User:Djcastel

Hello, I'm a moderately active Wikipedia editor specializing in history, physics, and mathematics, with graduate-level experience in all three areas. Please excuse the lateness of my replies to your comments, as I log in erratically, as you can see from my contribution history.

My historical interests include the history of philosophy, science, and religion in medieval and early modern Europe, as well as the politics of the modern Middle East. In physics, my past emphasis was on experimental particle physics, but lately I've come to appreciate theoretical and mathematical questions in statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. This meshes nicely with my mathematical interests, which focus on probability, statistics and combinatorics, though I'm also interested in mathematical logic and set theory. I am self-taught in philosophy, much of this knowledge being an outgrowth of my study of European history.

My edits usually focus on adding or correcting factual content, as I don't really have time to engage in POV or relevance disputes. I usually explain my edits in the edit summary, using the talk page only when more than a line of justification seems necessary. Since I only edit Wikipedia in my spare time, I'm not really protective of my edits. I'm content to point out a problem, and if people opt for a different solution, that's fine.

The best way to communicate with me is through my user talk page, as I only infrequently check my past edits. I search for articles to edit rather haphazardly, so if you know of an article where I might be of help, please let me know.

Although I try to be "apolitical" in editing, there are a couple of issues that are of concern to me:

Notability
Wikipedia is very uneven in its standards for inclusion and deletion. We have a high tolerance of pop culture trivia, unwieldy lists, obscure municipalities, businesses, and public elementary schools, yet equally un-notable subjects in other areas are (rightfully) deleted. If notability standards were really applied to the letter, there would be massive purges of articles and lists that would infuriate a lot of people, so I realize that is not practicable or even desirable. But could we at least stop pretending that such subjects are notable or encyclopedic? Maybe give them a separate category or domain, so we can separate the real encyclopedia from the trivia and directory information.

Criticism sections
I think "Criticism" sections are wholly inappropriate for an encyclopedia, and agree completely with Joema's eloquent comments on this subject. No reputable, neutral reference work has "criticism" sections, so I don't see how this is required by NPOV. I don't buy into the equation "POV + Opposing POV = NPOV". A neutral article should be written neutrally throughout, and if the subject is itself a point of view, then simply describe the point of view without advocating it.

The Immanuel Kant article is a fine example of how to explicate someone's views without endorsing them. If we were to introduce a "Criticisms of Kant", we would have to include the views of every non-Kantian philosophy, even though they already have their own articles, and the criticisms would easily take up more space than the original subject. The idea that "balance" requires these criticisms falsely assumes that describing a point of view is the same as presenting a "pro" argument. Criticism should only be included if it enhances our understanding of the subject, which is the point of the article, not to provide equal face time. Telling me that atheists don't believe in Religion X doesn't really help me understand Religion X any better. Stick to factual descriptions of the subject, or our articles will read like thinly veiled duelling editorials. The type of editing that typically goes into "Criticism" sections makes a mockery of NPOV. You can't say "Senator Smith is an idiot," but you can paste a paragraph from a Washington Post columnist ranting about Senator Smith's intellectual limitations. Basically, people need to put their egos aside and really get the spirit of NPOV, which is not to find clever ways to advocate your view or get equal face time.