User talk:Michel Laurin

Welcome!

Hello, Michel Laurin, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome!
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I used reference templates to turn your citations at Mesosaur into internal links to the bibliography (i.e. clicking on the footnote number takes you to the reference in the bibliography). If you'd like me to explain how they work, just ask! J. Spencer (talk) 00:28, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

December 2012
Hello, I'm SkepticalRaptor. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Reptile, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Michel Laurin. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may need to consider our guidance on conflicts of interest.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. MrOllie (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Welcome, really
Wikipedia, unfortunately, can be unfriendly to experts with controversial views, however rigorously they respect neutrality guidelines. Retaining even uncontroversial academic experts is a continuing source of concern; you may be aware of Expert retention and Expert rebellion as well as the Note to new editors from academia by   Curtis Clark. Do bear with us, as Dr. Clark has for over seven years. The project can only profit from your further contributions, as it has from your past ones. Peter Brown (talk) 22:16, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised to see my essay used for encouragement! If you stay,


 * Try not to take anything personally
 * Reference like crazy
 * Develop consensus ahead of time, even for piddly little things, if you think someone will object
 * Avoid editing big-concept articles, since they draw a lot of attention from people who, for both legitimate and spurious reasons, see the world differently from you. Obscure taxa and lower-level groups always need attention, and non-experts usually don't care.


 * --Curtis Clark (talk) 02:12, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both for the information, and especially to Peter for restoring some of the edits that I had done and that another user had deleted, and fixing some technical details in my edits. I will write a short section to explain my editorial policy, in case this discourages a few users from prematurely deleting some of the information that I add.Michel Laurin (talk) 08:01, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi, I noticed this thread, as sometimes happens in this public arena where some of us choose to keep watch on a select few talk pages of other wikipedia editors. Please forgive me butting in, it is just to offer some advice that I've recently decided is a useful addendum to the above recommendations. This advice comes as a result of considerable discussion with the real-life instantiations of some wikipedians.
 * I highly recommend using a pseudonym, one that doesn't look like a person's name. This is very counter-intuitive for a scientist, but has some significant advantages:
 * When you are attacked (and I guarantee that attacks will happen through no fault of yours, for example when you revert some flagrant vandalism and the vandal then attacks you), I bet that you will feel considerably less threatened if you are operating under a pseudonym, and you might even find the attack amusingly ridiculous.
 * There are people in here who seem to seek a bizarre kind of "personal connection" with their fellow editors, who will analyze your name and imagine that it indicates something about you such as ethnicity, gender, or a personality trait, and then attack or "tease" you about that trait.
 * The exception that I've seen to the general advantage of a pseudonym is when a scientist with skills in natural history deals with photos in Commons. For example, if I see that someone I know as a competent phycologist tags a photo with "This isn't parsley, it's Fucus", I'm enormously more confident that they are correct than if someone that I don't know has added the tag. Absurd misidentifications of photos are astonishingly common, and I'd recommend that anyone who wants to seriously contribute to straightening out that mess should use a signon that is their name as a real-life scientist, i.e., that they should have two signons, one for photos, and one for everything else.
