User talk:EMsmile/Archive 4

Welcoming inactive and blocked users?

I don't know how you are selecting the users you are messaging, but the "Welcome to Wikipedia!" message is a bit ridiculous for editors who have been for years, and in some cases are no longer active (User talk:Rickeyre) or indef blocked (User talk:Slowking4). Perhaps change the edit summary, and prune the list of editors? Fram (talk) 13:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi User:Fram, thanks for your message. I hadn't noticed that Slowking4 had been blocked, sorry. I've left these welcome notes on the talk pages of users who have signed up for our upcoming edit-a-thon on climate change topics (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Online_edit-a-thon_on_climate_change_-_November_2020). in the case of User:Rickeyre, I think that is not unusual for people to plan to reactive their Wikipedia account after a dormant period. What better way than doing so as part of an edit-a-thon? In which sense do you think it's problematic that I've left these welcome notes on these users' talk pages? In which sense is it "ridiculous", unless a user is blocked which should be the rare exception? I haven't paid any attention to the edit summary, sorry. I am not actually sure how to change that as I've set up a template in Twinkle. EMsmile (talk) 14:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Leaving a "welcome to Wikipedia!" templated edit summary for users who have been here probably longer than you comes across as rather ridiculous, yes. It is also unclear where and when these editors have signed up, certainly not onwiki, as e.g. User talk:Aya20Ysf has not made any edits at all. The end effect is a list of seemingly random editors which you picked to "welcome" no matter their status and experience. If Twinkle doesn't allow you another edit summary for this, then it isn't the right tool for this, and you should do this manually or ask at WP:VPT (or the Teahouse) for a better solution. Fram (talk) 14:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

They have signed up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Online_edit-a-thon_on_climate_change_-_November_2020#Registration (which leads to a Google form). I have done this before also for people who have signed up for an edit-a-thon on SDGs in September and nobody has ever complained so far. What is the problem, is it mainly the edit summary that you find problematic? Or the fact that I am welcoming users who have put up their hands to participate in an online edit-a-thon, starting 24 November? Yes, some of them haven't made any edits yet, which is exactly why a welcome note could be important. I really don't understand why you find this problematic. Yes, I can try to ask someone for help to change the edit summary text to make it "Welcome to climate change edit-a-thon" instead of "Welcome to Wikipedia" if you think that is a big problem. EMsmile (talk) 14:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I've asked on Village Pump here now. EMsmile (talk) 14:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

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Glad to see you're still around!

Frohes Neues!

I just noticed your username on my watchlist, so I'm really glad to see that you're still around and editing. Best wishes for 2017!

thank you. EMsmile (talk) 11:28, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Climate change initiatiative

Hi EMsmile, I've been looking into the climate change edit-a-thon you've made and I think it's a great initiative. I note that the week so almost over so I hope it's going well. Looking at the goals of improving Wikipedia content and increasing awareness, I thought I'd suggest that if the edit-a-thon creates any new articles, or seriously expands an existing article, that it would be a good idea to see if they meet WP:DYK criteria and if so to nominate them there. A DYK nom may also encourage a new editor to hang around a bit longer. It's also something that could be presented as a tangible outcome of an edit-a-thon. Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I didn't see it on the meetup page. Best, CMD (talk) 04:39, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi CMD thanks for your note! I don't really know anything about WP:DYK but if you think that it might encourage more participation then I am all ears! Could you perhaps elaborate a little how this tool could be used to encourage new editors to hang around? Please put it either on the event's talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Meetup/Online_edit-a-thon_on_climate_change_-_November_2020 or join our Slack channel and propose it there & interact and motivate the newbies. I think the event has gone really well although I'd like like to see even more edits from the participants... See Dashboard here. EMsmile (talk) 08:01, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

The DYK process provides editors a chance to see their new article reviewed by another editor, and potentially to see their article mentioned on the Wikipedia front page. It also results in a congratulatory template being given to them if they succeed (eg. User talk:Chipmunkdavis#DYK for Wildlife of North Macedonia). I posted on the event talk page, and am happy to help here, but I hope you might mention it on the Slack. Essentially a new article has to be at least 1500 words, be original work (ie. not copied from other sources, and not copied from another Wikipedia page), be fully sourced to reliable and appropriate sources, and meet WP:NPOV. Editors also need to stick around after the nomination to field any questions and make changes as necessary. At a glance Climate change in Kenya may be a potentially good example of this (only a small amount seems to be copied from other articles, although this would need to be confirmed with the authors), and could be nominated tomorrow to meet the week deadline. The DYK process is only for new and very significantly expanded articles, rather than general improvements to existing articles (unless they're improved all the way up to GA status), but I suspect it could be a good motivational tool if used correctly. CMD (talk) 17:57, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi, CMD. That sounds great. I will propose that in the Slack channel now. Feel free to also join us on Slack using this link (we are probably going to keep this Slack channel open anyway even beyond the actual edit-a-thon itself because we have longer term plans with Wiki4Climate. So it's worth joining. But if you don't want to join yet another app/channel, I also understand. ;-) By the way, do take a look at the talk page of the India article. We've kick started the same discussion there about including "climate change" like for the Australia article. EMsmile (talk) 04:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Featured article review climate change

I have nominated Climate change for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.

If I'm not mistaken, you had some comments about this article during last week's edit-a-thon, hence why am including you in the notifications for the featured article review. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:05, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		Thanks for maintaining the integrity of the Wikipedia. Zakaria1978 ښه راغلاست (talk) 05:31, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Organizing a wikipedia edit-a-thon

Hi EMsmile! Thank you for reaching out. I've talked to the society of ISHPSSB and they're interested in hosting/co-organizing an edit-a-thon in conjunction with their next annual meeting (which will be held online). They're asking if I could make a first-draft proposal for them while they plan the meeting this month. It would be great if I could model after a relevant event (organized by academics for academics to get into wikipedia editing) to offer them a budget and organization plan. Thank you so much for volunteering to guide us! FlybellFly (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi FlybellFly, yep, I can send you some info. Have sent you a message through the Wikipedia mailing system so that we can communicate directly by e-mail. EMsmile (talk) 02:46, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

DYK attribution

Hi EMsmile, with the Keyna Climate Change DYK passing, I raised a question about attribution at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Attribution guidelines. As the nominator, your input would be appreciated! Best, CMD (talk) 12:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh wow, it has passed, that's great news! Thanks for all your help. I've also replied there on the other page. EMsmile (talk) 04:31, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Climate change in Kenya

 — Amakuru (talk) 12:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Help on Wikiproject Climate change project

Hi,

any chance you want to help out on increasing coverage and info on this ? Carbon sink upscaling additional info on carbon sink upscaling (missing info) --Genetics4good (talk) 16:36, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Check out

• Wikidata:talk:WikiProject_Climate_Change#Actual_emissions_and_allowed_under_Paris_Agreement and
• Wikidata:User_talk:Bluerasberry#Wikiproject_Climate_Change_project

I asked Bluerasberry to contact ClimateWorks Foundation, New Climate Institute, Human Impact Lab via e-mail for adding the core data we need to wikidata. I'm not sure whether he done so (and I won't do so directly as else it looks like I'm the only one working on this, whereas multiple people in Wikiproject Climate Change should work on it. As whether he done so and perhaps do so yourself if he hasn't done it (it's just an e-mail that needs to be sent, and you can point straight to the wikipedia wikiproject and wikidata wikiproject article pages, so it's clear we're working on this as a group. I'll also ask the others that have shown interest, discuss with them who contacts which organisation. --Genetics4good (talk) 14:53, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Genetics4good, sorry, can't help with this for now. Am busy with restructuring the articles Climate change in Country X as per here. So much to do, so little time... EMsmile (talk) 01:37, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Menstrual cycle at FAR

The Featured article review of menstrual cycle has just started, and I was wondering if you have any expertise on this topic, or know people that might be interested in it? Considering it is read quite a lot, and important for women's health, I think it is worth saving, or at least updating. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you, FemkeMilene, very important article (together with menstruation, and possibly overlapping with it). Will try to make some time for it and also alert others to it, for example User:PlanetCare. EMsmile (talk) 01:11, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me on this. I've taken a first look and commented on the Talk page for the Menstrual Cycle article. I would be interested in working on this. PlanetCare (talk) 02:54, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Cut and Paste

Hi there. You're making a few article moves which are cut and paste moves, (see WP:CUTANDPASTE), which are not allowed. Even though you've provided attribution, as the new article's history grows, that attribution might get lost, especially on something so topical as climate change. I just did the Jordan page the way it needs to be done. If you need help, let me know. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh, User:onel5969 really sorry about that and thanks a lot for sorting it out for Jordan! I don't really understand this "round robin swap". When I tried to create the new page "Climate change in Nepal" I couldn't because it was already there but with a redirect. I couldn't figure out at first sight how to delete the "Climate change in Nepal" page to make way for the move. Sorry for being clumsy... EMsmile (talk) 02:56, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

EMsmile, no worries. I've been doing this for years, and still have to be really careful with round robin swaps. I just did Nepal as well. If you provide me with the list, I can do these for you. Or if you want to tackle them yourself, that's okay. You can find out the process at WP:ROUNDROBIN. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:59, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah, so glad that you have explained it to me now; it was always a bit of a mystery to me (I had seen other people do it but never really understood how they do it). There was only 3 article on my list today where I wanted to do it: Jordan, Nepal and Greenland. I think you have already done all three now? Thanks! Next time when I come across this, I'll try to have a go myself, following WP:ROUNDROBIN carefully. I am currently workong on tidying up all the articles of the type "Climate change in Country XX", learning heaps about climate change in those countries along the way... EMsmile (talk) 03:08, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

EMsmile, again, no worries. I did take care of those 3. If, the next time you run into issues, holler, and I'll try to help. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 03:14, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi User:onel5969, I've tried to do a round robin swap myself for the first time today but I've realised I can't do it without help by someone, as I now have to delete Climate change in India. I couldn't untick "leave no redirect" as a normal user doesn't have that option. So I have now placed a speedy deletion tag here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climate_change_in_India&redirect=no. Oh and could you also help me with this please: how do I change the title of this article to non italics?: Climate change in the Netherlands? I am assuming I have to do a round robin swap for that as well? EMsmile (talk) 00:11, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Since you don't have pagemover, asking for the delete is fine. I'm not an admin, so I can't do it for you, but one will soon. Regarding Climate change in the Netherlands, I'm not sure why the title is appearing in italics. You might want to ask a question at WP:TEAHOUSE, and you'll get an answer pdq. When you do, could you please ping me. I'd love to know what the issue was. Keep up the good work. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 00:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Good tip, User:Onel5969, thanks! Mystery solved: I asked about it on the teahouse and got help straight away (see here).

Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution (3rd request)

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you copied or moved text from Environmental issues in Japan into Climate change in Japan. While you are welcome to re-use Wikipedia's content, here or elsewhere, Wikipedia's licensing does require that you provide attribution to the original contributor(s). When copying within Wikipedia, this is supplied at minimum in an edit summary at the page into which you've copied content, disclosing the copying and linking to the copied page, e.g., copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a properly formatted {{copied}} template on the talk pages of the source and destination. Please provide attribution for this duplication if it has not already been supplied by another editor, and if you have copied material between pages before, even if it was a long time ago, you should provide attribution for that also. You can read more about the procedure and the reasons at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Thank you. If you are the sole author of the prose that was copied, attribution is not required. — Diannaa (talk) 14:20, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Diannaa: I do it most of the time (as you have reminded me about this before) but every now and again I forget. It seems tedious. Because if I write "moved from page XX" then everyone knows that "see that page's history for attribution" also applies. It feels superfluous to type that into the edit summary each time. Isn't it simply implied when I write "moved content from page XX"? EMsmile (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Fulfilling our legal requirements may be tedious, but proper attrubution is required by the terms of our license. ("Moved content from page XX" with a wikilink is an adequate edit summary.) That said, I see it now - it was not done at the edit where you copied the content, because you forgot. I missed it, because there are 72 CopyPatrol reports to check today and I didn't check the page history as carefully as I should have. Sorry about that.— Diannaa (talk) 15:11, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Diannaa OK, that's good - so just to be sure: Is it sufficient if I put in the edit summary "text was moved here from Environmental issues in Japan"? I ALWAYS try to do that and understand its importance. But I don't always write the second part, i.e. "see that page's history for attribution" just out of laziness. Is that OK? EMsmile (talk) 15:31, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

It is adequate.— Diannaa (talk) 15:40, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Menstruation Images

Hi, glad to hear the images have been found and deemed useful. I have no real conection to the vivani projec. a bulk uplpad seems like a good idea, I don't know how to facilitate that, though. --Tavin (talk) 11:34, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Tavin, good to hear from you. Do you remember how many of Vulvanis photos you uploaded already, or was it just the one? I am curious what gave you the idea? Thanks to you I found out about them. :-) EMsmile (talk) 11:37, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

EMsmile here you see I uploaded 4 images https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Tavin&ilshowall=1 from the collection. I sympethise with the vulvani projects goal and it was obvious to me that wikipedia is a good place to make sure the pictures are found. --Tavin (talk) 11:36, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion of Ocean, World Ocean, Sea etc

I have some real concerns that some of the input into the current discussions seem quite barbed and assertive. I almost added a comment to my latest addition to suggest that it may be sexist bullying at a low level. The construction and phrasing of some of the comments are demeaning and belittling especially from one editor who has been around for as long as I have. I am not happy with it, but wondered if it struck you in a similar way? Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   23:43, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Velella, thanks for your note! It's people like you that make life on Wikipedia bearable and fun, not those other people wo lash out at people with personal snipes whenever they can. What really upset me was this statement of that particular editor: "So do a proper formal proposal - see WP:MERGE. These are prominent articles (unlike the stuff you normally work on frankly) and there may well be objections." This was on the talk page of ocean and set the tone for everything the followed... (see here). If I was a newbie, I would like to say "don't bite the newbiew" (WP:BITE)! It certainly feels like sexist bullying but it's hard to prove... Funnily enough, I am involved in a discussion about why fewer women edit Wikipedia than men and if that even matters. There is an editor on the talk page of Gender bias on Wikipedia who keeps arguing that "nothing stops women from editing Wikipedia", see here. I quote from there "I've explained this. Women are simply not interested in history as much as men, just as they're not interested in auto mechanics, chess or hunting, nearly as much as men. As I've explained above, also, the vast majority of history books are written by men. Here also no one is preventing women from writing them". I think hostile editors, like those on the talk page of sea or Gender bias on Wikipedia, are likely to turn off other Wikipedians, and especially female editors who are not enjoying hostile environments, and don't need that bullshit in their (Wikipedia) lives. - Thank you for your emotional support, I really appreciate it! EMsmile (talk) 01:07, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

I hadn't seen that, that sucks. I will try to carve out some time to help make a more structured discussion, trying to tease out arguments based on sources instead of quick opinions. I made some mistakes in the climate change renaming discussion, making it longer than necessary, so I'm going to think about this a bit more. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:28, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Femkemilene thanks, that would be great. Meanwhile, should we treat the merger of world ocean into ocean as a separate issue (to keep things simpler)? How do you suggest to progress with this merger debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World_Ocean#Merge_into_ocean . To me, I find it clear that a rough consensus has emerged. But I'd prefer if someone else closed the merger discussion and did the merger as I have been getting so much flak of late from certain other editors. Should I request somewhere that a closer looks at this page? Or can you do it? EMsmile (talk) 00:56, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

I think treating it as a separate matter works. I'm involved in the discussion, so it wouldn't be appropriate for me to officially close it, but I might help work the discussion to an end. I'm a bit caught up at sustainable energy, but hope to have time tonight. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:40, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

I've now asked for an independent review and closer here. I've never used this process before and hope I have done it correctly (hopefully not too soon (initiated merger 18 days ago)). EMsmile (talk) 15:08, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Some incomplete thoughts about process

Thanks for taking up the unthankful task of managing a difficult discussion while learning. I was in the same boat with the climate change discussion. What I did there was first prepare a proposal in user space with a couple of other people that recognized the problem (but didn't have the same solution in mind). We made an inventory of

• procedures and relevant policy.
• We collected evidence how the old situation led to widespread confusion
• We tried to collect evidence of changing use and geographic differences, f.i. via Google trends. Differences between UK and US English have already been opined on, so some harder data would be welcome.
• Somewhere else (maybe during the "public" discussion), we examined the use of the words global warming and climate change in loads and loads of HQRS.

