User:Sifaka

If you are wondering why I changed or deleted something, please ask on my talk page!
 * I mercilessly remove names from day pages if they don't have Wikipedia articles about them. Click "edit this page" to see the hidden comment under the births section or notability requirements.



About me
I am a junior at Duke planning on majoring in biophysics. I am an editor as of Feb 10, 2006. I love lemurs. I have been to Madagascar (where I studied the Milne-Edwards's Sifaka) and Costa Rica. I like to code in Java, but I can't do Web pages.

Activity on Wikipedia
On Wikipedia, I want to focus on making articles more readable and clear. I would also like to add information to some of the lemur stubs. I like to answer science related questions on the science reference desk. I RC patrol on occasion during my non-existent free time. I watch all the days in the month of August for vandalism and non-notable additions. I like to be polite and relatively non-confrontational.

Random info
This is an awesome visualization applet for 3-D magnetostatics

My Interests

 * Chemistry
 * Lemurs
 * Science in general
 * Arizona
 * Biology

Articles that need some major revisions

 * Endophyte - expansion utilizing the papers of Betsy Arnold as sources
 * Milne-Edwards's Sifaka - Needs some species specific information.
 * Filigree- needs some content and organizing
 * Oyster Mushroom - factual overhaul. There are three species called oyster mushrooms.
 * Just about every article dealing with plant physiology

This is the list of all the articles to which I added content or seriously revised. This does not include updates on related pages that relates back to the information I have included.

Major Revisions
The following is a list of articles which I have either created, significantly revised, or significantly improved by adding information.
 * Hammond's Postulate (February 19, 2006) I added the actual postulate, discussed what the postulate is saying, how it related to rate and ratios of products, how to explain unusual results in light of the postulate, and started at the history.
 * 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal (6 May 2006) I typed up a minute by minute time line of the events, added a few notes and a quote and made a references section to which I redirected all the references
 * Retrograde amnesia (12 May, 2006) I added some info about how the victims feel, a little info about the condition, and tried to deal with some plagiarism.
 * Milne-Edwards's Sifaka (May 12, 2006) I finally started it. I did the paragraph on locomotion on (May 12th, 2006) I may get aroung to the other parts.
 * (16 June 2009) I added geographic range and sympatric relations.


 * Farnesyltransferase (August 9, 2006) Added a lot of info about structure, specificity, function, and mechanism of the enzyme's activity. Not much by way of numbers though I have papers for that.
 * Geranylgeranyltransferase type 1 (August 9, 2006) Created article and got the basic info started by copyediting out of FTase. Needs some solid data.
 * Rab geranylgeranyltransferase (August 9, 2006) Created article and got the info by copyediting out of prenylation. Needs a lot of solid data.
 * Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder treatments (15 April 2007) Created the article by forking it out of the treatments section of the article Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
 * (17 April 2007) General mass cleanup to the article by moving and removing paragraphs, editing for style and clarity, and formatting.

Minor Revisions
The following is a list of the articles where I have added supplementary content without drastically changing the overall article
 * Tetrahydrofuran (11 February, 2006) added solvent properties
 * Indri (20 February, 2006) Added legend of Babakoto and a correction about the tail of the indri
 * Duke University (4 May, 2006) I redid the opening paragraph and added information about merit scholarships
 * Lemur (18 December 2006) I added an in pop culture section add a couple instances
 * (8 April 2007) Added information to the biology section


 * Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder - A lot of general content improving work on and off, talk page discussions...
 * (8 April 2007) I rearranged the opening and restored a large amount of text that went missing.
 * (22-23 January 2008) Rebalance of article by removal of weasel words and undue weight given to fringe views, sourcing of many citation needed statements


 * Evolution as theory and fact (5 January 2008) Overhaul of the part which explains how gravity is a theory and fact. (Edited under the guise of IP 64.134.81.59 and 152.3.44.183)
 * Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies - Also a lot of general content improving work on and off. Talk page discussions...
 * (February 2008 - March 2008, April 2009) Practically edit marathons, relatively speaking


 * Noah's Ark Zoo Farm (April 2008) Adding appropriate scientific skeptical information and attempting to improve tone and article flow

Humor
April Fools 2006 modification to |Question Mark: might I have changed every sentence into a question? Beware of the wiki lemur!

Sub-pages

 * User:Sifaka/Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder - sandbox for said article
 * User:Sifaka/Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: controversies - sandbox for said article. Articles to model Extraterrestrial life, Homeopathy
 * User:Sifaka/sandbox

Basic

 * The Help Desk is an excellent place to ask questions about generally anything Wikipedia related. The Reference desk is similar for for topics in general.
 * A short description of and links to all the major policies can be found at List of policies. There are also guidelines which are lower on the totem poll than policies but are generally strongly recommended.
 * If you get into an argument with another editor, WP:Dispute resolution requests contains several of the various steps you should try. Do note that you should not try formal mediation (which is not the same as the WP:Mediation Cabal which is often called informal mediation) unless you have tried the other options first.
 * There are also several noticeboards where you can report various violations of policy. They are listed here at the Department directory and you can see the lot of them at the top of this page which is the fringe theories noticeboard.


 * You can keep track of changes made to any page in wikipedia by adding it to your "watchlist". You can see instructions how to do so here at Help:Watching pages.
 * You can look at the history of revisions to any particular page, see who edited what, and compare old versus new versions using the page history tab.

More advanced than basic?

 * Here is a list of templates for tagging articles. The following general categories may be useful: Template messages/General, Template messages/Cleanup,
 * Template:Hidden section top - use it to collapse long sections.


 * Reference templates will allow you to cite references in a consistent fashion.
 * You can create subpages of your user page such as User:(your user name)/(name of what you want the subpage to be). An example for me might be User:Sifaka/test. To create it you edit in it and save it - it's just like making a new article. You can work on copies of new articles here before putting them in the mainspace
 * You can enable the very handy navigation popups which lets you see details of a Wikipedia link by hovering over it by going to my preferences in the upper right, selecting the gadgets tab on the far right and enabling navigational popups under browsing gadgets. Twinkle is another popular tool, but I don't use it.
 * For tracking User and page statistics the following may be helpful: The list seems to live here
 * Rather strangely, in the page history tab, there is also a link to page view statistics there so you can see how many times a page gets viewed daily. The same thing is visible at http://wikirank.com/en/ where after the final slash you put the page name of the article.
 * http://www.wikirage.com/ - good for page statistics and editor's contribs
 * Aggregate user statistics: http://toolserver.org/~river/cgi-bin/count_edits
 * This one lets you see a user's most frequently edited articles: http://toolserver.org/%7Esoxred93/ec


 * Search for indef blocked users: