User talk:Dave souza/Archive 13

Request for help
Hi Dave. I have a favor to ask of you and it is a very big one - I hope you will say yes, but I don't expect you to do this all at once. Over the years the Culture article turned into a big mess. There was a GA and two users - serious and good faith editors but from their comments not experts in this field - made several comments. A couple of weeks ago I did a major overhaul, although my method was conservative: I deleted all fringe theories and tangents/material covered in other articles, deleted the many redundancies, and reorganized what was left so that different points of view are clearly identified.

Since that time I have begun work on expanding the article. My main principal was that culture is an object of scholarly research, and this article should reflect the actual mainstream scholarship on culture. I felt it needed to provide an account of all significant points of view, from notable sources, and also provide some general context to understand the different points of view.

I am limited in my expertise ... for example, I am not a linguist, and the relationship between language and culture is an important field of research. I am not an archeologist, although they are experts in material culture. I am not a biological anthropologist, although they are experts in the evolution of culture and primate "cultures" (there is a debate). I left notes for Wikipedians who seem to have expertise in these fields and so far none have worked on the article. I know enough to lay out the essentials in the archeology and material culture section, and spent a week researching primatology and human evolution and have done what I can. Language and culture is a big gap.

In academe, there are two disciplines that make "culture" their explicit object of study: anthropology and cultural studies. I know a lot about anthropology, and much less about cultural studies, so the section on cultural studies is still woefully underdeveloped.

(There are subfields of cultural history and cultural geography but if you talk to historians and geographers you will discover that these subfields are very vaguely defined and undeveloped and they rely on anthropology for most of their theories about "culture" as such)

For a variety of historical reasons, anthropology is most developed in the United States, Great Britan, and France (although there have been notable Anglophone anthropologists from South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia). But anthropology took different form in each country. "Cultural Anthropology" is specifically American - the British practice what they call "social anthropology" because society is their object of study, not culture. When French and British anthropologists talk about culture, they generally start off quoting American "cultural anthropologists."

There are two problems I am immediately concerned with: Some people involved in the last GA review have taken strong issue with many of my changes. I think they are very well-intentioned. I think they just do not have a sense of the actual debates among scholars, or what are the significant views and notable sources on "culture." One of them has been highly critical of my work being "American centric." I have tried to explain why the article appears American centric - many of the prominent names are scholars who were born in or moved to the United States. But as I said this is because "cultural anthropology" is specifically American, and when scholars in other countries want to debate "culture" they turn to American sources - not universally, but generally. (The US also just has more - the American Anthropological Association has over 6,000 members, which just swamps the entire European Association of Social Anthropologists. I am apparently not communicating this effectively.

Second - and here is where I really need the favor (the above is all essential context): I wrote a LOT over a short period of time. It needs editing, for clarity, among other things. I am turning to you because I know you respect serious scholarship and fully appreciate the importance and usefulness of our core policies in guiding us in content. And you are a good editor. I am asking you to check my work - I do not mean to check all my references (please trust me there!) but to look at the article, a little bit at a time, and help me edit it, the language, the organization, help me make it a better-written article that still does justice to a scholarly topic, one that is as lively as say the research on evolution (and is just as often misunderstood by people who do not have a strong education in the area). My hope is that if you go over a section at a time, every once in a while, over time you can help make strategic but significant improvements. Thanks, Slrubenstein  |  Talk 15:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Slr, that's certainly another area where I can claim no expertise, will be glad to try to help when time permits, but am currently in rather a rush with a topical anniversary. Will try to remember, but don't hesitate to give me a reminder after 12 February. . dave souza, talk 16:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes! There is even a Facebook thingy in honor of the anniversary!.  Anywa, I will get in touch with you again - I know that the topic is outside your expertise but that will make you a valuable editor, becuae it needs to be clear for non-experts.  Moreover, while the data dn issues may be unfamiliar to you, the scientists are all working within an evolutionary framework, broadly understood, and I think your sensibilities here make you especially valuable.  Enjoy the happy day! Slrubenstein   |  Talk 16:53, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Rather bogged down in the Vestiges senstaion, but had a glance and reached for my Hanns Johst – didn't know that showed allegiance to an American icon, specifically a LDS influence! More troubling, the mention of "Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism" is anachronistic and very debatable... will try to get round to that eventually.. dave souza, talk 12:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Owen/Huxley
Hi Dave....I got your post on my page and could read it. I have not been able to see how to reply to it. If you would not mind posting something else on how I can reply to your post I would greatly appreciate it. I have read the directions that WP posts for scholars who have done actually research trying to help with your articles, and am aware of the issues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cosans (talk • contribs) 16:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to draw your attention to some events. First, a new user, Cosens has rewritten/added large amounts to Richard Owen, taking the material from Christopher Cosens 2009. Owen's Ape and Darwin's Bulldog. Indiana UP. The material runs counter to almost all other references, and breaks so many WP guidelines, but especially NPOV and advertisement, especially self-advertisement. I assume the Cosens are related, or identical. Second, same material (mutatis mutandis) has been placed on the T.H. Huxley.