And then we started a deliberative discussion on talk, before making an actual proposal.

We basically have four terms to deal with here: A sea, the sea, an ocean, the ocean, all with different and overlapping meanings, and enough material to cover an entire encyclopedia. I suspect the end result will be somewhat arbitrary, and feel that's okay.

Going into user space first has the disadvantage of people feeling left out, so if you decide to go down that hole, make sure to engage with people that didn't seem enthusiastic before. It has the advantage of being as structured as you want it to be, and calmer as well.

What I think needs to happen here is:

1. a mapping of all the different subtopics of ocean/sea
2. Using a set of about 10 WP:HQRS spanning different scientific disciplines and law, to see if they cover these subtopics under ocean, sea or both
3. If there is a clear distinction (geography is discussed under sea, science under ocean, as some people opined), we can make a suggested distinction on that ground, and simply reorganize the articles.
4. If there isn't, it may be a good idea to have one top article (probably ocean, but I was trained in oceanography...), and have sea be a subarticle starting with 'A sea is', covering the definitions of sea that are smaller than the ocean.

Having figured that out, we'll start a formal proposal. Either a RfC, or an official merge (of sea and ocean, after which we start sea almost from afresh).

Does that sound semi-sensible? FemkeMilene (talk) 20:54, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

That sounds really good (but also very time consuming). I can try to help with this process as much as possible but I am not sure if I am fully up for leading it. I am asking myself about the effort and whether it's worth it. It was definitely worth it for climate change and global warming as they are huge topics! It's probably also worth it for ocean and sea but it seems very daunting at this stage. I'll try to hunt around for some academics (who are not yet Wikipedians) and see if they can help with content discussions. If I was to start with some baby steps, what should they be? When you say "mapping" of sub-topics, how would that look? EMsmile (talk) 01:57, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm swamped at the moment. Working on tropical cyclone, sustainable energy, antarctica, paris agreement keeping up with climate change, and participating at FAR, so I'm not volunteering to lead this process unfortunately. It should be less contentious than CC, but still a big topic. When I'm allowed back into the university library (6 months?), I might reconsider. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Mapping would consist of taking our articles headings and maybe two books about ocean/sea and listing their headings. We'd have maybe a list of 10-15 topics then. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:48, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I'll try... I don't really work with books much these days, especially not with printed paper version ones... Do you have a recommendation which books about ocean/sea I should consider? If they're not available via Google books then it's a disadvantage but I'd be willing to buy them for my kindle if not too expensive. Is your experience that such books are usually available via Google books or not really? EMsmile (talk) 06:05, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

If you don't have access to a university library, libgen is an option depending if you believe it to be ethical. Haven't looked into books yet. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:30, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Menstrual cycle

Hello. I saw your comment. Please don't sell yourself short. Even if those editors were experts in that subject area, which I don't see, it's no excuse for the very subpar way multiple editors there have been treated. You shouldn't feel that you need to step away and keep your opinions to yourself. Please also remember that Wikipedia doesn't give experts special treatment. I don't want to linger on this, so please don't call those editors here. I've said my piece. Thank you for contributions. New Sheriff in Town (talk) 06:18, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi New Sheriff in Town! Thanks for your supportive words, I really appreciate that! - I am wondering if you can give me your opinion about another talk page thread, this time on marine biology. It feels that yet again, a long-term experienced editor is using slightly aggressive, belittling language towards me (not as bad as I've seen elsewhere, but still). Or am I just being overly sensitive? Please see here. And if you have an opinion about the lead image and caption please do put it there as well so that we can collect more view points. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 03:05, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Sewage treatment

I have just revisited Sewage treatment after some time away from the topic. There was some need for clean-up and removal of WP:UNDUE and primary research sourced sentences, but overall it looks to be in moderately good condition.

I was wondering whether to make a GA nomination but would value your opinion on the subject - it was my daily grind for several decades, so I am probably a bit too close to make wholly rational judgments. Many thanks  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   15:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Velella, thanks for the alert. I'll head over to the article's talk page now and leave my two cents worth. :-) EMsmile (talk) 02:32, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Velella, I see that you haven't mentioned it yet on the talk page so perhaps better to discuss it here first. In general, I think it would be good if you could take it through the GA process and it shouldn't be that far off. It was also my daily grind for a decade or so, but meanwhile I have moved on to other topics, so I am not sure if I would be much of a help in the process. My current interest is more in wastewater treatment which I have included as one of the articles in the SDG 6 suite of articles that I am currently working on (see here). I see two problem areas: one is the overlap between sewage and sewage treatment. Wondering if it wouldn't be better to merge "sewage" into "sewage treatment". I know one is the "stuff" and one is the "treatment of the stuff" but in reality they are very intertwined. Why is there even a section on "legislation" in the "sewage" article; should be moved. The second problem is the overlap between "wastewater treatment" and "sewage treatment". I have just written about that on the talk page, too. Whilst our differentiation here in Wikipedia makes sense (wastewater treatment is the broader term), in practice many people don't use it like that. As a result, we have to continually clean up edits that people have made to the wastewater treatment article; so also how its lead section talks about sewage treatment... We could think about renaming "sewage treatment" to "Municipal wastewater treatment" which might make it clearer. Also rename "wastewater treatment" to "wastewater treatment (overview)", maybe. So in summary, if you go for GA nomination, it would be great if you could streamline sewage and wastewater treatment at the same time? EMsmile (talk) 02:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks for that. I haven't raised the issue on the article talk page yet as I have never nominated a GA before (in 16 years!) and I needed a sensible opinion as to whether it might be close enough to try. You are absolutely right about the areas of potential and actual duplication and cross-over and these will need to be carefully and diplomatically addressed to keep then right stuff in the right article without too much duplication. I think that I will flag up the possibility on the article talk page and see if there is any reaction there. Thanks for your input .  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   08:50, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Harassment

In less than a day you have pinged me on Facebook, emailed me through Wikipedia's email system, pinged me here, and sent an email to my work email. Please stop harassing me. I don't want to be driven off the ecosystem article, but your bullying is making that hard. Guettarda (talk) 03:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I am not harassing you. I am trying to clear up what went wrong back in 2018 and is apparently still going wrong on the talk page of ecosystem. Yes, I have used the Wikipedia e-mail system (once) because I honestly feel something like this is better clarified with direct e-mail contact than by writing on public talk pages. I will never ping you again if you feel that a mere "ping" equals harassment!! If you don't want to receive e-mails through the Wikipedia e-mail system then you should not enable that functionality. I am trying to resolve whatever it was that has put me on your list of "I hate that person". I am not intending to discuss this with you any further in public spaces. It is up to you if you want to reply to the e-mail that I sent you, and to clean this misunderstanding up, or if you choose not to. My e-mail was a very friendly e-mail; for you to call that "harassment" is in my eyes utterly shocking. EMsmile (talk) 04:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I understand you feel everyone else is wrong, but I feel bullied by you also and about to be driven off articles I would rather continue contributing to — Epipelagic (talk) 04:28, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

To everyone else: In case anyone is watching my talk page, this is the discussion (or one of them) that Epipelagic is referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Marine_biology#Come_up_with_a_better_image_for_the_lead? and this is the discussion that Guettarda is referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ecosystem#Who_says_that_%22history%22_has_to_come_first? . Everyone is welcome to read and make up your own mind about how these discussions went so far and the tone that is being used. Please contribute to the content of the discussion (keeping in mind WP:FOC) if you have an interest in improving the Wikipedia articles on ecosystem and marine biology. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 04:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Message to User:Guettarda: Upon further reflection, I do understand how my communication led to you feeling harassed, and wish to apologise for that. In particular, I should not have sent an e-mail to you work e-mail address. EMsmile (talk) 11:04, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

While I appreciate your "further reflection", this isn't about your "self reflection', this is about the Wikimedia Code of Conduct. This is harassment. Guettarda (talk) 15:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

The worst of it, of course, is that you sent me these harassing emails after I admitted how much this stressed me out. You chose to belittle that, and to weaponise it. Guettarda (talk) 15:50, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there anything I can do to make it right? I think we have both upset each other. I tried to make it right by emailing you but clearly I made it even worse. :-( So what can I do now to make it right? If this was a "normal" working environment I would now pick up the phone and try to clarify the situation. Not possible here. So what to do? (I got upset after reading this statement which sounded in my ears like I was purposefully making Wikipedia articles worse) EMsmile (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Teahouse

Regarding your email about the concerns raised at the Teahouse discussion, I will have more time to address this in detail over the coming weekend, if you don't mind waiting until I can devote full attention to your request.

I have other concerns than those expressed in the Teahouse thread, and seeing two editors I respect in the thread above this one (Epipelagic and Guettarda) is not encouraging. I have glanced at the Marine biology discussion and there are issues there similar to my concerns; you may find this to be helpful reading. This case was dismissed before the findings were finalized, but you may appreciate the direction the arbs were heading.

My computer was in repair for three weeks, so I am quite behind in my regular editing, and must catch up, but will be happy to dialogue with you about these issues over the next weekend or so. Meanwhile, I hope the Teahouse discussion can die the natural death it deserves, as that was a completely inappropriate topic for the Teahouse. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:21, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, looking forward to continuing the dialogue later / next week when you have time. Would it be OK by you to do it with direct e-mail using the Wikipedia e-mail system, rather than talk pages? That would be my preference; hoping that's fine by you. I have in the meantime moved the discussion from the Teahouse to another place, as suggested by the other editor at Teahouse. Whether it will continue there, whether anyone will find it an interesting topic to discuss, we shall see. I have also joined the WikiProject Editor Retention because I think it's actually more about editor retention than about newbies and WP:NOBITE. I am especially interested in retaining editors who come from cultural backgrounds that are so far underrepresented on Wikipedia. EMsmile (talk) 09:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Although I didn't intend for it to happen this way, parts of this conversation have continued at my talk page. I don't think we have the same concerns, or view the problems here on common ground. When two three updated, 00:22, 2 April 2021 (UTC) ) new accounts go after a valuable editor, I question what kind of editor retention it is you want to support, relative to the editors you don't seem to value at all. I support retention of the valued editors like Colin, Epipelagic, Fowler & fowler, Graham Beards, Guettarda, Tom (LT), and all the other fine editors you, WP Sanitation editing, or the two new accounts have insulted. It boggles my mind that three editors from WP Sanitation have to show up to argue over one silly image to the point of chasing off a long-time editor; something is off in your priorities. I hope you will think long and hard about how much your editing practices are being driven by Advocacy, Battleground, and Canvassing, and how little you seem to have grown as an editor since I observed the tangle you had with EChastain six years ago (where although she was a prolific sockmaster, she was more right than you were). Please reflect on your editing practices, as I explained on my talk, and think about the viability of a WikiProject that is basically an Advocacy project, not always with goals and practices in agreement with Wikipedia's goals. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I've responded to your points on your talk page here. EMsmile (talk) 00:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Barnstar!

