising such a flawed app, but never mind. - SchroCat (talk) 21:33, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you're very welcome to join us at WikiProject Climate Change where we try to make scientific content understandable to lay persons. Interesting texts are good but my main aim is to ensure people can actually understand text that is about difficult scientific content. See for example here on the talk page where we are discussing how to improve the start of the lead for El Niño–Southern Oscillation... Or see here on the talk page of effects of climate change. No matter which app you use or don't use, it's not easy to get this scientific content translated into sentences that our readers can easily understand (and which are still completely correct in a scientific sense). EMsmile (talk) 22:33, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]