Talk:Human impact on marine life

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2021 and 15 October 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cmm014. Peer reviewers: Chase.ingersoll23, Indislo.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2021 and 20 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AOCHEFU, Kolvera, Cfannin5, Kzakarian. Peer reviewers: Hudson2222.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2021 and 17 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Anon.nim77.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Microorganism section?
This section is there but is empty, there is just an image. I'll delete it and also delete Invasive species, which is empty too. Arteteco (talk) 14:30, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Use excerpt for marine pollution section?
My suggestion is to move the content that is currently in the section on "marine pollution" to marine pollution (if it's not there already) and then to replace it with an excerpt. I would find that more efficient, for example the information on how much plastics is in the ocean is provided in several articles. If it's just in one, and the others uses excerpts, then the maintenance work would become streamlined. EMsmile (talk) 04:11, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I have now replaced some of the sections under "marine pollution" with excerpts. More could be done along those lines. EMsmile (talk) 12:40, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

This article is about human impact on marine life
@, I understand you have some funding from a Swedish sustainability group to "improve Wikipedia articles" related to certain sustainability goals. That means there is some pressure on you to produce results you can show them. You have been doing something like that, but not so much by adding new material and rewriting old material for better clarity. Instead, your strategy seem mainly to take already existing material in Wikipedia, and then shift it to different places and rename it to suit your agenda.

This article was specifically written to support a series of overviews on marine life. The focus is on the impact humans are having on marine life. That is why the article has the title it has. It is not about the impact the ocean or marine life has on climate change. That would be a separate article. This article is about marine life, and is specifically written so it aligns with the other articles in the series of marine life overviews. It is not specifically aimed to fit the requirements of your agenda.

You have already stated that you regard this article as "needing improvement", and signalled your intention to rename it. I'm attempting an intervention here before you finalise your ownership of this article, rename it something else, and remove the parts that don't suit your agenda. Please leave it alone. If you want a different article that suits your agenda then write it yourself. You are free of course to copy any parts of this article if you need to. — Epipelagic (talk) 02:36, 14 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi please indicate which of my recent changes to this article you disagree with in particular? And yes, I do use the excerpt function a lot. I had suggested to do so on this talk page on 31 August, to which nobody replied. Hence, two weeks later I went ahead. If you don't agree with the principle of excerpts, let's discuss. With regards to the work I have recently done at plastic soup, I had first written on several talk pages and on WikiProject pages. I then waited a while. I got some few responses (one from you), so it seemed that the consensus was there to bundle the content about plastic pollution of oceans in one spot, rather than have it spread across ten different articles. That's what I worked on yesterday (you can see it in my contribution history). Yes, it did involve a lot of moving content from A to B and then using excerpts. The other articles can of course retain a summary or an excerpt but should then refer to the "main" one. with regards to my statement of "needing improvement", is that a bad thing? Don't all Wikipedia articles need improvement in one form or another? Are you saying this article is perfect and requires no improvement?  EMsmile (talk) 03:07, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, I did not "signal an intention to rename it", I simply asked the question and made a suggestion. This was back in March where I said here: "perhaps be renamed to "Human impact on oceans"". But don't worry, I have no intention to pursue this possible name change further. In fact, I am happy to "leave this article alone", like you have suggested, and to move on. EMsmile (talk) 03:18, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * In the interest of peace and to avoid any further conflict with you on this page, I have now reverted my edits to this page and put it back to how it was yesterday before I did the moving and excerpts. I promise not to touch this article anymore. EMsmile (talk) 03:32, 14 September 2021 (UTC)


 * There's not necessarily anything wrong with you shifting things around. In fact, your approach to rationalising duplicated content has often been very good. I'm still thinking about the pros and cons of the "excerpt" function, and I would like to see a more standardised approach on Wikipedia. You have done good work and a necessary job with Plastic soup. Nor am I necessarily disagreeing with the changes you have made to the article here. So in the interests of a fresh start, I've reinstated your changes. Let's see if we can move forward with some trust instead. Btw, I prefer to keeping discussions transparent by confining them to user and article talk pages. — Epipelagic (talk) 05:16, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure, that sounds good. I would be happy with a fresh start and good faith trust. (it's fine though if you do want to revert my changes for this article, I wouldn't object; I had grouped some headings together under the heading of climate change impacts - perhaps that was not the right thing to do for this article. Also maybe the way I had used the excerpts didn't work well in this case.) Regarding excerpts, the WikiProject Climate Change is really pushing them (well, that's how I first heard about them anyway). See here. There was also this presentation at Wikimania which I found useful. It looked at the pros and cons of using excerpts. - Noted about your preference to confine discussions to user and article talk pages. EMsmile (talk) 12:10, 14 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for those links to background stuff on excerpts. This issue has needed addressing for a long time, and seems the right person to be the developer. Very encouraging that something so useful for lowly content builders is happening on Wikipedia. Sophivorus has made a great start. Perhaps there is also need for maintenance tools so, for example, editors can readily identify other linked articles, as well as when excerpts have been edited or links have been broken. There is also a need for consensus guidelines on how and when to use the templates. Maybe editors will need a track record before they can use them. Otherwise I can imagine enthusiastic newbies creating all sorts of problems. – Epipelagic (talk) 18:34, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * @Epipelagic Hi! I'm glad to see such a civil and constructive exchange going on! Regarding your idea for a maintenance tool to "identify other linked articles", I'm not sure exactly what you mean but have you seen this tool already? As to a way to track broken links, Category:Articles with broken excerpts gets automatically populated by Module:Excerpt when an excerpt breaks. As to consensus guidelines, the closest thing I think is the usage documentation at Template:Excerpt. There used to be Excerpts, but I ended up merging it into the template documentation because I reasoned that's where it's most likely to be found/read/useful (see this relevant talk too). Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 20:13, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: SSC199 TY2
— Assignment last updated by Egmuehlb (talk) 15:18, 5 December 2022 (UTC)