		The Editor's Barnstar
		I hereby award this barnstar to editor EMsmile for many years work improving our global dev related articles, for fine editorial discretion, and for being a pleasure to collaborate with on article talk pages. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, FeydHuxtable, I really appreciate your kind gesture! It comes as a welcome piece of positive energy after some rocky weeks for me in March and April. And you have encouraged me to join the Kindness Campaign as well, and to also award barnstars to others in future. The benefits are numerous! So thanks again. EMsmile (talk) 23:45, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

May 2021

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EpicPupper (talk) 18:10, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Redirects for discussion

To answer your question from Talk:Sustainable energy, Wouldn't it make more sense to achieve consensus about possible redirects here, with the authors who have mainly worked on this article so far, rather than going to a more anonymous place?. Community convention is to centralize the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion, with notifications at other talk pages such as Talk:Sustainable energy and Talk:Renewable energy. As to whether it "makes sense" to use Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion rather than article talk pages, the choice of venue is the community's call not mine, but FWIW I think it helps keep discussions orderly and in one place. Best wishes, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:57, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for these explanations, User:Clayoquot. I think I have never used that page before but I can give it a go. However, I am a little hesitant to propose it there before I know what your stance is. As you've done so much work on Sustainable energy, I feel that your opinion regarding those redirects matters a lot (if not, the most). If you don't mind either way then I'll use that other page. If you have a preference to leave it as is, then I think I'll stay away from suggesting any changes to the status quo. EMsmile (talk) 12:00, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate that you value my opinion but I wish you'd paid attention when I made my opinion clear on Talk:Sustainable energy: "Personally I think these redirects are appropriate because the Renewable energy article describes environmental impacts less comprehensively at this time." Instead of addressing the substance of what I was saying, you asked, Do we have a good justification that they redirect to here? as if I hadn't given a good justification. That made me feel quite dismissed. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:02, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I am sorry if it felt dismissive to you. That was not my intention. I think I misunderstood your statement. I had interpreted it as saying that if the renewable energy article was improved and explained environmental impacts a bit more comprehensively then the redirect of "green energy" to "renewable energy" made sense. - Overall, I think I'll just leave the redirect discussion for now and come back to it at a later stage when I have a bit more time. Perhaps I'll first work on the renewable energy article a bit more. EMsmile (talk) 01:35, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Copyright problem on Capacity building

Content you added to the above article appears to have been copied from https://revistas.udc.es/index.php/ejge/article/view/ejge.2015.4.2.4312, which is not released under a compatible license. If you download the PDF you'll find the matching content on page 157. Copying text directly from a source is a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, the content had to be removed. Content you add to Wikipedia should be written in your own words. Please let me know if you have any questions. — Diannaa (talk) 10:42, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll take a closer look and either reword or use a quote for this sentence that was copied: "According to one early observer looking at the state of the field, ‘capacity building’ is simply being used as a ‘buzz word’ by international agencies for whatever they wish to do, with or without any accountability or logic (Enemark, 2003)" EMsmile (talk) 12:18, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

It's always better to write things in your own words rather than using unnecessary quotations.— Diannaa (talk) 14:40, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, sometimes quotes are justified, I don't think you can make a blanket statement about "unnecessary quotations". I am confused about a recent change you made to Capacity building. The revision history doesn't show me a change but on my watchlist it showed up like this: "Editor's summary: RD1: Violations of copyright policy". As far as I know, any sentences that were included from another publication were either paraphrased or they were provided as a quotation. Did I miss anything? I can try to convert some of the quotes into paraphrased text but I think some quotes are unavoidable for an article of this nature. EMsmile (talk) 00:56, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Some of it was quotations, but you also copied the surrounding prose. You can see what I mean by looking at the bot report. Click on the iThenticate link to view the overlapping material.— Diannaa (talk) 01:29, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, Oh yes, I see it now. Sorry about that. I have corrected it now by shortening and paraphrasing. The problem was that I worked with a content expert who gave me text blocks to use for this article. However, he partly seems to have copied from his own publications, even though I thought I had explained to him the copyright thing. People often think that if it's their own paper, they can just copy text blocks. I should have double checked. Just now I ran "Earwig's Copyvio Detector" and it's not showing any more problems. - However, what I am not clear on, did you delete any versions/text/sentences recently? I saw that edit on 9 June and that's clear to me. But I don't understand which change was made today, or whether the RD1 in the editor's summary was more of an internal note? EMsmile (talk) 02:12, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I removed the content on the 10th and did the revision deletion on the 15th according to the log. I sometimes postpone doing the revision deletion so that the user has time to review the edit to understand what I removed and why.— Diannaa (talk) 02:21, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

OK thank you, then I think everything with this article should be in order now. EMsmile (talk) 02:37, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

National varieties of English

Hi EMsmile. I thought I'd respond to part of your question on Talk:Sustainable energy here, as it's not article-specific. I'm curious - where is it recorded that WP:MED settled on American English? Also, FYI there is some useful background here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Enforce_American_or_British_spelling . Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:41, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Clayoquot, ah, I thought it was a rule in their style guide but upon closer inspection it seems to have been only an unwritten rule or perhaps just the preference of User:Doc_James... I thought it was a good (unwritten) rule. I am not talking about converting all articles from one English variant to the other. I am talking about those articles that are perhaps new or editors are undecided and don't mind one way or another. In that case the unwritten rule was "might as well use American English then". Or perhaps the majority of very active editors in WikiProject Medicine were from North America anyhow. Or perhaps it was just James' preference. I am not sure. I've written on the talk page of WikiProject Medicine today to ask about it here. For the much smaller, less significant, WikiProject Sanitation we did write into its style guide that American English would be preferred, see here. Not with the intention to force anyone. Just to provide guidance whenever someone says "I don't mind either way - which English variant should we choose for this article?". EMsmile (talk) 08:08, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

With respect to our discussion on the proposed sewage/sewage treatment merger, I want to make a few comments here because they apply less to the merits of that proposal than to our communication on the subject. I want to express my admiration for your command of the English language. You may have heard the adage: What do you call a person fluent in three languages? - trilingual; What do you call a person fluent in two languages? - bilingual; What do you call a person fluent in a single language? - an American. I'm embarrassed to suffer the latter affliction. Written communication has the disadvantage of denying opportunity for prompt recognition of visual cues indicating misunderstanding. I try to use an expanded vocabulary in written communication to convey contextual nuances which may be less obvious to people for whom English, and more specifically the Maine accent is not their native language. I apologize if any of my merger comments might be interpreted as anything less than respect for your significant contributions to Wikipedia. I agree with you this merger issue is a matter of personal preference. Thewellman (talk) 03:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Copying licensed material requires attribution

Hi. I see in a recent addition to Fecal sludge management you included material from a webpage that is available under a compatible Creative Commons Licence. That's okay, but you have to give attribution so that our readers are made aware that you copied the prose rather than wrote it yourself. It's also required under the terms of the license. I've added the attribution for this particular instance. Please make sure that you follow this licensing requirement when copying from compatibly-licensed material in the future. — Diannaa (talk) 19:08, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, thank you for this! I wasn't sure how best to do this because it's the first time that I did a plain copy and paste from an open access publication. Normally I reword it but in this case I felt the wording was good also for laypersons, so left it as it is. However, what happens later when people start to build on what I have added and perhaps modify the text further? Would it be better if the explanatory note provides the date or revision number in case it becomes later obsolete as it's converted to "original prose"? Also, I have seen for some other Wikipedia articles a note at the bottom like for onsite sewage facility. It says there:

• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Environmental Protection Agency, Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems Manual, Retrieved 2015-02-08

Is that good practice though? (the pdf file link doesn't work anymore, I just discovered) Later, editors have no way of knowing which content came from that particular publication. Also I have worked on articles that had a similar statement at the bottom but after re-writing the article very comprehensively, I felt I had to remove that tag. Was I right in doing that? EMsmile (talk) 01:37, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

We also have a template {{CCBYSASource}} which has a field for the Wikipedia revision number at which the material was copied. Modifying the prose is allowed under the terms of the license, so it's okay to do that. I haven't heard of anyone else removing the attribution later. I personally would leave it in place -it doesn't do any harm. Regardless, the source article should still be present as a citation even if the content eventually is completely re-worked. Personally I don't think adding a template at the bottom of an article is very helpful because like you say it's vague as to what came from that particular document. Including it as part of an inline citation is a lot more helpful than a general statement— Diannaa (talk) 02:18, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 6

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August 2021

Your edit to Water scarcity has been removed in whole or in part, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. — Diannaa (talk) 12:56, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa I am not aware of copyright violation in my recent work at water scarcity. I thought I marked everything clearly as direct quotes or I paraphrased the content. Can you please show me the text that you removed so that I can rework it? I am pretty sure everything was above board even if it was quite a bit of quoted text but clearly marked with quotation marks. EMsmile (talk) 13:07, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I have temporarily undone the revision deletion so you can see and fix it.— Diannaa (talk) 13:16, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Diannaa. I have reworked the text in question and I think it should pass now, so you can delete that other revision again. EMsmile (talk) 13:46, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for reaching out

You are very kind for both your comments about Usernames and your interest in collaboration. We are currently struggling through various trainings and exercises. The Evaluate an article template wasn't properly locked, got edited by one of my students, and left the rest of the class thoroughly confused about how to negotiate Wikipedia. I'm now in damage control mode. Under normal circumstances I would happily collaborate with you, but my students are already anxious about interacting in the mainspace, so asking them to veer off the path they're currently on seems unfair. Also, tensions are high on campus due to the ongoing pandemic. Status quo is best for us at this time. If I decide to do this project next Fall, I may reach out to you in the summer and begin with this type of collaboration in mind. That way, I can start the semester understanding how you rate articles and students will learn that from the beginning. The topics you focus on are all relevant to my Chemistry of Water class. Thanks again!--Chemkatz (talk) 19:32, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

(this continues the conversation that I had started here) Chemkatz, ah, yes, that sounds rather hectic! Well good look with your course "Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment". The offer is there. Wikipedia can feel like a lonely and a little bit hostile place to newcomers. So if any of your students (who are editing those articles that are also part of my interest) need a bit of extra support or guidance, they are welcome to reach out. There are usually always 5% of students in a course who want to do a bit extra and who might even become longer-term Wikipedia editors, so they might welcome this opportunity. Please refer them to my project page and tell them they can get in touch on the talk pages or directly. Of those articles that have been assigned to your students so far, these are the ones that I am also interested in because they related to SDG 6 or SDG 14 and have high pageviews: ocean acidification, water scarcity, aquifers, fresh water, water scarcity in Africa, waterborne diseases, Great Pacific garbage patch, marine debris, groundwater pollution, nutrient pollution, water resources, water pollution, Indian Ocean garbage patch, drinking water, microplastics. EMsmile (talk) 00:33, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

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Attribution needed

Hallo, your creation of Talk:Marine_plastic_pollution/Archive_1 triggered an alert for me because my name was included ... I'm sure it's part of your praiseworthy tidying up of the whole area of Plastic Soup / Marine Pollution, but it would be useful if you gave this new page some context by saying that it was copied from (I presume) Talk:Plastic Soup as it stood on date xyz, and so on. Otherwise the comments don't make sense. The {{copied}} template might be useful. Thanks. PamD 13:44, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, yes, sorry, I think I have corrected that now by adding a tag at the top of the talk page, sorry about that PamD. I just tried to create the first archive page of the talk page of marine plastic pollution. Hope I did it correctly. EMsmile (talk) 13:50, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

No, I've realised it wasn't a problem, as this was an archive page, and the page history of the main talk page shows what it was moved from etc so all makes sense and I was getting in a muddle. Sorry about that! PamD 13:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

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A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Excellent work on reorganizing and condensing the article on Sustainability Sunray (talk) 21:55, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Sunray, very kind of you! I feel that we're only half way through with the article. Still needs more work, and so does the one on sustainable development which overlaps a bit. EMsmile (talk) 22:45, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Barnstar

		Global Warming and Climate Change Barnstar
		Thank you for your contributions to climate-related articles and discussions. If you already have this barnstar, I will be happy to provide a different one. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 20:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Pyrrho the Skeptic, much appreciated! I wish we had another 100 volunteers for this topic as so much remains to be done... EMsmile (talk) 22:46, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Happy holidays

		Little Christmas card
		Wishing you a Happy holiday season, and all best wishes for the New Year! The photo of this White-breasted Nuthatch is not upside down. Femke (talk) 18:38, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

		Season's Greetings
		Here's wishing you a marvellous holiday and the best of 2022 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:57, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Sea surface temperature

Sea surface temperature has been nominated for a community 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) 11:33, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Capacity building

Hi EMsmile, my ping to you in that talk page did not work out, but I replied to your comments on that page. Cheers and thanks for the excellent work.Tytire (talk) 11:43, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Tytire, thanks for that. I've replied on the talk page of capacity building now. Thanks for the ping. EMsmile (talk) 13:28, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Tx. I regret I don't have the time now. I am busy on other projects. This is a large domain with a tonne of literature. See also my earlier second comment to that talk page in a lower section. Cheers. Tytire (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Tytire Yea, time constraints is always a problem for all of us. However, I didn't see in your talk page comments any mention of particular publications. Perhaps if you can list there the top 3 publications that you'd say should be consulted and utilised, this will be useful for the next editor who comes along and has time. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 10:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The main point I tried to convey is to have a background in public administration. The decontextualised summary of aid guidelines on the topic is already there. Tytire (talk) 12:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I still don't get what "to have a background in public administration" means with regards to editing the page. If you could recommend a few publications that would really help. - I'll copy this across to the talk page of the article so that we (or others) can discuss it there further). Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 09:47, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Help with edit request on GoodLeap page

Hi EMsmile. I am Jesse and I recently posted an edit request to Talk:GoodLeap, a company that is working to bring solar power to homeowners in the United States. You can see their Wiki article here. I saw that you are an active member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change/Participants, and thought you might want to help out with this company's page. I really would appreciate if you could look at my edit request and implement whatever you agree adds value to the page. Thanks so much. JesseGoodLeap (talk) 16:48, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Pollution Prevention is an American thing (apparently)

Just wondering if you have ever looked at Pollution prevention? It had escaped my notice until today and I really wish that I hadn't looked. Apparently pollution prevention is an American thing and doesn't appear to happen anywhere else! Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   20:25, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi Velella, I hadn't noticed that article before. I am wondering if we are not better off changing the article title to "Pollution prevention legislation in the United States" and then leave it alone. I don't feel particularly motivated to work on it. It has pretty low pageviews (around 200 views per month). I don't think it should even exist because pollution prevention is just the opposite of pollution and should therefore be integrated into pollution, shouldn't it? Same with e.g. water pollution - we don't have a separate article on "water pollution prevention". By the way, did you still want to discuss the structure of that article (water pollution) at this stage or leave it for now? I won't have much time for that one in the next few weeks; currently busy with effects of climate change and sustainability. EMsmile (talk) 08:35, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Sensible solution. I will revert my additions and move it to a better title. I too find the whole thing odd and it may be a target for a merger into a more main-stream article at some time. I will have another look at water pollution , but every time I look I get disheartened by the complexity of the whole article and how we represent cause, constituent and effect in a logical way without overlap. I will look again, but I will make no promises that it will productive. Thanks  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   17:44, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Paper you may be interested in

Hi EMsmile,

Based on some of our past conversations, I wanted to make sure you were aware of this new paper, about "Effective Communication About Pregnancy, Birth, Lactation, Breastfeeding and Newborn Care: The Importance of Sexed Language". I found it very interesting. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:36, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Crossroads, that is a brilliant paper. I love it. Have you thought about how to include it in the menstruation article (and possibly also Menstrual hygiene management)? I think it ought to be cited. I am also going to recommend it to my colleagues, e.g. in this thread on the SuSanA discussion forum where we talked about the term "menstruator". I like how they caution against "Cultural Imperialism in Global Public Health", something which I felt was the case but couldn't put a word to it. In my dealings through my work in the WASH sector, I've noticed that it's mostly Global North people pushing for the de-sexed language, not Global South people... EMsmile (talk) 09:28, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Let's bring effects of climate change to GA

Also pinging @Chidgk1. With the three of us working on it together, this should be feasible, right? I think bringing it to GA will allow us to completely sort out all the duplication and low-quality sourcing brought about by the merging. And it'll feel great to know that we're only having to update 1, rather than 5, articles. Femke (talk) 18:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene Thanks for your confidence in my abilities and I see it is a rather important article. But sorry not promising anything as I have one article being GA reviewed right now and 2 I put in the GA queue about a week ago which really need expanding to be GA standard. As they are all country specific I am 99% sure nobody else is going to edit them much if I don't (even the equivalent Turkish article is not being edited, which is surprising as electricity is now a hot political issue here). Hope you can find someone else to help. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:13, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene yes, sounds good to me! I'm in. I've never been involved in the GA process. My philosophy so far has been to bring lots of articles from C to B, or from Start to B. But not to spend too much time on just one bringing it to higher than B. But I'm happy to give it a go for this one. Hopefully we'll pull in some collaborators as well. Would GA automatically mean no excerpts though? I feel that topics that have detailed numbers which change with new publications should be dealt with in one place and then transcribed from there. This applies in particular to ocean acidification, sea level rise, retreat of glaciers since 1850, I think. But perhaps we can discuss this further on in the process later. EMsmile (talk) 08:36, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

One of the reasons I'm proposing this is to make you familiar with the GA process. Writing a few GAs will probably make your Bs stronger too :).