 * Anyway, best wishes to you, and I hope that you stay around. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:14, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello Sminthopsis84. You were right. No sooner did I start contributing that attacks started coming. Not only did Mr Ollie (who left a message above, in this talk page) undo most of my contributions, but he also put a tag on the biographical page that a colleague had done of me, raising doubts about whether or not I was sufficiently well-known to deserve a Wikipedia biographical page. This may not be an all-out, personal attack, but it sure looks like one. So, I am done with Wikipedia. I went into paleontology for love of science and to do a work that I enjoyed. I don't need to waste my time trying to improve web sites and see my work destroyed immediately. Farewell, then. Michel Laurin (talk) 22:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm very sorry to hear that, but I totally understand. I hope that you'll consider making small improvements, and perhaps corresponding with sympathetic editors behind the scenes (e.g., by email) who may be able and willing to keep watch on particular pages that you care about to stop vandalism. It is indeed very difficult to make any improvements around here, but there are a few scientists who keep watch on some favourite pages, contenting themselves with combatting further deterioration. Best wishes, Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:29, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Sminthopsis84, but I think that we cannot get the e-mail of Wikipedia contributors, unless we know who they really are, right? And after my experience, I understand that most contributors don't want to reveal their identity! This is a really bad system. If I had known how unruly it was, I would not have bothered with it. By the way, is there a way to prevent somebody who systematically removes my additions to Wikipedia from doing it again? Because if there isn't, this is all a big waste of time. As we say, it is far easier to destroy than to build.Michel Laurin (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, destruction is much simpler; one might come up with an alteration of a famous quote, something about foolish consistency. It is a user option to permit email or not. For those that allow it, email sending is accessible through a link in the left column when you look at their personal page or personal talk page. Wikipedia generates an email message that doesn't give away the true email address of the sender. The only way to prevent someone doing it again is for several people to work very hard to undo/critique their actions. (Flagrant vandals can be blocked; the difference is that the administrators who do the blocking have to be convinced that the person is incorrigible.) The good news is that the history of what has been done to a page is available, so that those of us with sufficient energy can slowly work to undo recent damage. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again, Sminthopsis84. I am learning a lot through you. How do I contact the administrators to warn them that there is a problem so that they can at least keep a watch on somebody's activity, especially on the pages that I edit? I might like to try, before giving up contributing to Wikipedia for good, since there might be a solution, after all. I did not see such a link in the "Contact Wikipedia" page. Michel Laurin (talk) 21:15, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * You can contact administrators by posting at WP:AN/I. I'm not sure how helpful they can be, but do report here that you have done so; I can probably add some material. In any case  I, Sminthopsis84, and apparently "Stranger forever" are prepared keep undoing MrOllie's petty reversions as long as necessary. User:Medeis may also assist. It is important to Wikipedia's coverage of Tetrapoda to keep Michel Laurin on board. Peter Brown (talk) 21:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Peter, that was very useful. I just filed a complaint on Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring and warned MrOllie about this. I don't know what the administrators will do, but hopefully, that will simply be sufficient to stop MrOllie from being a nuisance in the future. If you have a few minutes to look at my complaint, I would appreciate if you could fix any technical mistake and oversight that I have probably made. I am fairly new at this and my knowledge of html coding is not so good. Best wishes, Michel Laurin (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Edit warring isn't really the issue. Though User:Bbb23 did reject your complaint, his response to my comments at User talk:Bbb23 suggest that there may be other recourse; you may wish to respond in turn. I note that User:Ruud Koot has also reverted MrOllie's work and I have communicated with him here. As he is also an administrator, he could perhaps get further involved. Peter Brown (talk)