In both cases, the material should have been placed on the talk page, with a request that disintered persons should make changes on the main page if thought appropriate (IMHO). Also, said person needs attention... I thought it best to take advice before I did anything too dramatic! Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I've removed the info from Charles Darwin and questioned the degree of detail on the talk page, as well as reviewing other references and making some adjustments. Bowler 2003 p. 208 expresses some sympathy for a revisionist view of Owen, but some arguments by look wrong. As you say, the references to what appears to be Christopher Cosans's own book indicate problems of WP:COI and advertisement. The book cited is too new to have had much attention, though Amazon.com include nice comments from Ruse. The abstract of a 1997 journal article suggests a very metaphysical approach, and as you say the additions to articles conflict with more established sources. Can't do it right now, but if you want to get the ball rolling on his talk page that'll be much appreciated. . dave souza, talk 10:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * On second thoughts, I'll try to put together a brief statement on his talk page. . dave souza, talk 11:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC) OK, have done so, hopefully this'll lead to all round improvement on related articles. . . dave souza, talk 11:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I have compromised by reverting most of THH, but leaving a para plus Cosens reference, an explanatory note on the THH talk page (which does not mention Cosens by name); and have left Richard Owen as is for the present. I'm getting a copy of the Cosens book, too. Nothing can disguise the fact that Owens put man in a Subclass all his own, and on such poor grounds; for an anatomist to make such a misjudgement is really quite astonishing. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

thanks for your comment on my page
Hi Dave,

Thanks for your comment on my page. You are correct about me having expertise in the areas I have written in. I am a professor and my students constantly look things up on Wikipedia, and so I would like your entries to be accurate. I think the Darwin page is reasonable for the most part and does not have things that are that inconsistent with what people who are doing research on Darwin would believe. The accounts of Richard Owen that have been on Wikipedia are not so accurate. They do not consider any of the scholarship by Evellen Richards, Phillip Sloan, Nicolaas Rupke, Chris Smith, Michael Ruse, Bob Richards, or Ron Amundson, but rely on a book called "a history of everything". I think this is understandable because Richard Owen is pretty hard to read....he assumes a lot of anatomical knowledge on the part of his reader, and if you don't have that knowledge you will not understand what he is talking about. Both Darwin and Huxley make things much more simple for the reader. The consensus of people who do research on Owen is that he believed that evolution occurs in a way not unlike what Chambers argued. That view of evolution was somewhat different from Darwin's and so it can also be hard to see many of Owen's points unless you are aware of what the pre-Darwinian ideas about evolution were. For example, Owen believed that evolution could occur in abrupt steps, which meant that even if two animals have a big difference in anatomy it does not mean they are that "remote" from each other. Darwin and Huxley were unconcerned in a principle of comparative anatomy that anatomists today would call allometry. Although Owen was in fact aware of that principle it would be unfair of us in 2009 to judge Darwin and Huxley as being unsound scientists for not agreeing with Owen on that. The principle of allomety needed to be discussed by more anatomists before we could hold it against someone for not using it. In the last 30 years or so there has been a change in evolutionary theory that is called evo-devo.....it looks at many of the same issues that Owen thought was important, which is one reason why you can now find sympathetic accounts on Owen being written since the late 1980s. I do think that when you deal with a scientific debate using the word "discredit" is not as objective as stating what both sides actually argued and reporting how people responded. I would also like to assure you that I have read the WP guidelines as posted and particularly the one that advises scholars who have published on a subject that they should cite their work where relevant, but not excessively. In any entry I have made every effort to cite the important primary and secondary sources so that readers can look them up for themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cosans (talk • contribs) 18:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied at User talk:Cosans. . . dave souza, talk 21:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

