[open-science] effort to improve "open science" article on Wikipedia... also see citizendium

Sat Sep 14 20:23:50 UTC 2013

I applaud the suggestion to contribute to the Open science article in Wikipedia.

I wish to point out that there is an article on the same subject in the French version of Wikipedia, to which I contributed, but it's much less detailed (and satisfying) that its English language counterpart. I intend to contribute to the English language article, and to use it to improve the French version.

Two things I wish to point out to complete Peter's description of his experience with Wikipedia.

1. One of my main contributions to the (French language) article was largely deleted by an anonymous (see #2 below) author without warning or sufficient explanations. This weakened the article (in my opinion), notably by introducing some major inconsistencies. I don't know if this constituted an "edit war" (or "edit war declaration", as I didn't yet reinstate the former version), but one has to consider that Wikipedia strongly invites newcomers, even when in doubt, to edit articles.

My advice is that, especially when one considers removing or heavily editing parts of an article, one should announce its intention to do so in the Discussion page. If nobody objects after a reasonable delay (one could even receive useful feedback) one can then go on with the proposed editing. That's what I did instead of simply cancelling the changes.  I've noticed that the content of the Discussion page is sometimes as, or even more interesting than the actual content of the article.

2. About pseudonyms, and what one should conclude about "anonymous" pseudonyms. There are varying degrees of anonymity in Wikipedia. Non-registered users are "identified" by their IP addresses. Among registered users, hiding or revealing one's identity is not so much related to the pseudonym itself as to what is found in the user page (if it exists at all).

For instance, Peter's pseudonym (Petermr) is maybe less anonymous than 92.27.20.106 or, for instance, pseudos like Aencina or Jaamc. However, if I were to judge Petermr's a priori credibility as an author on a certain subject, I would find that Peter's user page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Petermr) gives us very basic information, certainly insufficient to adequately describe Peter's skills, which I've had the occasion to observe in this forum and others. As to Aencina and Jaamc: the former doesn't have a user page, while the latter can be easily identified at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jaamc), where there's a link to his personal website.

Marc Couture (aka Jaamc)
professor
UER Science et Technologie
Tele-universite  (Universite du Quebec)
Montreal, Canada
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