Thanks Peter, I have followed your advice and still need to do more on that. This is blowing out of proportions, though. I hope that this can be settled soon. Best wishes, Michel Laurin (talk) 04:26, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I have created a subpage User:Peter M. Brown/Michel Laurin updates. If there is an edit you prefer not to implement yourself, I suggest that you do the editing anyway but, instead of saving it, copy the wikitext of the entire section into the editing area of this subpage along with an indication where it should go and save using the relevant edit summary. Unless I encounter an edit conflict or (most unlikely) have some reservations, I will implement the change within the day. I will do no editing on the subpage, leaving you to replace its contents next time you wish to avail yourself of this procedure. This will be much easier for me than what I did with Varanopidae. Peter Brown (talk) 22:15, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Many thanks Peter. I just inserted a short text for the Lissamphibia page, which can serve as a test-case. If this works out, it may be a very convenient solution. Of course, always feel free to edit or omit whatever you disagree with or think is not appropriate for a given page. Michel Laurin (talk) 22:41, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Please see User talk:Peter M. Brown/Michel Laurin updates. Thanks, Peter Brown (talk) 00:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

You want to edit or delete text that I added or modified on a Wikipedia page? Please first read a bit about my editorial policy
I am an occasional, relatively new contributor to the Wikipedia web site. Thus, I apologize if some of the technical details (about links or html coding in general) are wrong and need fixing; I try my best within my time constraints. I am a professional paleontologist and systematist; those interested in my background should check out my home page. My contributions are of two kinds. First, if I see anything that looks like a plain error, or an oversight, I try to update or add the relevant information. Second, and most often, I add recently published information that has not yet reached Wikipedia. I try to maintain a balanced point of view, but I realize that complete objectivity is a chimera. If I develop a new section or topic, I try to present all well-supported points of view and cite the relevant papers. If I just add recent information, there may be just one or two new papers to add, and often (in my contributions), they may be my papers. This is simply because I try to write only about topics that I know very well, usually on which I have published regular scientific papers. And I can only hope that other scientists will make their work accessible in a similar way because I lack competence or time to do it for them. I know that Wikipedia discourages excessive self-citation (I try not to be excessive) and that care must be taken when writing about work by people whom we know. But I know most of the colleagues working on the topics about which I am qualified to work! So if I did not write about that, I would not write at all! Recently, I have added information about three papers on mesosaurs that result from work by an international group which includes about a third of the scientists working on mesosaurs (this is a very small community). There have been few responses yet from the scientific community (other than a few short citations in other papers), not surprisingly because the publication process often takes years. When relevant responses appear, I will add citations to that, unless somebody beats me to it. Some of the information that I add is controversial, and if so, I try to be clear about this or I at least qualify the statement (e.g. "some authors suggest that...") but all new results are controversial (unless they are trivial), and if we wanted to report only on what is consensual in science, we would now be writing about papers published in the 1980 or 1990s, at best. But I don't think that this would be in the best interest of Wikipedians. That is why my criterion for inclusion is scientific support rather than scientific consensus. Remember that when scientists dared suggest that the earth was round and revolved around the sun, they were a tiny minority and the consensus was that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe... If you think that there is a problem with my contribution, I would prefer if you wrote to me first, rather than just deleting my work; chances are that I can fix it. If any of this runs counter to Wikipedia policy (about which I have read) or if this displeases to a significant proportion of wikipedians, just let me know and I will simply stop contributing to that site; I can put my energy elsewhere, and I have contributed to other sites like the Tree of Life, and I can certainly restrict myself to these sites. So far, with about four reactions (two rather positive and two rather negative), my sample size is much too low for me to draw conclusions.Michel Laurin (talk) 08:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Welcome
Hi Michel. I noticed your report at the edit warring noticeboard so followed you here to see how you're getting on. I think Sminthopsis84 was mistaken, above, when they said using our email service hides your address. It hides the addressee's address from you but discloses yours to them.

Some volunteers here review all recent changes to the encyclopedia (by clicking the "Recent changes" link on the left). This is essential work, as they intercept most obvious vandalism and weed out a lot of well-intended but inappropriate contributions. These new page patrollers are skeptical of new editors adding citations to their own work, with good reason - we do have a bit of a problem with such editors giving undue weight to their own achievements (I'm certain this isn't the case with you) and patrollers, incapable of distinguishing spammers from valuable contributors, sometimes just automatically delete anything they suspect.

You will worry others less if you compose your larger contributions on a "user sub-page" and paste them into an article when they've got all the references and they're reasonably complete. (You can save a user sub-page to work on later.) Create a sub-page for a topic (say, "Actinodin") by searching for User:Michel Laurin/Actinodin. On the results page, click "Start the User:Michel Laurin/Actinodin page".

If someone reverts an edit you have made to an article, open a discussion on the article talk page. Insist they support their position with policy, and read the policies they cite. If you reach an impasse, our dispute resolution process is usually effective.

Editing at the frontiers of science in Wikipedia is more demanding than describing old settled consensus positions. Most Wikipedia science content is based on academic overviews of a topic (independent expert reviews, textbook chapters, position statements, etc.) and these are always our preferred sources. When new hypotheses or research have not yet been contextualised by independent experts, we must be careful to make very plain the true degree of acceptance of the different views.