More than three people working together would lead to too much overhead.

Excerpts are allowed in GAs, but individual reviewers may wonder and argue against them. Of course, the inclusion of retreat of glaciers without citations wouldn't go, but there is a strong consensus against that forming in the current RfC anyway. While I'm willing to update sea level rise before our GAN, the glacier article is too much work for too little gain (low viewership) to update, so it would be faster to get the old text back or write something separate for that section. Femke (talk) 17:09, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Beland: fancy joining us in this effort :)? Femke (talk) 08:07, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: I'm sorry, I've already spent way too much time on this article when I have many other issues I'm trying to wrap up, but I wish you good editing! -- Beland (talk) 08:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Water sachet

FYI, discovered that this topic didn't exist yet: and know its within your domain of interest, Sadads (talk) 11:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Very nice, Sadads, have made a couple of small comments there. Have also added it to the list of articles for WikiProject Sanitation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sanitation#By_theme . You could also link to this new article from a few other articles, such as improved water source, WASH and alike. EMsmile (talk) 15:13, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wiki4Climate welcome note (newbies)

Template:Wiki4Climate welcome note (newbies) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 09:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wiki4Climate welcome note (oldies)

Template:Wiki4Climate welcome note (oldies) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 09:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Copyright problem on Water security

Hello EMsmile. Content you added to the above article appears to have been copied from https://reachwater.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/REACH-climate-report.pdf, which is not released under a compatible license. Copying text directly from a source is a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, the content had to be removed. Content you add to Wikipedia should be written in your own words. Please let me know if you have any questions. — Diannaa (talk) 21:14, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, could you please send me the deleted text blocks so that I can rework it? You could either temporarily undelete it or send it to me through the Wikipedia e-mailing function. I am assuming it was text from the Ethiopia and Bangladesh sections? Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 21:45, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Correct. YGM— Diannaa (talk) 22:46, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll rework those text blocks now. EMsmile (talk) 09:53, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa if you have time, could you check if my reworked section on Bangladesh is OK now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_security#Bangladesh)? I think there should no longer be a copyright issue. EMsmile (talk) 14:00, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

The new version looks okay. Thanks,— Diannaa (talk) 20:40, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Signing in articles

Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. I've noticed that you have been adding your signature to some of your edits to articles, such as the edit you made to Water pollution. This is a common mistake to make and has probably already been corrected. Please do not sign your edits to article content, as the article's edit history serves the function of attributing contributions, so you only need to use your signature to make discussions more readable, such as on article talk pages or project pages such as the Village Pump. If you would like further information about distinguishing types of pages, please see What is an article? Again, thank you for contributing, and enjoy your Wikipedia experience! Thank you. - Arjayay (talk) 21:55, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Arjayay, oh that was an embarrassing mistake of mine! Thanks for pointing it out. I was rushing my edits, working on article and talk pages in parallel. Will make sure it doesn't happen again. :-)

Marine resources moved to draftspace

An article you recently created, Marine resources, is not suitable as written to remain published, and more content. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

AfC notification: Draft:Marine resources has a new comment

I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:Marine resources. Thanks! Robert McClenon (talk) 03:11, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

climate change article

Your edit summary is a little confusing to laymans. Could you perhaps explain it, either here, or on the article talk page? Do you feel it is an issue regarding RS or editor consensus? Sorry to be so nosy. DN (talk) 00:56, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi DN, I was referring to the discussion that is taking place here. Does that clarify things? And we might not have reached consensus yet, I am not sure. EMsmile (talk) 07:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Excerpt function

Yes, let us take it that moving forward there will be good faith. However, I prefer publicly transparent exchanges. There are issues with the excerpt function. We had an earlier discussion about that. I think the excerpt function is a good idea that can be seriously useful when used in the right way. You have often used the function appropriately, and have improved and rationalised a number of article. But it is a powerful function that, with very little effort on the part of inappropriate users, could result in havoc.

It is a new function with unaddressed teething problems. One of the issues is that if you have an article on your watchlist with an excerpt from another article, and someone edits the relevant text in the originating article (changes the subtitle for example), then there is no notification on your watchlist and you will not know if inappropriate changes have happened.

A more serious issue, and the one that bothers me, is that some articles do not lend themselves at all to making simple excerpts from other articles. The reason why the excerpts can be inappropriate can be nuanced, and I fear that this nuance will result in the excerpt function being used widely in inappropriate ways. A case in point is Human impact on marine life, which was the focus of our earlier discussion. To recapitulate, the issue there was that sections on marine polution and plastic pollution were replaced with excerpts from other (parent) articles. But in this case the substitutions were not appropriate. The article Human impact on marine life is focused on how marine life is affected by human impacts. But the article on marine pollution is focused on how pollution affects the marine environment. These are different foci. I eventually removed the excerpt functions when subsequent edits to the parent articles used for the excerpts were changing the excerpts in unpredictable and aggrevating ways, with no notifications on the watchlist for the article itself. The article was becoming something else, and ceasing to be about what was happening to marine life. — Epipelagic (talk) 10:29, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks for getting back to me Epipelagic. I take your points on the excerpt and promise to be more careful in future / discuss first on the talk page if there are any doubts. I am looking at this article today: Aquatic ecosystem - would you say that the excerpts used there are justified? When I added them in a while ago my intention was to reduce overlap between aquatic ecosystem, freshwater ecosystem, lake ecosystem, river ecosystem, ... So I think when it's an overview of "types" of something then it works quite well, would you agree? - And point taken about the watchlist + excerpts. I remember seeing a discussion on that and I think/hope it'll be addressed eventually (see here). EMsmile (talk) 10:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the excerpts work well and appropriately in the Types section on the Aquatic ecosystem page. — Epipelagic (talk) 11:27, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Reversal of edits by new users

Hi EMsmile, It's been a while. How have you been?

I am doing a series of training to introduce new editors to Wikipedia and have them edit Wikipedia articles related to the SDGs. I just noticed some of their edits were reversed which is quite discouraging for new editors. Let me know if there is anything I can do to reduce that and also if there are any tasks new editors might find easier. New ideas will be appreciated.

In the meanwhile, here is a link to the Meta page and Wikipedia page to see what we have been up to Wikipedia:Meetup/Wiki Loves SDGs Campus Tour (should have been signed by User:Prithee P. EMsmile (talk) 17:16, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:Prithee P that sounds like an interesting project! If you tell mw the user names of those newbies whose edits were reverted, I can take a look. Or tell me which Wikipedia articles they worked on. It might have been me who reverted some edits? Especially for the SDG articles I find people sometimes add information that is non encyclopedic in nature. I can explain further if you give me some examples. - Please also don't forget to sign on talk pages with the four tildes: ~~~~ to produce a signature such as this one: EMsmile (talk) 17:16, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Natural disaster

Hi ... you are right, I should not have changed the wording of a quotation from another source. I did not notice the origin when I changed "in the event" to "if". Usually, "if" is a better and shorter way of expressing the wordy "in the event that", but in this case should have been left alone. Thanks for noticing it. Cheers. Friothaire (talk) 14:35, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Friothaire. Let's continue this conversation about this and other improvements on the talk page of natural disaster. EMsmile (talk) 09:47, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Check out my new article

Hi Elizabeth,

How are you doing?

I noticed Climate of Nigeria did not have it's own article rather a redirect link to Geography of Nigeria. I looked through the edit summmary and talk page of 'Geography of Nigeria' article and it was created sometime way back in 2012 (I guess) and was joined because of lack of citations/data. I believe there are more content on the climate of Nigeria and worked on creating one in a draft and I am done. Draft:Climate of Nigeria

I wanted to seperate them like Climate of the United States and Geography of the United States. However, I noticed the 'Geography of Nigeria' was a B article and removing content from it might reduce it's quality so I decided not to.

Would appreciate if you could go through the draft as you are more experienced and let me know what you think.

Many thanks,

Prithee P (talk) 18:21, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

P.S I didn't forget to sign out this time. Prithee P (talk) 18:21, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a redirect from Climate of Nigeria to Geography of Nigeria and I don't know how to redirect it to the draft article. Would appreciate if you know how Prithee P (talk) 19:15, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Prithee P, I've written on the talk page here to ask for feedback: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AClimate_of_Nigeria#Draft_article_(July_2022). I think you need to add more inline citations for it, especially in the first half of the article. I don't think that you can change the redirect to a draft article. But in general, redirects are easy to change in the source editor. By the way, have you seen this one: climate change in Nigeria? I would find that one even more exciting to work on than climate in Nigeria. EMsmile (talk) 14:29, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for taking time to respond and always been available. Would definitely add more citations like you advised.

I was also the editor that started the climate change in Nigeria article in 2020 and i think some aspects needs updating. Thanks for bringing it to my notice,

Many thanks, Prithee P (talk) 21:06, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

GoodLeap

Hi EMsmile, back in February you were quite helpful with my edit request for GoodLeap. I have a new edit request recently posted at Talk:GoodLeap#Update company numbers and add two awards. I would so much appreciate if you could take the time to implement the request, or at least tell me which of those edits you think I could make directly, since I believe they are non-controversial, so maybe you do, too. Thanks so much. JesseGoodLeap (talk) 13:51, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi, JesseGoodLeap, OK, done, written on the talk page there. EMsmile (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I want to know about long term and short tem rain fall priduction of gujrat in india

I can't speak English very wel but I can talk slowly in English So we can talk 2405:205:C868:C488:6F4:EE43:2D25:F058 (talk) 02:45, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Try Climate change in India as a starting point... EMsmile (talk) 08:37, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

September 2022

Your edit to Water security has been removed in whole or in part, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. — Diannaa (talk) 21:08, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, please let me know which sentences you objected to in this edit? I have been very careful to either use quotation marks or to paraphrase & summarise when I take content from publications that are not open access. If you tell me what the content was (send me an e-mail if necessary, please), I can improve it. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

YGM — Diannaa (talk) 22:42, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. So it was those sentences about the “trans-boundary hydrologic legacy". I had already tried to paraphrase that content but will have to try harder & try again. EMsmile (talk) 23:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Explaining reverts

I see you've taken a more active role reverting poor edits on climate change. Really appreciate the extra pair of eyes! I noticed you did not provide an explanation in the last two instances however ([1], [2]). Per Wikipedia:REVEXP, an explanation is best practice. It can be just one or two words (like "too detailed"), or a short sentence external links should not be placed in the body. I know you're passionate about helping new editors, and giving them a bit of guidance on why their contributions didn't stay is important for that :). Femke (talk) 16:09, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi Femke, thanks, and true, I only wrote "reverted good faith edits by new user", should have said more. I've tried to get in touch with the organisers of this event (the editor had mentioned #CfACP in their edit summary). Turns out it's this event: Code for Africa Climate Change Project - Meta (wikimedia.org) (I found out through the Telegram group Wikimedians for Sustainable Development). I think it's important that the organisers explain to their participants that the main climate change article has a different status than all the sub-articles. Any edits to there should really be discussed on the talk page first. EMsmile (talk) 17:55, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Great you found the group. I did an unsuccesful search myself.

I think it's important we don't treat climate change as too different from other articles. There is an informal agreement with the core group non-trivial changes to the lead should get prior consensus, but overall, WP:BEBOLD is still the guiding policy. WP:FAOWN just says it is considerate to discuss significant changes of text or images on the talk page first. Discussing too much on talk can lead to a status-quo bias, and perhaps a bit of fatigue among the regulars. Femke (talk) 18:03, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

OK, point taken. :-) EMsmile (talk) 21:03, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	Excellent work on Ocean temperature, bringing together a thorough package of information in short order. BD2412 T 04:43, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, User:BD2412 your note means a lot to me and made my week! And I have to say: you helped us enormously here in the process as the discussion about "redirect to where, disambiguation page or new article" had become stuck, and you managed to cut through the knot! - I'm planning to do more work on the Ocean temperature soon and hope that others who are more knowledgeable on the topic than me, will also help. EMsmile (talk) 09:06, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Hayes Barnard

Hi EMsmile. This is just a gentle nudge to ask you to please have a look at a recent edit request I posted at Talk:Hayes Barnard#Early life, Career and Personal life. The edits are pretty straightforward. I would so much appreciate it if you could implement those edits, or allow me to implement them directly. Thanks so much. JesseGoodLeap (talk) 20:38, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

November 2022

Your edits to Climate change mitigation and Climate engineering have been removed in whole or in part, as it appears you added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. — Diannaa (talk) 14:35, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

This is your fourth warning. Please stop adding copyright material to Wikipedia, or you risk being blocked from editing. Thank you. — Diannaa (talk) 14:37, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, you can see from my work that I always do my best to avoid copyright infringement (and that I fix it straight away if it gets pointed out to me). Therefore, I find it a bit unfair that you say now "this is your fourth warning. Please stop adding copyright material to Wikipedia, or you risk being blocked from editing". For someone like me who does so many edits (nearly 40,000 edits in total and over 5000 edits in main space in this year alone), it can happen that a copyright problem slips through. You might think some of my paraphrasing is not sufficient whereas I find it sufficient. See e.g. in this change. There is often only a limited number of ways to say the same thing! A statement such as "The global energy system is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions." is pretty much a statement along the lines of "the sky is blue". Do you want me to put it in quotation marks? Or change the order of the words to "The largest source of carbon dioxide emissions is the global energy system"? (then you copyright detection tool wouldn't have picked it up?) Regarding the climate engineering article I don't even know what I am being accused of there. I am not even sure what you have removed there? The six technologies that are mentioned on Page 30 are included as a bullet point list under "overview". As far as I can see this is not a copyright violation as similar lists can also be found in other reports such as the IPCC reports. Please clarify. - Coming back to your mention of "fourth warning" so are you saying with the fifth/sixth etc. warning I will be blocked? Don't you think you also have to consider over what time period we are talking and how many thousands of edits I have made in the meantime which were all OK and helpful? I might get so scared by your stern warning that I either stop editing at all or that I put everything in quotation marks! Is that the solution? Please be reasonable and don't threaten me with blockage after 4 times of copyright infringement in 8 years of editing on Wikipedia (I am not sure when you started counting). EMsmile (talk) 17:40, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

You can see here how I have now tried to address the copyright problem for content from the IPCC report in the climate change mitigation article. For some of the listing of things I could not come up with a better way than to use quotation marks around the lists. The only other option would be to find an alternative term for each of those terms - which seems very artificial. See also here: Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing: "Limited close paraphrasing is also appropriate if there are only a limited number of ways to say the same thing.". EMsmile (talk) 17:52, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Everybody who edits Wikipedia is required to follow our copyright policy, regardless of the length of their service or the number of their edits. Every single edit you make, whether large or small, has to comply with that policy. Nothing should "slip through"; you must be aware when you are copying and when you are writing original content (which is a lot harder to do, I know). If you can't think of a way to summarize the content in your own words, it's better to leave it out than to risk being blocked.

You say that you believe your paraphrasing is adequate, and that may very well be so. I would havew to see some examples. But the content I removed from these two articles was not paraphrased at all; it was copied unaltered. That's a clear violation of our copyright policy.

Using quotation marks is better than nothing, but in my opinion it's almost always possible to re-word or summarize content in your own words. Wikipedia is not intended to be a collection of quotations, but rather prose written by our editors specifically for Wikipedia.

For your specific example "The global energy system is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions", the way I would do it is to find out what the term "global energy system" actually means, and substitute that. I discover it means "energy use", which currently nowadays is fossil fuels. So I would re-word it to say "As of 2022, energy use, primarily through the use of fossil fuels, is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions."

Regarding climate engineering, the bullet points are still there, and it's perfectly ok to add such lists, but I removed the descriptions of each point, which were copied unaltered from this document, page 30. Each item has a Wikipedia article; you could have copied from those articles (while providing the attribution required by the terms of our license; please see WP:CWW if you need more information on that), or youy could have written your own content.

Four warnings for copyright in eight years is four more than the vast majority of Wikipedia editors of your tenure have received. Don't think that you are immune from being blocked. This is a warning, not a threat. I want you to continue editing, but you have to do so strictly within the confines of our copyright policy. — Diannaa (talk) 20:06, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Four warnings in 8 years and 40,000 edits is pretty good if you ask me. I don't mind your warnings (as they help me to improve) but I don't like to live with this anxiety that if I make one more mistake then "Bam! - that's it: Blocked from editing!" Mistakes do happen. We are all just human. So with each additional mistake that I make I now have the fear of being blocked? The WP:close paraphrasing is not always clear cut. I am upset that you treat me the same like someone who has made 10 edits and 4 of them resulted in copyright infringement and they had no explanation whatsoever. Surely you cannot put me and someone like into the same basket!?

With regards to "global energy systems", I don't know where you read that energy systems equals energy use? Like the next sentence says "energy systems are defined to consist of "energy supply, energy transformation, and energy transportation and transmission"". So it's a whole system. I don't think I should have to find a different word for "energy system". Do I also have to find different words for all these terms?: "Recommended measures includes: "reduced fossil fuel consumption, increased production from low- and zero carbon energy sources, and increased use of electricity and alternative energy carriers"? I guess so. Of course I could simply delete the sentence. I think such a sentence in quotation marks is still better than not having this information at all. Maybe one of the other page watchers can come up with alternative words for each one. Then we can drop the quotation marks afterwards. EMsmile (talk) 21:35, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I assume these are rhetorical questions, and you are venting. If not, please let me know and I will attempt to answer them. — Diannaa (talk) 21:57, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

You don't have to answer them. You probably have dozens of similar copyright issues and discussion going on at once with lots of different editors. I do want you to know that I do understand the copyright infringement issues in theory and I do always try to adhere to all Wikipedia policies but that I cannot guarantee that I will never make a copyright infringement mistake again (I am only human). This makes me anxious. I guess I just have to live with that. EMsmile (talk) 22:33, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

This is an extraordinarily difficult area in which to write clear prose that is both unambiguous and politically neutral. This whole area is impossibly fraught with political melodramas overlying a a surprisingly robust scientific consensus. Choosing the right word, or the right turn of phrase is critical to the understanding of the topic, but get it wrong then all the political malcontents arise "en masse" to complain. Not just here on Wikipedia but in the real world and in some areas of the popular press. The proposal that "it's almost always possible to re-word or summarize content in your own words" is itself potentially contentious when scientific authors and political representatives have often spend weeks,choosing a very precise language that conveys the critical thinking yet never overstepping the statistical confidence of the scientific modelling. As a consequence, I have great respect for the contributions of EMsmile in seeking to convey that balance and authority. However, I do also understand and support the copyvio policy, but I do believe that there must be a more collaborative way of getting to the best outcome without threatening blocks. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to think of a Wikipedia forum that might be able to assist in providing guidance or even policy where there is a need to tread such a fine line of precision without stepping over into close paraphrasing.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   22:47, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Velella, it's great to read these words from you. You've hit the problem on the head for those IPCC reports, which I am currently using a lot in my Wikipedia work (IPCC Sixth Assessment Report). Their "summaries for policy makers" or "technical summary" are often fine tuned to the n-th degree and thus very hard to paraphrase without changing any meaning. It would be wonderful to work on that kind of stuff in a collaborative spirit, not under the threat being banished. (that other example of climate engineering I have to say mea culpa, I slipped up on that one, somehow I thought taking content from a table is treated differently; it might have been one of my late nights of editing (not an excuse but an explanation) but yes, it was my mistake). EMsmile (talk) 22:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Granting confirmation to other accounts

Hello, EMsmile. I noticed that you have recently begun adding users to the confirmed user group (AquariusTom, Richarit). You have the technical ability to do so due to your membership of the eventcoordinator group. However, as the name of the group suggests, it is meant to facilitate your role co-ordinating outreach programmes on Wikipedia. Grants of confirmed should not be made for users that are not participating in such events.

There are usage standards here: among other things, you should not grant the user group indefinitely. If you feel that a non-event participant should be given access to semi-protected pages, you should carry out an edit requested by them or ask them to request access and allow administrators to decide. Further inappropriate use of your access may unfortunately lead to revocation of access. Sdrqaz (talk) 16:31, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi Sdrqaz, thank you for your notice and I apologise for my mistake. I don't normally add any users to that user group (these were the only two I have added since I got the permission to do so about two years ago). I was hoping it would be OK that I add them because this is part of this project, and I felt that I could judge them to be "safe/good". I thought one could say this is an "event" as well, just a very long one (two years). But I guess "events" only applies for short time periods. Also, I was confused about the time limit versus "indefinitely". I wasn't sure if by setting a time limit these users will automatically be set back when the time limit is reached, or not, depending on their edits. So there was a bit of confusion on my end. Thank you for linking more to the standards page, I'll read that and learn. EMsmile (talk) 09:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

This is very much delayed – my apologies. This seems to me like a bit of a grey area, but I would say that it's advisable not to use your tools for this project, due to its relatively open-ended nature in comparison to most outreach programmes that last a day or maybe reach a week or two at most. As for what happens when the time limit is reached, if they don't have the ten edits and four days of tenure, they'll revert as before. If they do, nothing will change from their perspective. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:40, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Sdrqaz, thanks for your reply. I am just wondering what you would be scared of: that I give lots of people editing permission who then turn out to be vandals? Given my track record on Wikipedia don't you think this is highly unlikely? In any case, I don't think it would happen often that I would feel the need to give someone the autoconfirmed status. So far it's only been 2 people and I am not planning to do any more, given your warning/advice. However, I am wondering: if I did like to get the kind of status where I could give people the autoconfirmed status (even outside of a week-long event), then what would I have to do? Would I have to try to get admin status or is there also a level below that (i.e. in between normal editor and admin). If admin is the way to go, do you think I'd have any chance of getting that? I've also read WP:CANDIDATE but I don't want to waste my time applying if it would be quite clear from the outset that I wouldn't qualify. EMsmile (talk) 07:45, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

There are no permissions short of admin that allow you to give people confirmed status in this grey area.

I don't think you would pass an WP:RfA with your current record. You need a really strong grasp of policies, including in some back-end areas, and the right temperament. I think nobody can fault your temperament, but policy wise, you still have some way to go. You're unlikely to pass with multiple copyright warnings in the last year. You would probably also want to write one or two WP:GAs, and become active in places like WP:AfD, WP:AfC, WP:NPP, or any other background process. For more concrete advice, see WP:Advice for RfA candidates. One of the more-cited user essays on de facto criteria is User:Kudpung/RfA_criteria#My_criteria, even if it may be a bit on the strict side for somebody whose core strength is content creation. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:40, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks for this feedback. I think I'll stick to content creation work in this case and not pursue reaching admin status. I take my hat off to all those people who are admins and sink their time and energy into WP:AfD, WP:AfC, WP:NPP - some of it is probably quite tedious work and maybe less satisfying than content creation work (at least for me it would be). But probably some people love that kind of work so it's good that we have someone for everything. EMsmile (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Working with IPCC reports and using other sources

I've removed some more text from climate change mitigation. Diannaa will be able to assess this better, but copying long section titles may not be appropriate either. More importantly, the IPCC language is about 10x too difficult for a typical Wikipedia article. I do research on the topic, and even I couldn't quite understand what the text meant without going back to the IPCC. EMsmile, I think it would really really help if you slow down your editing. You edit at an incredible rate, and I'm sure you can edit much better if edit 25 or even 50% slower, at least for additions.

If you struggle with using the IPCC reports (as I do for quite a few topics), consider using other sources. There are a lot of high-quality sources written for a slightly more general audience (for instance, books by academic publishers). Because the IPCC has an extremely dense writing style, paraphrasing is more difficult. Always happy to help if you struggle to get access. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:48, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Oops yes, you are right for removing those bullet points, thanks. I had meant to get back to it and translate it into normal language but then I forgot. I have done it now, see [[3]]. I do think the demand side mitigation options were underrepresented in the climate change mitigation article so far, so content from chapter 5 is important. And yes, it's hard to work with the IPCC reports - it would be a lot easier if they were open access but even then we'd have to simplify their language, no doubt. Yes, please if you have suitable publications about climate change mitigation that we should use for the climate change mitigation article, please do point them out on that article's talk page. Note I don't have access to a university library though so conventional textbooks, or anything behind a paywall really, is difficult to use for me (and also difficult for our readers to verify). EMsmile (talk) 21:37, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Regarding slowing down: yes, the last two weeks were extremely busy weeks for me on Wikipedia (I also spent a lot of time on the ocean acidification article). It won't always be like this, don't worry. I won't always have this much time. Regarding the climate change mitigation article, I think I didn't rush into it too much: As you can see on the talk page, I first discussed the proposed changes in June (here), then I wrote more ideas about it in July, and then I came back to it on 7 November. After that it became pretty intense with lots of changes but I think those were necessary to make in a short timeframe when you have to restructure a whole article. But yes, overall you are right, it's problematic for one editor to stream ahead and not give the community a chance to catch up. I am mindful of that. Am planning to slow down. EMsmile (talk) 21:37, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm less concerned with you not giving the community a chance to respond, given ample warning on talk. I'm more concerned with the quality of additions. As a fellow non-native speaker, I have to spend a lot of time tweaking my prose to make it understandable. By editing this fast, I don't think you take that time. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:38, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The new edit is sufficiently clear that it can be simplified by other editors. It is still a bit too difficult, with words such as "psychological variables", "demand-site mitigation options" and "per capita". I also noted a bit of WP:SYNTH, which is now removed (nudge theory, which the IPCC is surprisingly not that negative about, was not mentioned in relation to rich individuals). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:58, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for a third message here. If you want to have freely available resources, I would switch to the emission gap report as one of your main sources. It's written mostly in English, rather than in academic. I can send you a few books by email that I used for sustainable energy if you'd like. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:08, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the clarification. So it's not the speed as such but more the accuracy in terms of citing from sources, not infringing on copyright and writing in a less academic style that you think I should focus on. Point taken.EMsmile (talk) 10:28, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

About the refs for the climate change mitigation article, that's a good tip about the emission gap report. And I'm interested in those books please (in general, I hesitate to use books that are behind a paywall because it makes it impossible for most of the other editors to verify that everything is right, even checking the page numbers is impossible unless one has access to the book's pdf file). Some books are on Google books but I never got my head around which books get onto Google books and which not. Let's move the move detailed discussion about climate change mitigation to its talk page now. EMsmile (talk) 10:28, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

It's your prerogative to choose sources as long as they meet Wikipedia's minimum standards. But I just wanted to point out that the community norm is to also use sources that are difficult or costly to access (WP:SOURCEACCESS). Personally, I see Wikipedia as being most valuable when it surfaces knowledge that is difficult to find for free on the web. We take knowledge that is not free and we make it free. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 14:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your message and noted about WP:SOURCEACCESS. I would say we aim to make knowledge accessible and understandable. So even "free" sources (like the IPCC reports) are not very accessible and understandable for lay persons. Our contribution is to make e.g. climate change topics understandable, to distill out the main content that people ought to know about and to make it interesting and enjoyable to read. I would use sources that are behind paywall if I have to but they are not my first preference. I find it almost "unfair" for my fellow Wikipedians who might want to WP:VERFIY what I have put there but can't easily do so unless they also get access to that paywalled source. But yes, sometimes a paywalled book is the best choice, e.g. I felt that the book by Christian Berg was worth taking content from for the sustainability article. Plus there are ways and means to get access to paywalled materials, some are in Google Books, some are in in Libgen etc. EMsmile (talk) 20:26, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

A goat for you!

Take this goat as proof that you are the goat. And thank you for your work in the dolphin article.