more on Owen
Thanks for the feedback. It was not clear to me if there was a simple reply button somewhere to the message you sent. Anyhow you wrote: "There does seem to be a parallel with Chambers, but I don't think Owen would have liked the comparison." I am curious why you don't think he would like a comparison with Chambers. Both Evellen Richards and Nicolaas Rupke argue at length that he was very sympathetic to Chambers and they offer two of the most detailed published scholarly accounts of Owen's thought. Owen's diagram of mammal classification from 1857 p. 37, shares major stylistic elements with the evolutionary classification of all animals from Chamber's 1844 work 226-227. The four subclasses Owen outlines can be seen as four evolutionary steps...you start with a basic mammal brain, then you add a corpus callosum, then you expand the cerebral hemisphere's with gryi, finally you expand the cerebral hemispheres with backward growth. Owen argued about the brain size distinguishing humans from apes in his gorilla paper in 1851. In doing so he uses a concept that is a predecessor to what anatomists now call allometry. Allometry looks at how the scale of parts changes with absolute size. For animals our size humans have large brains. In 1851 the largest gorilla brain was less than half the smallest adult human ones that had been published even though the gorilla was a larger animal. When things heated up with Huxley, Owen kept coming back to brain size. The 1857 paper talks about anatomy in great detail...he uses the brain not just to classify humans but to look at all of the mammals. He states that there was no hippocampus minor in the gyenchephala, but when Huxley wanted to argue there was, Owen conceded that it existed and pointed out that it was much smaller and not even a rudiment (prior to Owen's 1857 there were mixed reports on it...for Owen it was not an functionally important structure but only a way of pointing out that the human brain grows larger than in apes). Huxley never acknowledges or addresses the rudiment argument that Owen makes, and he uses a claim about race to argue that size is not a good criterion. A direct quote from Huxley, is: "if we place A, the European brain, B, the Bosjesman brain, and C, the orang brain, in a series, the differences between A and B, so far as they have been ascertained, are of the same nature as the chief of those between B and C" (Huxley, 1861, p. 83). A further reading of both Owen and Huxley shows that they use somewhat different methods...and it would seem to be incorrect to simply state Huxley "was a better anatomist" based on their claims. Huxley's own diagram of the hippocampus minor shows it has the growth pattern that Owen says it has when he argues it is not even a rudiment. Furthermore Huxley alters the scale so the chimp brain looks the same size as the human brain on p. 101 of his 1863 work, while Owen always uses life size drawing if he can or ones that were on the same scale. While Owen was critical for Darwin for being overly deductive in the Origin, including with the snipe after the praise on the pigeon and insect observations, my sense is that he probably did in fact admire those observations....they are the places where Darwin comes closest in the Origin to doing what Owen spends so much time in his works do of describing observations. He complains at length about Darwin not giving a picture of the initial life forms, which we can see as an illustration of their different temperaments, since Owen does give a picture of his theoretical archetype. So I do think he saw the observations as "gems", but you are correct that the rest of the sentence is not very flattering. Cosans (talk) 00:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Responding here to keep the statement and reply together, and keeping it brief as this could usefully be transferred to talk:Richard Owen as a broader discussion about improving that article: some aspects are also worth discussing at Talk:Thomas Henry Huxley.
 * The reason I think he'd dislike comparison with Chambers is political rather than technical: he concludes his anonymous Edinburgh Review article with praise for himself, Cuvier and Agassiz, clearly supporting the anti-transmutation side, "as of far higher value in reference to the inductive determination of the question of the origin of species that the speculations of Demaillet, Buffon, Lamarck, 'Vestiges,' Baden Powell, or Darwin.", with Chambers still anonymous as 'Vestiges' being classed with the then discredited Lamarck. The review was clearly seen by Darwin as "extremely malignant, clever.... atrociously severe on Huxley's lecture, & very bitter against Hooker", full of misquotation and "malignity".
 * There's been a tendency for historians to simplify this in a "conflict thesis" and, as you show, we need a better understanding of how Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things" as "a constantly operating secondary creational law" compares with the transmutation he was attacking, and modern ideas of evolution. That's something to develop on article talk pages. . . dave souza, talk 09:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