You may take your complaint to Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents (ANI). That noticeboard deals with general behaviour problems. If you do take your complaint to ANI, would you let me know on my talk page? I'm very keen to make this a more welcoming environment for experts. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:31, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you Anthonyhcole. I have taken other, less drastic steps for now, so I will give this some time before I resort to filing a complaint to ANI (although I will if I need to, and I will try to remember letting you know about this). But I would be grateful if you could answer a simple questions: is there any Wikipedia violation that prevents or discourages inserting information about a point of view expressed in an author's own papers when that is presented as one of the hypotheses (I am involved in many controversies and I am careful not to present as settled fact a controversy)? I had done that on the Tiktaalik page. Or factual information, like the oldest known amniotic embryos, as I had done on the Reptile page? I thought that this would be unproblematic, but it turned out to be a nightmarish experience. In these cases, I do not think that it would be necessary to start subpages, given that my additions were fairly punctual. Please also note that some of my viewpoints, when they represent a minority point of view (and many recent discoveries fall into that category) area already more difficult to publish in scholarly journals than papers that simply reinforce established consensus. But I succeed in publishing them, simply not always in journals as prestigious as some of my competitors. I would not cite (in Wikipedia pages or elsewhere) work that has not been peer reviewed. Then, some of my competitors (not all of them, fortunately), whose names need not disclosed here, sometimes "forget" to mention that their hypothesis is not the only one valid (something that I don't do in my own papers). And finally, even when new hypotheses are widely cited in regular scientific papers (and this is the case of several of my papers), it takes a long time to percolate through textbooks (5-10 years, in my experience) and obviously, to sites like Wikipedia. I was hoping that I could make this process less biased and faster. Best wishes, Michel Laurin (talk) 05:02, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Sources in medicine and paleontology

 * In medicine (the topic I monitor) we rarely report a new theory until it has been put into context by at least one highly-regarded independent expert in a dedicated review. There are exceptions, of course, and those are argued on the relevant article talk pages until the involved editors come to an agreement. Once all relevant policies and sources are considered, unanimity is common. You may decide, though, that it is too time-consuming. As I said above, editing on the frontiers is very demanding.


 * Though it's not forbidden to directly add your own work to articles, we recommend in such cases posting the suggested edit to the article talk page for community input first, to avoid stirring up defensive reactions from editors who've seen one too many self-promoters. I'm sorry, but editing Wikipedia can be arduous. I hope you're not put off by all this. :) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:50, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Anthony. "Put off" would not be the right way of formulating it, but I would probably lack time to do all this for several pages. If that is unavoidable, I may have to restrict my activity to 4 or 5 pages. Medicine seems to be far more disciplined than paleontology of phylogenetics. In my field, controversies can last a lifetime (I published on turtle origins back in 1991, and it remains just as controversial today as it was then), and many that I have been involved in seem to fall into that category. If we wait till there is a consensus to expose Wikipedia readers to new ideas, many of them will not be exposed before I retire (or die). So, what should I do? It may simply be that Wikipedia is not the right medium for me to write in, and given that there are many others, I can simply give that one up, if you think that this is optimal. Best wishes, Michel Laurin (talk) 06:29, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * A great many paleontological theories don't make it into dedicated reviews, Anthonyhcole. Also, an editor often has to rely on original papers reporting bits and pieces, and it is wholly impractical to exhibit each one on a talk page for comment. The Dinosaur article, for example, has 160 references; a typical one, from 1997, is "Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone".  This article, 15 years old, has 40 citations on Google Scholar, but none really qualify as review articles. It is used to support a tentative claim, that hemoglobin may have been found in dinosaur fossils. A Wikipedia editor does not have to hold off reporting the theory until the day, if it ever comes, that the article is cited in a dedicated review Peter Brown (talk) 07:48, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * In medicine, we often cite primary sources when they've been discussed in scholarly reviews, but if they haven't been contextualised by a secondary source, they rarely make it into a Wikipedia medical article. Medicine is highly-funded though and scholarly reviews of most interesting topics are published frequently. I'm not sure what best practice is for the natural sciences. If you both approve, I'd like to copy this discussion to the Reliable sources noticeboard for more opinions. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:27, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As far as I am concerned, you may post this. I confirm what Peter Brown has written above: in paleontology, consensus is rare and slow in coming. Funding is always severely limiting (more than fossils!), so reviews are not that common, and even when they appear, they do not lead to consensus; they reflect the opinion of their authors, only. I have had to respond to such reviews that I found highly biased (because they did not mention a hypothesis that I thought should have been covered). So I don't think that it is feasible, useful, or even desirable to wait for a review of a paleontological (or systematics) paper to incorporate it into Wikipedia. I would say that the most important thing is that it has to be a peer-reviewed publication. That does not guarantee accuracy of all statements included, of course, but that kind of certainty is seldom within the grasp of science. I also think that there is a fundamental difference between medicine and paleontology. People rely on medical knowledge to treat ailments and the like; so many people will look for medical papers to get practical solutions to their problems. You don't want them to play guinea pig on themselves by trying a treatment whose efficiency or side effects have not been tried on other species first. Paleontology is not like that, and as a historical science not amenable to experimentation, uncertainty is much greater but matters less (nobody's health is involved). The fossil record will always be incomplete, so there are hypotheses about which we will never be sure. For instance, is Tetraceratops the oldest therapsid or not? After 22 years (I published my first paper on this topic in 1990), the jury is still out, and no more fossils have been found (that taxon is known from a single, crushed, incomplete skull), so other than reanalyses of basically the same data, no progress can be made. Such factors may also explain part of the difference between these two fields, and I think that practices on Wikipedia in these fields may need to differ as a result. But of course, this is only my opinion. Michel Laurin (talk) 14:46, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I've left a few questions there, pointing to this discussion. Hopefully we'll get some other views. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Tetraceratops is an excellent example. For two decades, Michel Laurin has consistently maintained that the animal is a therapsid. As he notes, however, the jury is still out; his is a point of view, others disagree, and he will not make this claim on Wikipedia. The Therapsids and List of therapsids articles are suitably cautious on the point. 1908 in paleontology is defective in this respect and needs to be repaired. A contribution of Michel Laurin will not suffer from such a defect unless he makes a mistake, which is not likely and, quite probably, will quickly be caught. Peter Brown (talk) 23:24, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi, chiming in here, I think the best thing to do is always put a new idea in context so there is not undue weight. As much as possible lay out consensus and then a new theory can be juxtaposed against it with attribution as to who's come up with it. I've written a bit round here so am happy to help out as a seconda pair of eyes. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * If I may add my two cents here, as someone who writes in history and philosophy of science, where conflicts go on for generations and review articles are few and far between. It's common usage there to present the various perspectives on the controversy; an encyclopedia certainly doesn't have to wait until the experts have resolved the controversy.  An excellent example of the presentation of an ongoing controversy is at Demarcation problem, where the opinions of various competing schools of thought are presented, without the need to come to a resolution of the issue.
 * The only problem I sense here, is the question of whether you can present the opinions of those authorities who you are certain from your personal research haven't got it right. That's one of the ongoing problems that academics have writing for Wikipedia.  We have to put aside all of our opinions that can't be cited to reliable sources.  It's hard to right that way, but it's Wikipedia's policy, and it really seems to work.  --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 04:18, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Casliber and SteveMcCluskey. I agree with what you both wrote. When I make a statement, I usually support it with citations to scientific work. One of the differences I noticed between my preferred use and Wikipedia policy, if I understand the latter correctly, is that I usually prefer citing primary works that reviews, simply because I have a specialist's perspective, I have written reviews myself, including an academic book by U. of California Press that covers most of the topics that I wish to discuss in Wikipedia, and over my 25 years of career, I have assembled a library of nearly 20 000 entries (primary and secondary scientific littertaure), although I have admittedly not read all! But I have read enough to have a good idea of what is a significant paper in the field (at least, I hope so). And in science, it is customary to attribute a finding to its author, not to the first reviewer who covers it. Is that wrong? Anyway, it is also customary in science to mention the alternative opinions (disregarding what has been eliminated as plainly wrong) and attribute them to their authors. I got into trouble here on Wikipedia when I started adding references and text documenting a second point of view that was often mine and often still represents the opinion of a minority, but not a marginal one to the extent that my opinions are typically cited in primary and secondary works dealing with these topics. This is shown, for instance, by my Google Scholar profile, which documents over 2000 citations to my work (to 127 papers so far). So I thought that these ideas needed to be presented (of course, as alternatives, not as established consensus), but obviously, some users did not appreciate that and erased systematically my additions, evoking a definitive censorship. Fortunately, other users helped restoring my additions and openly expressed support (otherwise, I would already be out of here and would have just given up contributing to Wikipedia). Well, sorry for rambling on, but I wanted to be very clear about the issues involved. Fortunately, I think that Peter Brown just found a workable solution (see above). Best wishes, Michel Laurin (talk) 08:06, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure it has been clarified in all this that the general Wikipedia approach to primary and secondary sources seems almost turned on its head relative to the situation in the sciences. Outside of scholarship, "primary sources" aren't peer-reviewed journal articles, but rather a conglomeration of newspaper accounts, single-author books, and who knows what else, and secondary sources are an assurance that the primary source can be taken seriously (and sort of a substitute for peer review). I've argued about this before, with little traction.--Curtis Clark (talk) 19:08, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Do you want to reopen the matter, Curtis? Nobody seems to be upset at the discrepancy. In making some edits at Metaphysics a while back, I noticed that the existing sources were all secondary sources. I supported my points with primary sources, and no one objected. To report Hume's view, what can be wrong with citing Hume, especially as the relevant work is available online?  To write a decent article in paleontology, primary sources seem essential, and nobody seems to be protesting. Where the use of such sources is unbalanced, of course, we can complain of bias and revert. Peter Brown (talk) 19:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks both for these comments. What Curtis wrote helped me better understand this Wikipedia rule about using secondary sources as preferred references. You are both right that this rule makes much less sense in natural sciences than in other fields, and I also agree with Peter that citing an author like Hume directly should be preferable to citing a secondary source. In my experience, review papers are less reliable than the primary literature because there is always the risk that the author who writes the review will distort what was in the original papers. I hope that this will change, at some point. I don't suppose that the opinion of somebody as new at Wikipedia as me would have much weight in this debate, but I do hope that you succeed in changing this Wikipedia guideline. Michel Laurin (talk) 20:06, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