InfernaIBaze (talk) 02:05, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	For writing the whole of the natural hazards artical… I think InfernaIBaze (talk) 02:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Happy holidays from japan

	A Japanese flag
	As a native speaker of both English and Japanese I am happy to give you this flag. As a token of my appreciation for all the work you have done for the Wikipedia community. InfernaIBaze (talk) 02:12, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Individual action on climate change

Hi EMsmile. I just saw your edit (and comment) on Individual action on climate change. Thank you for moving the edits to a more appropriate space! Regarding adding the same survey results to multiple articles, I noted there are no other surveys with similar data on climate. Since it is based on respondents and actions in different countries, I thought it would be really valuable to add to multiple climate change articles. If they need to be removed that's totally fine. Thanks again! Noura2021 (talk) 11:06, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Noura2021 I am not so sure where this kind of content would fit optimally. Perhaps Public opinion on climate change - ah I see you have already put it there. No need to additionally put it somewhere else then, or? What makes this survey so important (honest question, not a rhetorical one)? EMsmile (talk) 20:29, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi again. I agree, I think the Public opinion article would probably be the best for this kind of info. I would argue that it's still useful to add it into other articles when the info is relevant, though, just in case people don't look at that particular article. I don't think there is another survey on public opinion as big as this one, including EU countries, the US, UK, and China (at least from what I have seen), so it's good to see the impact of different climate policies on people's lives - or what people are gravitating towards.

The data is also incredibly relevant at the moment regarding the energy crisis and climate crisis. This is why I think it's valuable, but I'd be happy to hear your thoughts? Noura2021 (talk) 13:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Yea, I am not sure. I think in the high level article on climate change mitigation it doesn't fit particularly well. I've actually just taken out some statements that you had probably added, see here. Perhaps rather move that to the article climate change in Europe? EMsmile (talk) 22:15, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

That's fine. I'll take a look at Climate change in Europe (and maybe US?), thanks for your help and work on this. Noura2021 (talk) 09:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

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cf your contribution in "urine"

Hi, you mention in the article Urine "Urine after four months of storage, ready to be used in gardening activities", with an image an all, do you have a link where it is explained why you have to leave it four months for it to be ready to be used in gardening? Thy, gardener SvenAERTS (talk) 05:09, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi SvenAERTS: If it's your own garden you can use your own urine directly. If the urine is collected from a whole community then the 4 months of storage is recommended for pathogen kill, just in case. I used to work in the area of urine-diverting dry toilets but it's now a while ago. See here for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine-diverting_dry_toilet#Urine. You might want to help improve and update those articles, i.e. Urine-diverting dry toilet and reuse of excreta if you have an interest in this topic. EMsmile (talk) 10:23, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

GOCE review of Sustainability

Thanks, User:Tdslk, much appreciated! I'll have a closer look in the coming days just to check if everything looks good now. I was disappointed to see various bits of vandalism to this article in December (before your edits). One of those vandal edits, on 13 December, removed the very good first sentence that we had found and this was not re-instated later when some of those edits were reverted. I've now applied again for page protection for this page (we had page protection earlier but not for long enough). EMsmile (talk) 12:07, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Sandbox (previous discussions on gender neutral language in medicine articles)

I don't want to take over the Talk:Menstrual cycle page with this tangent. The discussion at User talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 4 started because of the long and contentious discussion now archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 157#Discussion about article "Sex differences in medicine". As I said at the time, I didn't want that discussion to make other people avoid the regular WT:MED page, so we moved to another location. It turned out to be a good choice, given that User talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 4/Archive is over a million bytes (on the order of 150,000 words, so about as long as Crime and Punishment, but with far less literary value). At one point, I noticed that the number of page views was disproportionate to the number of participants. Lurking is not unusual for a discussion on a contentious subject.

I don't think that it makes sense to encourage people to join the discussion. I suspect that we've mostly said everything that needs to be said. All the options have advantages and disadvantages. Edit warring is bad. A practical step forward probably begins with a policy or guideline saying that editors are not only expected to write in their own words, but they are also expected to actively avoid outdated and incorrect word choices, and giving the example of a business changing its name. In such cases, we use the new name immediately, even if it's not in the individual cited source for that passage, and even if the majority of sources in an article use the prior name. If we added that to (e.g.) a MOS page now, then in a couple of years, maybe editors would have absorbed the principle that we're writing encyclopedia articles, instead of copying and pasting individual words out of sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, WhatamIdoing. But how is a newbie meant to find out about earlier discussions if there is no link or mention whatsoever to those discussions from the main page of WikiProject Medicine? The end result is that a new discussion is started from scratch without taking account previous discussions (unless an experienced person steps in and points to previous discussions). I think we owe it to new people to make it easier for them to find previous discussions, so that we don't start from zero each time, like we did here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Menstrual_cycle#Gender-neutral_language . I think User:Fireant314 might have emjoyed reading Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 157#Discussion about article "Sex differences in medicine" and User talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 4/Archive prior to asking their question. I am not saying re-starting or re-kindling those discussions but to make them easily findable from the WikiProject Medicine main page would be good. EMsmile (talk) 19:16, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Why would a newbie want to read a discussion that's longer than most novels and sometimes quite unpleasant? Nobody really enjoys reading discussions that alternate between being sad, angry, afraid, and aggressive.

I don't expect newbies to find WPMED. If you were talking to a newbie, it would probably be more appropriate to recommend that they read the Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language essay, which has been around for years. It's not holy writ, and it's probably due for an update, but it's fairly comprehensible. If you felt like updating it, I'd suggest adding a list of the various ways in which different groups recommend approaching the subject (broadly: gender-exclusive [erases trans people], gender-inclusive [erases cis people], gender-additive ["pregnant women and other pregnant people"; not concise], and gender-avoidant ["pregnant patients", or re-phrasing sentences to avoid mentioning the people]).

I have no hope of preventing these discussions. These discussions probably need to happen. It is interesting to watch how they play out. Less-watched pages seem to be moving towards a gender-neutral approach, but a high-traffic article like Pregnancy probably won't adopt that style for years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't link to Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language. Yes it has been around for years, but, WhatamIdoing, it has been nearly 8 years since you last edited it, and it is now displaying some of the problems of essays that are treated by some as community guideline: a tiny number of editors can impose their own opinions and there is no mechanism to resolve. You can see in the history conflicting edits about guidance and you can tell who is dominant right now, as they added a mention of the village pump discussion, as though that settled things. An essay that clearly takes one position and argues for it is one thing, but an essay that pretends to be documenting community consensus, but isn't, is another. -- Colin°^Talk 08:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, I think there are some people who do enjoy reading such discussions even if they are long and heated. I am one of those people for example. I enjoyed reading this discussion about a paper on effective communication that I found very good but that others "ripped apart", see here in the Archive of your sandbox_4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox_4/Archive#Effective_communication_about_pregnancy,_birth,_lactation,_breastfeeding_and_newborn_care:_the_importance_of_sexed_language . It was User:Colin who pointed me to that link after I had mentioned that same article on the talk page of menstrual cycle. I do enjoy reading the various points of view and cross-checking with my own opinions, learning, re-thinking etc. A nice concise summary would also be good, of course, but reading the "raw discussions" can also be fruitful. Therefore, I think it would be good to link to them from a central location (maybe in an "example discussions" section at Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language if not WikiProject Med?). - And I think one day in the future, a workable consensus will be reached that most people find comfortable to adhere to. We just have to be patient. (me personally I worry a bit that women are being "erased" once again but I am also open to adapting to new trends over time) EMsmile (talk) 08:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

When WAID said "Nobody really enjoys reading discussions that alternate between being sad, angry, afraid, and aggressive" I thought, but that's what soap operas are (well at least they are in the UK). WAID, could you perhaps archive the discussion to another sub-folder, rather than just delete it, then there would be something to point at. I'm not proposing we point it at WP:MED, but at least it would be a live link rather than a history point. You can top/tail it with "archived" to prevent it being continued on that sub-page if you like. Of course, if there are bits of it you think are best deleted for all involved, then I respect that. -- Colin°^Talk 08:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that essay is an appropriate place to expand on making an article less cisnormative or more trans inclusive, partly because "gender neutral" is only one approach to it, and partly because there are all sorts of non-contentious things to say about gender neutrality that are nothing to do with the trans debate.

I think EMsmile is right that we currently have no good place to point new editors at. I think we should try to salvage some advice from that huge discussion, and probably best to develop that in userspace somewhere. It needs to be allowed to mature without constant attack from "over my dead body" activists, so that if it does end up in Wiki essay space, it has some sensible ideas that might work. -- Colin°^Talk 08:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Re. your comment

Gentle reminder, editor EMsmile... in regard to your comment at Talk:Stratification (water), RMs are meant to stay open for at least seven days and may be closed only by an editor who is uninvolved in the move request. And the uninvolved closer expects to perform the page move. Thank you and a belated Happy New Year to you and yours! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 12:55, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:Paine Ellsworth, oh OK, I wasn't sure if this page was seen as completely uncontroversial and therefore more of a "technical move" or not. But thanks for clarifying. I can wait. EMsmile (talk) 13:08, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Cleaning-up after the move of Stratification (water)

Hi EMsmile, in Stratification (water), you created a link to Ocean acidification – shouldn't that be a link to Ocean stratification?? Best regards --Cyfal (talk) 20:45, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, Cyfal, so sorry, I had mistyped it again... Brain fog! It's because I previously did weeks of work on the ocean acidification article. ;-) I've corrected it now. EMsmile (talk) 22:35, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

No problem at all, thank you very much, and a bit of brain fog only shows your eager dedication to Wikipedia :-) --Cyfal (talk) 22:51, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Ha-ha, yes that's right! Or it shows that editing later than midnight is not a good idea... :-) EMsmile (talk) 12:21, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

CCI Notice

Hello, EMsmile. This message is being sent to inform you that a request for a contributor copyright investigation has been filed at Contributor copyright investigations concerning your contributions to Wikipedia in relation to Wikipedia's copyrights policy. The listing can be found here. Thank you. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:38, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, good. You could perhaps also add "EMsmile had/has problems with paraphrasing where this user too often uses close paraphrasing (or sentences in quotes) - especially in the case of sentences that contain enumerations of facts or examples." See also above where I just added two new examples from the WASH article to your table. I think it's mainly the enumeration sentences that throw me off balance! EMsmile (talk) 21:31, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I see your request for a contributor copyright investigation has now been accepted by an admin (here). EMsmile (talk) 23:15, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing at water security

Hello EMsmile. I wanted to rewrite parts of water security in a less prescriptive tone, after all, Wikipedia is not a how-to guide for policymakers. The article contains the phrase "need to" ten times, and "have to" 3x. I noticed some close paraphrasing in the first paragraph of water security#consideratoin of scales, which you added on in April last year. Could you please rewrite?

I'm also noticing similar style issues as I keep correcting:

• Long quotes from the IPCC
• Unnecessarily mentioning IPCC inline
• Overly long section headings, including those that repeat the title.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:46, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Glad to see someone else taking an interest in the water security article. It's been rather lonely work there. Wouldn't it be better though to discus improvements for the article on its talk page rather than on my talk page? Just some quick replies:

• have replaced the "need to" and "have to".
• good changes to the section headings, thanks. Still not sure if "contributing factors" could somehow be worded differently.
• there are only 2 quotes from the IPCC in the article (one is repeated in the lead). I don't think this is too much. If you insist, the quotes could be omitted or rephrased but I find them actually very useful and also would find it difficult to say exactly the same thins in my own words. IPCC is mentioned only twice which I think should be acceptable for an article of this length. But if you think the mentioning of IPCC needs to go, I won't insist otherwise.
• I've looked at the section on scales and changed the wording so that it is less close to the original text and also less jargon-y, I hope. EMsmile (talk) 16:00, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Much better, thanks :). I posted here, as some of these issues seem to be recurring (I know you've done a lot lately to avoid close paraphrasing, so mostly the more minor style issues). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:17, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Request to do wider clean-up

I've spent about 3 hours on water security now, and I've come across too many examples of close paraphrasing and incorrect labelling of licenses. For instance, text seems to be copied from:

• Charles et al (2022)
• Taye et al (2021)
• Dyer (2021)

The citations claim they are published under a suitable license, but none of them are. I've solved quite a few issues for you, but I'm concerned about the scale of mistakes I'm finding, especially given the fact I don't have access to some of the more-used sources. Would you be willing to go over your contributions in all these articles with a very fine comb, and rework in your own words those you've mistakenly labelled CC-BY-4.0? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:20, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi, oh gosh this is embarrassing. You are totally right. I was fooled by seeing those publications marked as "open access" but I see now that they have NC, ND etc. So I was totally wrong to think they are under a compatible licence. Will fix that up ASAP, probably tonight or else tomorrow.

Will also take another look at the close paraphrasing issue even though I thought that my paraphrasing was usually OK and that I understood the guidelines around that. In some instances it could also be text that was added by other users although most of it will be my text.

I do find the line between good, close and too close paraphrasing hard to draw in some cases, e.g. when there is a limited way of saying the same thing in different words. E.g. I saw that you changed "access to water" to "access to freshwater" in one case. I would be inclined to change that back because "access to water" is the correct term. If anything it could be changed to "access to water supply" or "access to drinking water" but the term used in the literature is normally simply "access to water". Just a very small example where an effort to avoid close paraphrasing can lead to an unintentional different meaning. I'll also e-mail you the paper "sink or swim" now. EMsmile (talk) 08:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! So you have an overview of how many articles are possibly affected? Is this recent confusion? I think the effort, though substantial, will be worth it, as you'll have a chance to rewrite for a broad rather than academic audience.

I had this confusion up until about 6 months ago which is when User:Diannaa pointed it out to me either on her talk page or on mine (I had a look but couldn't find the exchange anymore). I used to think that all open access publication are also compatible but have now realised that maybe 80% of them are CC BY but a good proportion do have NC or ND as well which is annoying.... So I need to go back to all the articles were I added text from open access publications and recheck those (it's easy to find from the ref list as I always put there "text was copied from..."). I've already fixed it at water security, WASH and sanitation worker tonight. Also checked it for ocean acidification (everything OK there) and will continue with it this week (have already spotted a problem at sustainability now). I'll go through all the articles that I've majorly worked on in the last few years. I can re-find them from my edit contribution page or from here. EMsmile (talk) 23:11, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

As for describing piped water as freshwater, there is a bit of a difference, yeah.. if you believe drinking water is better, feel free to change. It's difficult to paraphrase a single sentence, hence most people summarise paragraphs instead. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Have changed it to drinking water as a wikilink. Good point about summarising & paraphrasing a paragraph instead of a single sentence. Will keep that in mind. EMsmile (talk) 23:11, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I've now reworked several articles where I had in the past added content from publications that I had mistakenly regarded as compatibly licenced but that were only open access. These were the articles where I fixed this up today: ocean heat content, Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability, water scarcity, effects of climate change on oceans (in some cases I had to resort to quotes for now but plan to improve this further over time). I am 95% sure that these are the only ones were I made this mistake but will continue to look over my older work to see if there are others. Will also address those close paraphrasing issues that you have identified in the table below ASAP. EMsmile (talk) 14:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Brilliant. It seems that planetary boundaries copies some text from planetary integrity, which is not published under a compatible license. Have you used that for other articles too? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:43, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh yes, I forgot about the planetary boundaries article. I was excited in that week and used that publication by Biermann (which at the time I thought was compatibly licenced) - a comprehensive review about the SDGs - in several articles. I already corrected it now at sustainable development goals, sustainability, planetary boundaries. I don't think I used this publication anywhere else. How did you find this article in particular? Perhaps with the same search method that you used I can also find other articles where I need to rework content that I had added? EMsmile (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I clicked at a random article from your user page, and then checked manually.. Femke (alt) (talk) 08:24, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing examples

In terms of close paraphrasing, there are quite a few examples that are okay(ish) on their own. It's mostly the pattern I'm worried about. I think there is one clear-cut example of copyvio left (last three rows from Sadoff). I'll ask User:DanCherek (I know that Dianaaa, you and Moneytrees are all busy, sorry), who is much more familiar with the boundaries of the grey area. Specifically, what should be done with long enumerations like the last example from Grey? WP:Close paraphrasing indicates in WP:LIMITED that "The more extensively we rely on this exception, the more likely we are to run afoul of compilation protection.". I'm not quite sure what compilation protection is, but my understanding is that you shouldn't rely on the exemption of "there are only a limited number of ways" too often. A few comparisons of text where I believe you can paraphrase more.

Source-text similarity at water security (and later added to the table are some examples from WASH)

Source	Source text	Article text
IPCC WG2	Droughts reduce river dilution capacities and groundwater levels (Wen et al., 2017) increasing the risk of groundwater contamination	Droughts reduce river dilution capacities and groundwater recharge. This can increase the risk of groundwater contamination.  Fixed
IPCC WG2	water security or insecurity cannot be quantified in absolute terms	It is not possible to quantify water security in absolute terms  Fixed
Sadoff	Climate change alters the means and extremes of rainfall, evapotranspiration and river discharge, making it more difficult for water managers to identify investments capable of coping with uncertain changes in hydrologic variability	Changes in the water cycle threaten existing water infrastructure and make it harder to plan future investments that can cope with uncertain changes in hydrologic variability. Changed to this although not sure if this is now straying too far from the source and includes my own interpretation/synthesis: "Changes in the water cycle threaten existing and future water infrastructure. It will be harder to plan investments for future water infrastructure as there are so many uncertainties about future variability for the water cycle." EMsmile (talk) 22:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Sadoff	Information provides the fundamental underpinning for water security institutions and infrastructure	Information provides the fundamental underpinning for institutions that deal with water security issues Changed to "It is important for institutions to have access to information about water because it helps them with their planning and decision-making." OK? EMsmile (talk) 22:31, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Sadoff	protection, restoration and rehabilitation of natural water storage facilities, such as aquifers and wetlands, adaptation of existing landscapes to store water (for instance, soil conservation, managed aquifer recharge) and built infrastructure (such as distribution networks, latrines, treatment plants, storage tanks and dams)	Improved storage: protection, restoration and rehabilitation of natural water storage facilities, such as aquifers and wetlands; adaptation of existing landscapes to store water (for instance, soil conservation, managed aquifer recharge); built infrastructure (such as distribution networks, treatment plants, storage tanks and dams). Changed to this (but it has a lot less detail now): "Improved water storage: using "natural water storage facilities" (for example aquifers and wetlands) or built infrastructure (for example storage tanks and dams)." OK? EMsmile (talk) 22:24, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Sadoff	augmenting water supplies through non-conventional sources, including water recycling or desalination	Augmenting water supplies through non-conventional sources (water reuse or desalination) Changed to "Using new water sources to add to the existing water supplies. This can be done through water reuse, desalination, rainwater harvesting, groundwater pumping.". OK? EMsmile (talk) 22:19, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Sadoff	Flood protection embankments are also an example of water infrastructureto manage water’s destructive force	Flood protection embankments to manage water's destructive force. Changed to: "Embankments for flood protection." OK? EMsmile (talk) 22:13, 27 February 2023 (UTC) Is there an easier word for embankment? I don't really know what it means, but that may be a ENGVAR or non-native speaker issue.Femke (alt) (talk) 08:15, 28 February 2023 (UTC) Good point. I've now made it this: embankment (or levee or dike) for flood protection. I guess none of the terms are very well known by everyone but with the wikilink it should help people to look it up if needed. Perhaps levee is well known in America from Hurricane Katrina at least... EMsmile (talk) 09:25, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Grey	Many of today’s trans-boundary basins are the result of 20th century colonial borders that cut across watersheds	Many of these trans-boundary waters are the result of 20th century colonial borders that do not align with natural watersheds . Edit on 26 Feb by EMsmile: Now changed to "Trans-boundary waters and international rivers which belong to several countries (country borders often do not align with natural watersheds for many reasons e.g. due to borders drawn during 20th century colonialism)" Is this any better? If not, we can also drop the mention of the colonialism as it's perhaps not that important. EMsmile (talk) 22:52, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Grey	It is a force for destruction, catastrophically through drought, flood, landslides and epidemic, as well as progressively through erosion, inundation, desertification, contamination and disease	Water can be a force for destruction due to its extraordinary power and mobility Water can cause destruction through catastrophic events (tsunamis, droughts, floods, landslides and epidemics) or through progressive events (erosion, inundation, desertification, contamination and disease. Changed to this, is it better (it loses some of the detail though): "Water can cause large-scale destruction due to its extraordinary power. The destruction can be through sudden events (for example tsunamis, floods, landslides) or through slowly progressing events (for example erosion, desertification, water pollution). EMsmile (talk) 22:09, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
IWA publication (example from WASH article)	Beyond the protection of water resources at the source, water and sanitation services have to adapt their water supply and storage strategy, as well as their planning and operation.	Adaptation efforts in the WASH sector include protection of water resources at the source, modifying the water supply and storage strategy, as well as reworking the planning and operation. Changed to (but this strays a bit further from the source): Adaptation efforts in the WASH sector include for example protection of local water resources (as these resources become source water for drinking water supply) and investigating how the water supply and storage strategy can be improved. It might also be necessary to adjust the utility's planning and operation.
IWA publication (example from WASH article)	Investing in the protection of the source water quality reduces the need for treatment and its associated energy requirements and GHG emissions.	When source water quality is better protected, this would reduce the energy requirements for the treatment of this source water to achieve drinking water or similar standards. Changed to: There is another method to reduce the energy requirements for the treatment of raw water to make drinking water out of it: protecting the quality of the source water better.
IWA publication (example from WASH article)	These emissions are mainly caused by: • the construction of capital assets or depreciation (construction and use of goods such as buildings, pipes, infrastructure, etc.), • the necessary chemical products and reagents, • the reuse of by-products such as sludge (composting, spreading, etc.), • discharge into surface water.	They include for example emissions from "construction of capital assets, production of chemical products and reagents, management of sewage sludge". Changed to this, is it better?: They include for example emissions from constructing infrastructure, from the manufacture of chemicals that are needed in the treatment process (like flocculants) and from the management of the by-product sewage sludge. Strange, the old quote wasn't really a quote, but semi-paraphrased.. The new sentence is almost there, but I don't see any mention of flocculants in the source. Please summarise, rather than expand, to ensure you comply with WP:OR. Adding information that is simply a generally-accepted definition is the only 'extra' info you can add. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Reply moved to new section below on "paraphrasing from bullet point list". EMsmile (talk) 23:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
IWA publication (example from WASH article)	Five factors affect the quantity of energy required for treating wastewater: the amount of wastewater collected and treated, the infiltration and inflow (water from underground and rain sources) in the wastewater network, the level of treatment to meet discharge requirements, the type and concentration of pollutants in the wastewater, and the energy efficiency of the process.	The following factors influence the amount of energy required for treating the wastewater: wastewater quantity, amount of dilution through infiltration and inflow, treatment level, degree of pollution of the wastewater, and the type of treatment process and its energy efficiency. The energy efficiency of the treatment process is another factor. Changed to this, is it better?: The following factors influence the amount of energy required for treating the wastewater: wastewater quantity and quality (i.e. how much and how polluted is it), treatment level required which in turn influences the type of treatment process that gets selected. The energy efficiency of the treatment process is another factor. The bit before the colon is still a bit too close. It has the same sentence structure, and still some overlap in wording. You can change energy required -> energy needed. Something like: "The amount of energy needed to treat wastewater depends on various factors" —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

These all light up orange with your name using mw:Who Wrote That. I'm not sure how smart Who Wrote That is with shuffled sentences, so let me know if any of these are false positives. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:47, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this detailed comparison. I'll work through these in the coming days. I also wonder about how to deal with lists of enumerations which often find rather difficult to "change into my own words". Perhaps using quotes is the safer option in that case (but also frowned upon, I know). EMsmile (talk) 22:52, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the threshold is for too close paraphrasing, but I do have some tips to avoid the gray area.

• Omit difficult examples. For instance, I asked three random friends if they know what inundation was, or what the difference is with flooding. None knew
• Keep it limited to max three examples per sentence, to limit sentence length + improve readability
• Look for different examples in other parts of the source.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:24, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Using quotes is very suboptimal: the reason I encountered these issues is that these sentences almost all need rewriting for Wikipedia's audiences. Copied from academic sources, they are almost always too difficult for our audiences. For some of these articles (water security, we expect 16-year olds to read it, who will have about 8 years less education than the typical audience of academic literature. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:26, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I've now reworked the sentences in question. If you have time, can you check if you agree with my new edits? Two weeks ago, I went over this entire article, looking for ways to improve its readability. I can look over it again to identify more content that is hard to read (often the same content that is too closely paraphrased, I guess), although I have to admit I find it hard to do it myself as I can't see the forest for the trees anymore, looking at my own writing without enough distance in time. I find it much easier to take a team approach here, i.e. let someone else point out the problematic sentences and then I can fix them, like you have done in the table. But I know this is time consuming for anyone who would choose to get involved and take an interest in this article. I could also try again to find an external reviewer (have already tried previously). EMsmile (talk) 22:43, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've gone over them with very light copy-editing. You sometimes quote small phrases. Most of the time this is only a copy-editing issue (it doesn't look neat), but occasionally it is also a NPOV issue, as people will think these quote marks are scare quotes. I don't remember the article, but I saw them around global warming. It can be interpreted as you disagreeing global warming exists. Femke (alt) (talk) 08:14, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I see what you mean. I have recently begun to change my formatting style there and now tend to use italics more than quotes around a term. Do you think that is better? I am not 100% sure on this but I had a discussion with RCraig09 a while back and they were saying italics would work better when referring to a term. I would normally never put quotes around "global warming" (or global warming) but did it at ocean heat content as I was using the same wording as the source. I have now changed it there to Therefore, when we use the term global warming it is actually more importantly about ocean warming.. The original sentence from the source was: Consequently, “global warming” is, in fact, mostly “ocean warming,”. What's your preference with regards to italics or not for terms? EMsmile (talk) 09:18, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, the WP:MOS is clear on this one. MOS:WAWs indicates that italics should be preferred, unless italics are heavily used for another purpose like non-English words. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:09, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Femke, and EMsmile. I apologize as I am taking a break from editing until the end of the month (crunch time on my PhD dissertation) and so don't have enough time to devote to this as I would like. I see that there has been additional discussion and a CCI request, which is great for getting more eyes on this; please let me know if you would like me to help flag down additional copyright editors. Sorry again! DanCherek (talk) 02:38, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Good luck Dan! Hope you have a good stack of chocolate and the ability to take frequent walking breaks. Don't repeat my mistakes with getting golfer's elbow while you're writing up!

With CCI, we should have it covered. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:34, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Checking more close paraphrasing

Thanks! What we still need is trying to figure out if there are more articles with close paraphrasing. Would you be willing to analyse another article, and list all the instances where you've copied 4/5 or more words from a source in a row (of course excluding names/titles that are 4 words like IPCC). If your findings are similar to mine, we probably have to go over your work in more detail. We may get some help and guidance if we open a WP:CCI on this, but given how overburdened they are, I hope to just resolve this between the two of us.

I know this is a bit discouraging, but I hope you can take it as an opportunity to significantly improve the difficulty of the text. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:40, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I am not exactly sure what you are asking me to do? I have dabbled in loads and loads of articles over the years (40,000+ edits). I don't think that the "too close paraphrasing" is a very common problem in my editing work and hope that through several rounds of iterations, readability of any sentences that I have added anywhere has been improved over time in any case.

Probably two examples where I did a poor job and really struggled is this article (water security) and also sustainability. It's usually articles where I work in quite a lonely fashion (sadly). The latter has in the meantime received a review from the guild of copy editors, afterwards I also reworked it again for readability and also User:Jonathanlynn is currently working on it for readability improvements. Actually another article might be sustainable development goals that needs to be looked at again. Maybe also groundwater where I added some content recently.

My preferences with all of this would be to think of it as a team approach where all the various editors improve on each other's work. I am not asking others "to fix my mistakes". I can fix any mistakes I made myself. But it helps if others review each other's work and either improve sentences that are difficult to understand directly or ask on the talk page about it. We all have different ways and styles of how we work on Wikipedia. If I've made an actual mistake (like copyright violation) then I need to of course immediately fix it myself. If I've struggled to paraphrase something well or to use my own words instead of a quote then it's nice to work on it in a team approach. - But perhaps I've misunderstood what you've asked me to do? EMsmile (talk) 22:53, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

"I don't think that the "too close paraphrasing" is a very common problem in my editing". My hope is that you're right, and that you temporarily developed a bad habit of 1) copying text and 2) paraphrasing that text and 3) clicking publish before you're ready, but that you normally rewrite from scratch.

Given from what I've seen at water security, I think we need to test that hope. Could you choose one article, and go over all the sources you've added and compare them to the text (or in the case of a long article, say 3000 words of text). Sustainable development goals may be a good choice, as it would benefit from a WP:MTAU rewrite anyway? The same as I did at water security (I think I checked about half of the text). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:06, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I can look over the SDG article again. I already fixed it up on Monday as it was wrongly using the book by Biermann as a compatibly licenced publication. I am not sure if I remember exactly which sources I had added to the SDG article (it's been a while since I worked on it) but I guess I can use the "who wrote this" tool to check it. Is there a more automated way to check for close paraphrasing in those articles that I have worked on? I think the copyvio tool would not pick this up or is there another tool for it? I am only aware of this tool: https://copyvios.toolforge.org/. EMsmile (talk) 22:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't normally add a lot of new content to articles but tend to re-arrange existing content, or just work on readability improvements. Compare with the work I have been doing recently at bioenergy and biomass (energy) which is probably a more typical type of editing that I have been doing. But yes, am happy to correct wherever I have done too close paraphrasing in the past (if nobody else has corrected it already through the normal process of editors improving articles). EMsmile (talk) 22:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One more request

Your user page now implies people can copy from open-access material. Can you change that title, so that others do not get similarly confused? There is a table with compatible licenses at the Copyright FAQ. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:46, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I've updated my user page accordingly now. EMsmile (talk) 22:02, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks :) —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:07, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Paraphrasing from bullet point list

(moved from table above for clarity)

True, it wasn't a quote but I had put it in quotation marks just to be safe because I thought when I convert a list of bullet points into an enumerated lists, someone might say this is still copyright breach? Or is it OK to convert a bullet point into an enumeration sentence and to leave out the examples in brackets and then to call that "own words"? And I added flocculants as it's a typical chemical product used in the treatment process so I thought it would be helpful for the readers to have an example there. Would I have to add a reference (standard wastewater treatment handbook) to prove that flocculants are an example of a chemical product used in treatment? I can do that but I would have thought this counts as "generally accepted" example of a chemical product for wastewater treatment. I guess I could add another sentence saying: "Flocculants are chemicals that are commonly used in wastewater treatment", with the reference to the textbook. Is that necessary? EMsmile (talk) 08:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Not knowing enough about the topic at hand, I'd say leave out flocculants, as it's a highly technical term that is not essential for the topic at hand. If you do want to include it, the preference is to use a source about water security that talk about it. A general wastewater treatment handbook is less useful to know if such information in WP:DUE.

Taking out examples is not sufficient in terms of close paraphrasing, and examples typically make text easier to understand.

Note that putting things in quotes that are semi-paraphrased is misleading, as other people may not double check and say that this is what the citation said. Not a copyright issue, but a text integrity issue. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

So just to be sure: if the original source has a bullet point list with 4 entries, and I convert that into a sentence with an enumeration of 4 items (without paraphrasing and without leaving anything out) then I still have to put quotes around it (if the publication is not compatibly licenced), right?

In another example, I took text and converted it into a table (without quotation marks). That is alright, right? This example is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASH#Indirect_emissions_associated_with_the_energy_required_(Scope_2) (I thought that was quite a clever way to deal with the copyright aspects in this case but maybe I am wrong. EMsmile (talk) 23:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello. Could you direct future questions at the CCI page? That page will have more knowledgeable people watching to your questions.

1. Please do not solve these issues by putting quotes around it. An overuse of quotations is still a copyright issue, even though you can get away with slightly more. And yes if you do not reword and reorder, it's not properly paraphrased. As you're not quoting, but changing the formatting, you cannot use quotes anyway.
2. Converting it to a table requires the same paraphrasing as you normally have. The table was almost there, but some easy paraphrasing was missed. I often use a synonym finder to help me paraphrase. Please note that large tables are poorly displayed on mobile phones, and that being overly verbose there can be an accessibility issue.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

SDG article

Hi Femke, I started to look again at the sustainable development goals article. I see lots of room for improvement and can do some of that work but I am confused in which sense you see this as a "test" for my style of work. I worked on that article over the years on and off, maybe starting in 2018 (I am not sure now exactly when). Looking now at "my content" but also at other people's additions, I can see lots of room for improvement. That's normal, isn't it?

For starters, I think it got too long now and needs to be culled. A lot of the data should probably be updated (but who has time to do that); maybe remove some of the data or move it to the sub-articles for the individual SDGs. There is for sure a lot of jargon and "UN speech" there. But shouldn't these kinds of improvements rather be discussed on the talk page of the SDG article? In which sense can it be used as a "test case" to find out if my editing style is "consistently bad" (I don't think it is)? By the way, I checked with the copyvio tool and it found no signs of copyright violations (see here).

So yes, it needs improvement and yes I can do some of that work. But I don't think I now need to spend a lot of time on setting up another table to compare sentences with close paraphrasing and those without. Rather the article should simply be improved (by me and everyone else who has time and interest).

If you want to somehow "test" all my edits from the last XX years, there should be a more automated way of doing that, right? Also, what are you trying to achieve? I know now that I have to be more careful with the paraphrasing that I do. Wherever I see previous work of my "too close paraphrasing" I can correct that, over time. What more do you want me to do? I can't and don't intend to re-visit my 40,000+ edits that I have done, and I think the community would have anyway noticed by now if there was a persistent ongoing terrible problem with the quality of my editing work. EMsmile (talk) 23:28, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not asking you to look at 'bad editing', I'm only asking you to look at copyright violations. I'm wondering if the problem is too big for us to sort out together, and whether we should ask help at WP:CCI, where people with copyright expertise will go through additions systematically. I'm increasingly convinced we do need WP:CCI. I'm unaware of automatic ways to do this. I would not describe your work as terrible, it's usually quite good. But persistent terrible editing does go unnoticed on Wikipedia, for instance the copyvio by Doug Coldwell. Femke (alt) (talk) 08:11, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

That's fine by me, go ahead. I am happy to be pointed to and then correct any copyright violations that I might have inadvertedly added over the years (hopefully not many!). It'll be interesting to see how good the automated tools are at flagging up "too close paraphrasing". I think AI tools will in future be very helpful for that. EMsmile (talk) 08:15, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

After looking at the public toilet article, I've decided to open up a CCI after I figure out how that works. I corrected one diff, but [4] also needs fixing. Femke (alt) (talk) 08:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I've corrected this diff [5] at public toilet now. EMsmile (talk) 08:37, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

FYI, I've now also gone back to the UDDT article which was one of the first ones I worked on (and created) in 2014. It had some copyright violations (unclear copyright from GIZ publication) and also excessive detail, written more like a how-to guide and advocacy piece (some had come from me, some from others). EMsmile (talk) 09:53, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

individual SDG articles

I just checked SDG seven.. This will need significant work, with loads of direct copying from [6]. I think the edit that created the article is maybe one third copyvio.. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:12, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I've made the corrections at SDG 7 for the text taken from [7]. I am surprised in hindsight that I hadn't taken more care with the copyright of that publication. Strange! My bad. When I made the corrections tonight, if I couldn't immediately think of a good paraphrasing, I left it as quotes. If those quotes are unacceptable then I suggest those quoted sentences just be deleted as they're probably not really crucial anyhow. (I didn't have more time & brainpower tonight to paraphrase those as well) EMsmile (talk) 22:34, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

It's better to wait a day solving issue than half solving them with quotes imo. Did you check all your additions? I think a good working model would be for you to do a full check of an article and then let others know at the CCI. That way, they can check it and tick it off. Femke (alt) (talk) 07:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Regarding It's better to wait a day solving issue than half solving them with quotes imo: well, we have different working styles. Could be a philosophical question. I think small incremental improvements are always better than nothing. Let's just say "Rome wasn't built in a day". Anyhow, I have now fixed up the remaining issues at SDG 7 and have marked it accordingly in the CCI. EMsmile (talk) 12:16, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Please do not mark them off yourself, but just indicate when uninvolved editors can have a look. Indicate clearly what you've done to correct copyvio (so for SDG 7 you could say, cv removed: paraphrased + CC-BY licenses added, ready for check).

The N at CCI indicates that no copyvio was found, whereas Y indicates it has been resolved. For SDG7, Y will be appropriate when all copyvio is gone. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I found more copyvio after one minute of looking. How did you determine it was free of copyvio? Did you go over all sources systemetically? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I repeat, do not mark these yourself with n or y. That's for others to do. Indicate when you've cleaned an article up. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:47, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I'll undo the n or y now (didn't see your comment until after I had done it). Yes, I checked SDG 7 quite thoroughly, I thought. Please tell me which other copyvio I have overlooked? Can we not simply run the Copyvio tool over all of the articles that I had anything to do with? EMsmile (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Earwig doesn't always pick up on copying. I'm not quite sure what the limitations are. You can ask the experts at the talk of your CCI page. For the overlook copyvio, see my latest edit. The 'today' in the old text was a red flag to me; WP avoids today/recently in text. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:53, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Could you please stop copying from articles that are part of your CCI? Tracking down copyvio (like you introduced three days ago [8]), is much more difficult when it's being moved around articles. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I've finished the work that I was doing on the SDG article yesterday: I was culling it by moving content to sub-articles about individual SDGs and also converting some quotes to "own text" and adjusting some of the refs, and removing repetition. I think it's quite a lot better now but still not great. It's amazing how much "fluff" had been added in recent years to the individual SDG articles and to the main SDG article. More culling would be needed for the individual SDG articles. EMsmile (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Urban heat island

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)

COI edits

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)

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

environment.wiki

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)

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)

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)

Erroneous definitions of net negative and net zero emissions

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)

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

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)

?? 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

Examples of unsourced content, misrepresented sources or original research

Article	Diff	Comment
Satellite temperature measurements	[9]	Unsourced change. Introduced the error that satellite temperature measurements are part of the instrumental temperature record, which instead only includes the thermometer record
Arctic sea ice decline	[10]	Unsourced change. Diff errorounously claimed sea ice decline is driven by ocean change, rather than by both ocean and atmospheric change.
Effects of climate change on oceans	[11]	Misrepresents source. "The oxygen content of the ocean is vital for the survival of most larger animals and plants and also serves a long term role in controlling atmospheric oxygen upon which terrestrial life depends". Source does not talk about larger animals/plants, and I've not found terrestrial life either.
Effects of climate change on oceans	[12]	Add the uncited claim that acidification is a form of carbon sequestration. (This is true for a subset of definitions of sequestration, but you should not add unsourced jargon)
Effects of climate change on oceans	[13]	First two paragraphs supported at all by this source. No page number given for a report of over 1000 pages. Not fully supported by WG2 ocean chapter either, so wasn't a simple mix-up.
Effects of climate change on oceans	[14]	Modern observations, climate simulations and paleoclimate reconstructions suggest that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has weakened since the preindustrial era. Not on page 19 as claimed, but 10. The choice of a mildly outdated source (IPCC 2019 vs IPCC 2021) made a difference in this case.
Effects of climate change on oceans	[15]	Misrepresentation of source + introducing an error. Example of sea ice not in source given; sea ice responds within decades, and was even considered a tipping point before.
Effects of climate change on oceans	Can't find diff	Adding the excerpt to Antarctic sea ice (change) introduced an obsolete claim on growing sea ice there (sourced 2009 and undated). Since this is a claim often misused by climate deniers, a check would have been good (I think you should always sanity check, but more important when we're talking controversial topics). Example of spreading content without doing a quick accuracy check.
Carbon dioxide removal	[16]	Per above
Carbon sequestration	[17]	Introduces the claim that carbon sequestration occurs naturally without a source (took me quite a while to find out that the majority of sources agree). Misrepresenats glossary (WP:SYNTH) by relating carbon sink and carbon sequestration, where the source does not, and mis-defines both (carbon sink only refers to carbon uptake not GHG in general). Gives a non-existent page number.
Ocean acidification		Talk:Ocean_acidification#Question_about_sentence_on_unchanging_alkalinity?. Subtle misrepresentation of source from imprecise paraphrasing (maybe the first attempt was just ambiguous, second attempt was ambiguous, but neither interpretation corresponded to source)
ocean heat content	[18]	Partial revert of my removal of unsourced information. The way it was places breaks the WP:INTEGRITY policy.

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

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)

More examples

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.

Article	Diff	Comment
Carbon dioxide removal	[19] and [20]	Removed BECCS from the lead and removed the entire section on BECCS, saying it’s not a CDR method. BECCS is a CDR method. This is especially baffling because the next day, you added in sourced content that correctly included BECCS as a CDR method,[21] but you didn’t fix your previous error.
Carbon dioxide removal	[22]	Removed the entire section on ocean fertilization with edit summary “we don't need this for two reasons: firstly it falls below "carbon sequestration" which is already mentioned above. Secondly it is not a promising pathway.”. At the time, there was a “Carbon sequestration” section with an excerpt from the lead of Carbon sequestration, however the lead at the time[23] did not mention ocean fertilization. IPCC AR6 WGIII says “Despite limited current deployment, estimated mitigation potentials for DACCS, enhanced weathering (EW) and ocean-based CDR methods (including ocean alkalinity enhancement and ocean fertilisation) are moderate to large (medium confidence).” Whether ocean fertilisation is a promising pathway or not is a matter of extensive, active scientific debate. We are required to cover all sides of a debate neutrally. Your edit summary suggests you removed the entire section based on your personal opinion.
Carbon dioxide removal	"these are all part of carbon sequestration so I've moved them down a level.” May 30 2022 “changed structure as I think these are not part of carbon sequestration. For DAC I am pretty sure it's not part of carbon sequestration; for enhance weathering I am not totally sure,” Nov 15 2022 ”enhanced weathering belongs within the carbon sequestration section” Feb 7 2023 re-arranged as there are really two main methods: carbon sequestration and DACS” 09:55 Feb 7 2023	Series of edits that reorganized CDR methods into two categories based on whether you considered the method to be “carbon sequestration” or not. All CDR methods involve carbon sequestration.
Carbon dioxide removal	[24]	Reorganized methods in a way that implies, incorrectly, that afforestation, reforestation, and forestry management are not part of “Carbon sequestration on land and in the ocean”. Edit summary claims this makes the structure “more similar to IPCC structure”. This is not what the IPCC says. The IPCC agrees with other sources in classifying afforestation/reforestation as land-based CDR methods.

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.[25]

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

I think article quality for many climate change sub-articles is too low

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)

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)

CS1 error on Blue carbon

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Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 13:02, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

CS1 error on Blue carbon

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Blue carbon, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL" error. References show this error when one of the URL-containing parameters cannot be paired with an associated title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 13:02, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

CS1 error on Blue carbon

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Blue carbon, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL" error. References show this error when one of the URL-containing parameters cannot be paired with an associated title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 13:02, 9 May 2023 (UTC)