so this is how I write you a message that you see? Does this exhaust all the ways we can communicate? I am assuming everything we put here is visible to someone surfing the internet...am I correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cosans (talk • contribs) 22:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yup, more advice on your talk page. . dave souza, talk 22:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dave....Thank you again for showing me how to use the different features and explaining how editing works. At this point I have posted two items under Owen. One is a general suggestion/invitation to people to look at the key scholarship on him and make revisions in light of that. I give a list of the major books and articles in English. The other one is a list of additions and revisions I made, along with an explanation of the rational of each one. Most of what I put in was pretty basic stuff that anyone who is doing research on Owen would agree on...although some of the items do break with the urban legends about Owen. I have also put a little note on the question of subclass to add to your and Ross' points. I do wonder if we can really judge past scientists the way Ross seems to want to. Its not like God had an answer sheet of how to classify things, and Owen went against it when he bumped humans up from an order to a subclass. Foucault has a really interesting discussion of classification in the Order of Things. Finally I did add a talk post on Huxley in which I put some of the current text, a suggested revision, and a discussion of what I think the issues are in the revision. Some of the claims made in the Huxley article are oversimplifications at best, and they are not consistent with a reading of what Owen published in 1851, 1857 and 1859. It is not consistent with Chris Smith's 1997 article or Nick Rupke's 1994 book as well. Anyhow, I would like you to know that I would not intentionally put anything on without logging on, so please delete if you can any of the other things that have been posted on Huxley that you want or Ross or others want to delete. If there are any ideas you want to discuss from it let me know. I do want to note that I don't think Ross has been all that welcoming, and it seems to me if all professors and researchers contributed to your site after they published articles or books with university presses it would improve the quality of the site as well as help advance everyone's understanding. We have strict things we have to go through to have our work published, and once it is published we know what some of the key points are. The guidelines say we are suppose to cite ourselves but not excessively, and that seems reasonable to me. If we were to dump a lot of stuff on your site that was not refereed and published first then we would be going outside of that process. Thanks again for all your help and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts. Chris Cosans (talk) 04:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for getting the ball rolling on the article talk pages, we do have to work within the constraints of article size and WP:WEIGHT so points will have to be concisely summarised, or perhaps expanded into new sub articles. While was a bit suspicious of what was going on, that's understandable in light of past events in this big open community of all sorts of viewpoints. Sometimes people do try to amend articles to promote their viewpoint and their books – on this same general historical topic, promotion of  The Homeopathic Revolution by Dana Ullman   involved a lot of argument to overcome his claims that Charles Darwin was cured by homeopathy, improving the articles but not everyone's temper! (links for my own convenience) Expert contributions are very welcome, subject to no original research and appreciation that non-experts can also contribute. Including me! . . dave souza, talk 09:51, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi...I just saw this comment. Basically I think I like wikipedia's open nature. The question is how do you include experts who research and publish on topics and non-experts. Many of my professor friends complain, but they don't do as much about it as they could. i don't think my book is that controversial because it defends a reading that fits with Rupke's big book on Owen from 1994. His book is the most complete study, but it costs $80 so it is not as widely read. a less expensive paperback version will be coming out soon I understand. Mine focuses more on anatomy and also tries to give accounts of Huxley and Darwin. A lot of what you hear about Owen is recycled versions of Darwin's complaints. But I think Darwin did not understand Owen that well. In the Origin he cites Owen as giving evidence for evolution...and according to Richards and Rupke this is in fact because Owen did believe in evolution based on the evidence that he published and Darwin cited. The quote on the Owen page of Darwin saying Owen claimed to have discovered "natural selection" is enlightening as well....Owen believed in evolution but not that natural selection was the main means, he certainly never claimed to discover "natural selection"...I did look through the end of the Edinburgh review article again. What Owen is doing there is defending what we would call a punctuated equilibrium view of evolution. You have forms that are stable for a long time...and then suddenly a new form arises...that seems what Owen was thinking in Nature of the Limbs. The Origin's picture of evolution is a little different than that with forms not being stable over time but constantly open to gradual change. Darwin's platypus comment again shows he didn't fully get Owen's points. All of this makes me also wonder how reliable Darwin is on whether Owen was "jealous"..if we had a letter from Owen's wife saying Owen was "jealous" that would be reliable. I think Owen was mad not because Darwin scoped him by publishing on natural selection first, nor because Darwin proved evolution over creationism...but because Owen was working on a theory of evolution that was different from Darwin's and Darwin does not talk about all the other theories about the process of evolution in his book. If he had something like the introduction in the 5th edition in a chapter in the 1st edition of the Origin where he outlines earlier versions of evolution and compares where his theory takes us, the tone of Owen's review might have been quite different. Cosans (talk) 19:07, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

good morning Dave....thanks for the note. I agree there is an issue of space. Initially I simply tried to fill out the details from what was on the Huxley page, and to preserve some of the style. The concept of NPOV is actually one that is dear to me and one that I argue for at length in my published writings. The Huxley entry before I modified it violated the NPOV principle because it said things like Owen was "wrong" or Huxley was a "better anatomist" without saying any thing about what Owens perspective was at all. It was not consistent with many of the things that have been published on what Owen's perspective was. Huxley is actually pretty complex as well and I think it is hard to give a simple account of his full position. I have a deadline with something else right now, but I will focus more on our discussion with time. Chris Cosans (talk) 17:40, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've a few other deadlines myself, hope to come back to this in time. Just now I'm watching David Attenborough's programme about Darwin's Tree of Life, giving a dubious account of Owen's disagreements with Darwin about fixity of species. Look forward to future clarifications. . dave souza, talk 20:47, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dave...I have looked at your thoughts on Darwin and Owen on my page, and written some thoughts on those. Chris —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cosans (talk • contribs) 14:49, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

directions
thanks for you thoughts. Could you tell me how I get into the "message section" and how I respond to "messages" you post there. I am not finding this obvious. Cosans (talk) 15:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dave...I have made some revisions on the Galen page and added comments on its discussion page. If you have any thoughts on what I have done I would be interested in them. Do you think it would help people if I wrote more about the courses I have taught and things I have published on on my page? Chris Cosans (talk) 17:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * More thoughts on your talk page, of course remember that I'm no expert! . . dave souza, talk 21:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

of interest?
This might interest you. TheresaWilson (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it's an interesting angle, as you say the lack of citations suggests OR, or at lest leaves a question as to the relationship of the statements to the references. Bit out of my field, I'm trying to get my head round the complex relationships between religion and early science. . dave souza, talk 17:38, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn Relation?
so, it has been a while, and i have watched the fireworks for months now without saying much so that i would not interfere or be falsely accused of being my wife. however, now Hrafn has gone and come back and you are still mixed up with him and Orange Marlin and Chihuahua and the rest, so i want to ask you: what is your relation to Hrafn? why is it that you always seem to come to his defense or appear to post whenever his name is mentioned? is he a relative or a close friend or something? thanks. -- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 03:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * What a peculiar question. Hrafn's a constructive editor who is on my watchlist. . . dave souza, talk 13:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * actually it isn't that peculiar, since putting someone on your watch list only allows you to know when their page is altered or they are involved in conversations, and not when their name may come up in random conversation on some other talk page somewhere. is there a special setting for watch lists that i don't know about?-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 02:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * While I can't recall the exact circumstances you're referring to, I have 3,725 pages on my watchlist (excluding talk pages), and sometimes follow up user contributions. One of the hazards of being an admin, must trim that list sometime. . dave souza, talk 09:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There's a few people whose contribs I have on Bookmarks. Not because I'm stalking them, but because I know that anything they're involved in will be interesting. Possibly Dave follows a similar system? Isn't it a fairly logical thing to do? Isn't it equally peculiar that you, self-ref, notice such a coincidence? TheresaWilson (talk) 13:01, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Theresa, I hadn't thought of that, but there are occasions when that's a good idea. Our self referential friend seems a bit obsessive here, no doubt for reasons beyond the reach of science. So much to keep an eye on! . . dave souza, talk 15:56, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * so how does that work? I am familiar with regular browser bookmarks, but when a semi-random conversation starts on an unexpected spot in Wikipedia, and mentions someone's name that i might want to track, how do i get that flagged so that i can be sure to be able to read it and have the option of being involved in the conversation? I'm curious. thanks. -- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 05:30, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Your comments would be appreciated
As someone who has contributed to a thread about terminology on WT:NPOV/FAQ, I'd like to point you to a thread that attempts to bring the issue to some sort of closure, here. It's important we try and get to the end of this debate, so your comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time. Ben (talk) 08:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Have put a word in, not sure if you'll like my comments! ..dave souza, talk 10:38, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

new article
I know this may seem kind of sheepish, but how do you create new articles?Prussian725 (talk) 16:35, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sticking in uninvited. Easiest way is to use the search box: search using Go for the new article & click on the red link (Create the page) that'll appear if it doesn't exist. TheresaWilson (talk) 17:23, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hadn't thought of that, usually just link the name to give myself a redlink, either in a related page or on a temporary edit on my own page. The other thing worth remembering is to cite sources showing verification of notability, and that way you don't get any argument about speedy deletion. . . dave souza, talk 19:48, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh! My way also gives you some idea of how much it could be linked to once it's created and possibly finds any closely associated or even identical pages (with a slightly different name) that already exist. TheresaWilson (talk) 20:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Either way thanks a lot for the help! Talk later.Prussian725 (talk) 22:52, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dave
I think we got off on the wrong foot over on the argument we had about Creationism. We don't agree on this, neither do we have to. But I would appreiate a little space to try out this first article of mine. If you have a problem, please do not revert but take it to the talk page. Thanks. Refreshments (talk) 18:24, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You've been given plenty of good advice. Follow policies with care. . dave souza, talk 20:06, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Would appreciate your input
Dave, in that you are knowledgeable about evolution and appear to be a level headed administrator of that topic, I ask you for some help. I was following up work and came upon the Epic of Evolution and then Michael Dowd. The first article on the Epic in 06 was deleted for as I now understand good reasons. It was about to again be deleted or redirected. Dowd was also being cut badly. I went to work on them but ran into an administrator who cut most everything I did. He was technically right but a bit heavy handed. S/he threatened me with being blocked and some of the comments were questionable, at least to me. I’m new at this and was working on a monkey see, monkey do (most articles are under referenced) but I think I have it figured out. Wikipedia is intimidated to the novice. As I hope to become one of you, I do wish to get started right. Please check out my sandbox work on both – User:Jlrobertson/sandbox - Epic of evolution & User:Jlrobertson/sandboxDOWD and advise. My background and efforts are at User:Jlrobertson. Will appreciate your opinion as I’m about ready to load both of these rewrites up and defend them. I have devoted much time to them both. If they bite the dust, I will find more rewarding things to do with my time.Jlrobertson (talk) 16:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There's certainly a lot of information there, in some ways keeping the articles concise might work well. While I appreciate that you're keen to add information, the idea of using third party sources for opinion on the subject, establishing what's worth including, is a good way to go and I do try to follow it. So, best to start with additions where you've got a third party explicitly commenting on the subject of the article, and not just using it as a phrase. Hrafn isn't an administrator, but has a very good grasp of policy and it's best to check the policies to argue any points. The block template is standard, and anyone can issue one if they think it's appropriate but the question of blocking is a decision for an admin. It may seem a bit heavy handed and in principle we want to encourage editors, but there can be circumstances where a degree of bluntness becomes appropriate. I've not looked into it to check out the situation. So, good luck with that and hope you can fully justify proposed additions in accordance with relevant policies. Do let me know if there are more specific points I can advise on, though unfortunately I'm pretty heavily committed to other things just now. . . dave souza, talk 17:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks - it is a bit over done. Been writing to address Hrafn's deletions rather than do good copy.Jlrobertson (talk) 12:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

NPOV
Thanks for the message you left on my talk page. Instead of saying Baraminology is a pseudoscience wouldn't it be better to say that baraminology is considered pseudoscience by much of scientific community? By the way I am not a creationist. And also nobody seems to have seen my creation Chris Harper.--EvilFlyingMonkey (talk) 07:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, there is a case for saying who considers baraminology to be pseudoscience, at the least it's the overwhelming majority of the scientific community and in addition the US courts when they've had to decide whether it can be taught in public school science classes. Something to discuss on the talk page. Did have a look at your Chris Harper article, a useful start but when I looked it gave no more detail than the Landover Baptist article, and I couldn't get the biography source link to give me more than a brief statement which, as I recall, was that they didn't have a photo of him. So, more sources needed, thanks for getting it under way. . dave souza, talk 07:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Concerns about what you are proposing for Origin of Species
As I posted in a response on the review page I have severe concerns about some of what you seem to be prosing to do with the Reception section. I think we should thrash it out before any major changes are made. You can read what I say more in depth in my response on the review page, but the essence of my concern is this. In the mid 19th century theology, scientific opinion, and educated popular opinion were all much more closely entwined than they are today. Therefore while it is possible to discuss the impact on the scientific community; it is not possible to separate the reactions of scientists and non-scientists the way you and Pilcha seem to be proposing. I will temporarily add your talk page to my watch list in case yo want to discuss any of this here rather than on the review page. Rusty Cashman (talk) 07:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, my feeling is that the current division is a problem and will discuss it as you suggest. . dave souza, talk 08:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * BTW I asked Malleus and G-Guy to comment in case I was asking for too much, especially as I'm pretty interested in evolution. --Philcha (talk) 20:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, the help from Malleaus is great, I'm not sure what to make of G-Guy's rather general comments. . dave souza, talk 21:07, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I omitted the description of David Quammen and just wiki-linked him. He is a science writer/journalist so perhaps "historian" was pushing it, although many of his non-fiction books have been science history. I agree that the section could use material from additional sources, but I thought it was a good start anyway. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for your help re: harassment. If you have the time, you might want to keep an eye on those guy(s) -- I highly suspect it's one user, given idiosyncratic behavior. Plus, dystopiasticker has already been found to have multiple accounts. Probably not the last we'll hear from them. Thanks again! //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 19:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, just advertised theirself by posting nonsense on a talkpage on my watchlist. Will try to keep an eye open, don't hesitate to contact me if you suspect another episode. . dave souza, talk 19:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey
A while back, I asked Raul about editing a page that was on a Christian topic but redlinked. I think it was on Jesus's Tomb or something similar. I was able to pick up quite a few books (like the Oxford gloss). Were you still interested in things like that? As you can see, I've been busy lately, but I thought that I might try that area. I normally avoid pages like that because of the normally massive fighting, bias, or my own potential CoI. By the way, how have things been? I haven't seen you about lately so I guess things have been quiet. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:30, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps frantic is a better word than quiet, this being the year of Darwin I've been working flat out on some article, plus getting diverted as usual. Sorry not to have noticed your RfA earlier, have put some thought in but it's a difficult call. As for religious issues, it's a bit of a spinoff from Darwin for me, and the complex relationships between religion and science at that time are very hard to briefly summarise, which is my current aim at the Origin page – thanks for commenting there, the literary aspects sound worthwhile. . dave souza, talk 11:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I saw the Origin of Species article and I instantly thought of George Eliot's Middle March. I left a note about the literary aspect, as a lot of famous authors almost instantaneously incorporated it into their works. I have sources, so drop me a line if you want to