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Taxonomie
Bonjour M. Laurin, j'ai vu que vous aviez ajoutée une référence donnant le point de vue de Ernst Mayr sur l'orthographe de Taxinomie. Il y a en ce moment une demande de renommage qui traine en longueur justement à ce propos. Peut-être pourriez-vous y apporter vos lumières ? En tant que spécialiste, pratiquez-vous la taxinomie ou bien la taxonomie ? fr:Wikipédia:Demande de renommage. Cordialement. Iossif63 (talk) 09:46, 22 February 2015 (UTC) C'est fait! J'espère que ce sera utile. Michel

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July 2020
Hello, I'm Enivid. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to Saxo Bank have been undone because they appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted; Wikipedia articles should be written objectively, using independent sources, and from a neutral perspective. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Enivid (talk) 09:36, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello, I am an experienced Wikipedia contributor; check out my user page or my biographical page to find out more about me and my contributions. My posting was not at all intended as promotional, so I will restore it. The comparative information I provided was to contextualize Saxo Bank's recent change in pricing policy, which goes strongly against the trend. I did not mention that, but in the US, a few large brokers recently abolished altogether these transaction fees (I am not sure how they make money, thoug). Upon reflexion, it seems like a good idea to add this information, to make it clear that this is not promotion for Degiro and Bourse Direct, so I just added it. Please feel free to edit the contribution if you think that it looks promotional, but please, do so by providing additional information, rather than just deleting what I wrote. I know this to be accurate because I have been a long-term user of many trading platforms, including Bourse Direct and Degiro, and for about a year Saxo Bank too (though I intend to sell all the positions I hold there and eventually close my account if they do not reverse their strange decision to drastically increase fees). I assure you that I am not a share holder of any of these companies, nor of a holding company that has interest in these, to the best of my knowledge. Michel Laurin (talk)
 * If you are an experienced Wikipedia contributor, you should understand that that paragraph is not about a notable event and is unencyclopedic. If you are not intending to promote anything with it, I would kindly ask you to please remove it. Enivid (talk) 10:01, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I disagree with you on this. I think that a major trading platform going against the trend of fee reduction is a notable event. But only two of us expressed our opinions about this. I suggest that we let the community decide. Do they think that potential users should be informed about this? I think so (like any anomalous development in this field), but if a clear majority thinks otherwise, someone else will just remove it. Also, I already stated that I have no financial interests in any of the competitors, but you did not clarify your position. Do you have any relationship with Saxo Bank that might influence your position? Also, if this information were better placed on another Wikipedia page, I am willing to consider moving it. Michel Laurin (talk)
 * Whether it is a "notable event" is for the mainstream or industry media to judge, not us. Right now, that paragraph is beyond salvageable - it doesn't constitute information that should be included in Wikipedia. If, let's say, Bloomberg or some other WP:RS writes about the significance of that price change, then it will be worth to include it. Right now it is an original research and product price listing mixed with some spammy links. PS: I have no affiliation with Saxo Bank or any entity mentioned in the pargraph/article. Enivid (talk) 10:39, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello!
Dear Michel, nice to see you actively edit and contribute to the paleontological articles here. I just expanded Quercy Phosphorites Formation, which was more than necessary, if you have time, can you review the article as it stands? More information can be added, but at least I tried to be as complete as possible. Salut, Tisquesusa (talk) 17:02, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

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Aristotle's biology
Michel, thanks for your efforts to improve Wikipedia by adding to this article.

However, inserting refs into an existing text is fraught with danger. There are minor details (refs go after punctuation, not before); and major ones, like making the text appear to derive from the new refs, not the existing ones where they actually came from. Then there's the obvious question, what are the extra refs for, given that the existing ones already cover the existing text? Better is to leave the text alone unless something is actually wrong, and to use the new refs to make new points (i.e. supporting new text), if any new points need to be made.

Then there is the question of where new material should go. Additions concerning current debates belong in the "Influence" section at the end, not in the part concerning Aristotle's own work.

Finally, I see that you are an author in a recently-added citation. This makes you an interested party with respect to the citations or text you are adding. Wikipedia does not absolutely forbid authors from citing themselves, but the behaviour is deprecated, as the risk of taking a side rather than describing the subject of the article neutrally is ever-present.

For now, I will do my best to accommodate your changes to the article. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks Chiswick Chap,
 * I had forgotten that refs in Wikipedia go after punctuation (I am used to the reverse, in scientific papers, where they are always cited in sentences). I have tried to be faithful to the papers when I added them to existing text (this is because I think that they make the point that previously cited references were credited for, but usually added more strength to the argument, or a new perspective, or were more recent or more accessible, for instance). When works that I cite require new text, I add it.
 * Thanks for moving the part on Aritsotle's influence to a better section of the paper. I had not taken the time (yet, anyway) to reflect more on the structure of the page.
 * And indeed, I did author some (a few) of the papers that I added. This is not unusual for me because once I have worked on a topic for a while, I try to update Wikipedia pages in light of what I have learned through my research. This typically involves adding several papers that I have read recently, and a few of my own, when they seem relevant. This is probably more obvious for my contributions than for some others because I use my real name, not a pseudo, for my Wikipedia contributions (so, I never tried to hide the fact that some of the work that I reference is mine). My understanding is that Wikipedia prohibits excessive (unjustified or exaggerated) self-citations, not all forms (i.e., justified) of self-citations, which are indeed very common in the scientific literature (you see them in nearly all papers, except for the first paper that a scientist contributes to a given field).
 * Best wishes,
 * Michel Michel Laurin (talk) 12:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)