User talk:MiningSimGuy

Comments about your Mining simulator edit
Hello MiningSimGuy, I hope you're doing well! I hope you saw I thanked you for your edit to the article Mining simulator, but that I changed a few things from what you added. Judging by the general quality of your apparently only edit which was to this page, and your highly specific name, I'm not sure if I would be wrong to say that you made this account for the sole reason to make this edit. I don't fully understand why, but it's cool you like the topic so much (I do too 🙂), and it's not like it was a disruptive edit by any means, so I'm fine with it.

As for your edit, like I said above it's not bad, but there are a few critiques I have to keep in mind for any future editing. 1) Because all of the information in the lede of the article is brought up and cited within the body of the article, the lede does not need a citation to accompany it per MOS:LEADCITE. 2) Naming the section "Benefits" over "Criticism" I think violates WP:NPOV and WP:PROMO by specifically choosing and promoting a belief. The word "criticism" doesn't necessarily mean to point out bad things, but to analyze both the merits and faults of the given subject where they present themselves. In this case, the section almost exclusively promotes the benefits of the use of mining simulators because there aren't many downsides in general, minus the price, but I couldn't even find a good citation for this when I was editing the article a few months ago, so this isn't even mentioned. One of the only negative things in the section which mentioned that "heating, and other amenities and add-ons [...] may not directly affect the effectiveness of the simulation training" you removed, which would make the section particularly biased, which is why I reverted this. Lastly 3) the sentence you added: "intended to provide comfort in extreme mining environments", I felt was an unnecessary add-on which doesn't really add new information or progress the point the sentence is trying to make, so I removed it.

Besides making a really long edit summary, I thought I would just leave this feedback here instead for your own reference if you decide to continue to edit. I hope you find this information helpful, and I hope you like the way I incorporated the new information about mobile simulators that you added into the varieties section. Gosh, I didn't expect to write this much lol. Cheers!  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 06:06, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * HI Johnson524!
 * I really appreciate you reaching out. You are 100% correct that the sole reason I created this account was to improve the quality of this page. :)
 * For background, I have been involved in this industry for about 20 years across dozens of mines. I accidentally came across this page, and I was somewhat concerned at the inaccuracies in the content – but I also didn’t want to make more substantial changes, because I am unfamiliar with standards etc. So I really would appreciate it if you could assist me in improving this page based on the following understanding of these products, and how they are applied.
 * In general, the industry is segmented broadly into two segments. The ‘low cost’ simulators are in reality not very broadly adopted as compared to their ‘high cost’ alternatives. As such, their relevance to the page is notable, but should not be the emphasis. In reality, VR simulators and PC based simulators are even more niche, as is the pictured simulator.
 * The bulk of this market is in the ‘high cost’ category as this page describes it. However, even within this segment, there is significant price / functional variation based on the use cases they are designed to address. In a very simplified form:
 * 1.     The most basic use case is ‘machine familiarization’ where  a mining simulator permits training / familiarization of a machine and / or the environment it operates in to occur without the availability of a real machine. This is typically cheaper, more accessible, and reduces carbon emissions / fuel consumption for real world training.
 * This use case is typically addressed through machine specific recreations of the mining equipment cabin controls. Typically, these controls have a one-to-many relationship with the simulator platform onto which they are installed, so that the same display, motion, and computing system can be used across multiple cabins.
 * 2.     The next use case can be broadly categorized as ‘compliance training’ where the goal is to objectively quantify operator conformance to standard operating procedures – by measuring  faults or response to emergencies (e.g. equipment failure, environmental failure). This in turn permits coaching to reduce unsafe, or abusive behaviors.
 * This use case is typically addressed through the depth and accuracy of measurements, and the configurability of the software to site specific requirements. In short, the more errors, the more emergency events, and the more end-user configurability to site specific standards – the more expensive the system will be.
 * 3.     Finally, these systems can be used for ‘optimization’ where real world data from fleet management systems and equipment health monitoring systems identifies low performers, and the simulators are used to deliver targeted training to address their shortcomings. Behavioral improvement is then quantified in the field.
 * Addressing this use case requires several costly changes. Motion, wrap around screens, graphical enhancement are all targeted at providing a higher fidelity experience – because optimization is occurring with experienced operators familiar with the nuances of real world operation.
 * From a software perspective, this use case also requires a more realistic simulation, the development of performance measurement, reporting tools, and a service organization to run the data analysis and site project management.
 * Regardless of use cases, HVAC and environmental systems are essential for all of these systems because these simulators are typically set up with no shelter, in dusty hot / frozen environments. Simulator sickness occurs in about ~5% of the operator population, and high volumes of steady cool air blown across the face of the operator is one of the most effective ways to reduce / manage this issue.
 * Additionally, because these become a working office for many trainers for long shift work, there are basic OH&S requirements for dust filtration, lighting, and ambient noise. Cheaper solutions often ignore these requirements, but for mining operations running 24/7 they are very real concerns.
 * So I know this is a bit of a brain dump – but based on what I have said – do you have any recommendations on how to improve the quality of this page? Perhaps identifying available references?
 * Cheers! MiningSimGuy (talk) 16:26, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You have been involved in the industry for 20 years? Wow! I'll be completely honest, I haven't even been alive for 20 years, so to speak with someone who has made this a long-time profession is (I would go as far as to say) an honor 😁 I personally find it interesting to expand short articles in which I have no prior knowledge on, because not only do I get to expand the encyclopedias' coverage on the topic, but I get to learn something new as well. That being said, I have no experience in mining or simulators, but when I found this page by chance a few months back and saw that at the time it had no pictures, was three sentences long, and had no citations, I felt I had to do something. The page as you see now is almost entirely composed of my original research on the topic, so that is  I guess why some more niche things of the field have more coverage than the more important things, because I had no way of knowing and was just writing off of the citations I found.
 * I am more than happy to improve the article in any way that you think needs it, but to do so I am going to need to find more citations first. There is a de facto policy of Wikipedia that nobody likes but that we have to uphold titled WP:Verifiability, not truth, which in summary states that "Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it". This is only in place to make sure that everything you read on the encyclopedia has a reliable source citation behind it, so that you yourself can look into any given claim made and see where it comes from. Upholding this prevents misinformation or in some cases, especially in articles about foreign governments, propaganda from being pushed as fact. This is where this policy is good, but unfortunately has the downside of preventing information like what you said above from directly going onto the encyclopedia.
 * I could probably search through Google Books or JSTOR to see what else I can find to cite what you said, but you'll probably have to get back to me on that because it might take a little while. Thank you for taking the time to write such a thorough response back, and I hope that this reply was helpful. As always, if you have any more questions about Wikipedia or it's policies (which may sound relatively complicated, but really are not in practice) feel free to write to me on my talk page and I'll respond as soon as I can. Cheers!  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 06:15, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I should be able to assist with that. Unlike many domains, mining tends to publish in industry specific publications which are typically of a lesser degree of academic rigor. This isn't because they are poor in quality, but more so because scientific studies are hard to conduct in an industry which varies considerably based on geology, host nation requirements etc.
 * Is there a collaboration space where we can draft this up which isn't public domain? I am not sure if this thread is private or not. I imagine that this will be an iterative process. MiningSimGuy (talk) 15:11, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, sorry for the later response 😅 First, most citations on Wikipedia aren't necessarily from academic studies, they just need to come from a reliable source to be used, which you will typically be notified of if a non-reliable source is used in an article before you publish your edit, so that's not something to worry about. Second, if you have an idea of how you want the improved page to sound but don't want to disrupt the mainspace, I recommend creating Draft:Mining simulator by clicking on the red link and typing. This information can be transferred over when you're done without impacting the main article beforehand. I hope you do make the draft, because I would also like to see this article accurately represent the topic of mining simulators. Cheers!  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 03:03, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. Give me a couple of weeks to pull together some resources. 190.60.116.204 (talk) 12:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me 👍  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 15:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)