pursue it (a few lines if anything to show the instant cultural impact - then you could have something like Inherit the Wind later which shows that it was no longer the Origin of Species in particular but the "idea" of Darwin later). I personally studied Darwin in terms of canonical literature and classical science (how science and the scientific method developed over time), so, my view may bit a little bent towards emphasizing those things. :) As to the RfA - the need is mostly busy work stuff (I'm tired of bothering admin for history merges, viewing deleted pages to help with creating new ones, having images on the main page go unprotected, etc) and then there is the discussion based stuff (ArbCom enforcement) where those like Orange Marlin are dealt with too heavy handed and I think I can be a moderating force there that gets both sides to work together instead of just putting forth a situation that could look like raw punishment. None of these are a "need", really, but they would help me. Oh, and did you ever hear that, in regards to blocking IPs to stop problematic banned trolls, I topped Raul - I blocked the Boston area and the IPv6 node at Wikiversity to stop Moulton when he was using the MIT labs to get around everything. He threw a fit that I would do that. After I wished him a merry Christmas, he responded something like "it would have been merry if I didn't have to travel two hours to find a computer to respond with". :) Ottava Rima (talk) 14:47, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, feel free to bother me for these tasks, though I'm a bit out of practice with history merges and maybe best give that to an expert. Of course George Eliot was part of Chapmsn's Westminster Review group and involved in promoting Spencer's progressive Lamarckism applied to human society, which became increasingly popular after publication of the Origin and came under the umbrella of "Darwinism". A brief statement about the influence of the book on literature would be very good, with care to source it to good historians as it could get confused with the influence of Vestiges of Creation which remained more popular than the Origin. My aim is to stop short of Inherit the Wind and restrain myself from mentioning the relevant literary work which is Vernon Kellogg's Headquarters Nights..... don't know if that counts as literature! Congrats on your dealings with Moulton, who must be one of the most tedious organisms in the universe. All the best, dave souza, talk 19:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Botanist-inline2
Hello, you removed a deletion template from Template:Botanist-inline2, while the deletion discussion was still open. Please read the closed discussion more carefully, as it was closed as a duplicate nomination to an existing still open discussion. The discussion should be closed or listed as backlogged by tomorrow, but today was a day too early. 70.29.213.241 (talk) 21:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * My error, just that I tried following it up and it seemed a dead end archive. . dave souza, talk 22:10, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for the useful hint - I find that editing the markup of inline citations can be tricky - particularly when they include long urls. Aa77zz (talk) 22:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Me too! . . dave souza, talk 13:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Watch the Evidence for Common Descent page
User Christian Skeptic just put a "speedy deletion" tag on the Evidence for common descent page -- I removed it, but I just wanted to alert you that he's going off the deep end on this, and suggest that people who are interested in the topic keep an eye on the page. Agathman (talk) 15:58, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, as you'll appreciate it is on my watchlist. Will have a look. . dave souza, talk 16:05, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, very pointy, and have advised accordingly. Thanks for the heads-up, dave souza, talk 16:27, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Missing puppy
I think someone haz found ur missing puppy. Ceiling Cat (talk) 18:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Chow! Not in very good taste, I fear, but topical when the voyage is being recalled... . . dave souza, talk 19:01, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Mentioning Darwin gave up natural selection and became a Lamarckian
[Hi Dave. Logicus would be grateful for your prompt provision of the information and evidence for your claim that Darlington claim that Darwin became a Lamarckian on evolutionary selection as requested by Logicus in his 15.35 contribution of yesterdauy in the following discussion copied from Talk:Darwin. I am shortly going to check your claim against Edition 6 of The Origin, and so ideally need your paged textual evidence. ]--Logicus (talk) 11:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * [repetition of article talk page deleted, and date corrected by ds]
 * O hai. Replied at article talk page. . . dave souza, talk 12:23, 21 April 2009 (UTC)