User talk:MrPooter

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David Horton
Hi MrPooter. Thank you for your email. I'm replying here. If you want to reply to anything I say you can write it here by just editing this talk page - I will notice and be able to reply.

I answer to your question: yes I did delete and article David Horton in March. However there was nothing in the article about the Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia. The entire contents of the article was "David Horton is a Jewish countercultural rebel who works at McDonald's.".

You are permitted to start this article again. However I should caution you that you are very strongly discouraged from writing articles about yourself. It is both a Conflict of interest and Promotion (the latter is prohibited). In all probably the article will be deleted.

I would recommend that you write about subjects other than yourself. If you really edited an encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia there will be many articles where your expertise would be useful, and it would be much better appreciated if you were not seen to be using Wikipedia for self-promotion. You can of course write about yourself on your user page.

I hope that is helpful. Have fun, and happy editing. DJ Clayworth (talk) 00:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi DJ, needless to say (perhaps!) I am not a "Jewish countercultural rebel who works at McDonald's". Us David Hortons do get around - there is an ultramarathon runner (definitely not me), a vegan (sadly not me) and a character in a British sitcom (happily not me). Odd that the Encyclopaedia author link took readers to the McDonald's worker, but it's an odd world. I know about the ban on writing about oneself, but I was puzzled when following the link to the authorship to find myself (apparently) a non-person without any knowledge of why. I will obey the ban, and concentrate on editing some of the Australian Aboriginal articles where some of my expertise lies. Thank you for your prompt, helpful, and friendly reply. Always liked Canadians. Regards David Horton (Australian vaguely leftish cultured writer and farmer).


 * David. The thing with Wikipedia links like that is that the only thing the link knows about is the name. So when you see in an article something like David Horton all the system knows is to build a link to the article called 'David Horton'. It's quite common for people to write links like that in and assume it will go to the person they are thinking of, not realising that there are other people with the same name.
 * Incidentally it's normal on talk pages to sign with your username, which is easiest done by putting four tildes at the end of your posting like this ~ . You'll find that mean you get known by your username rather than your real name, but that's what most people want. I see you;ve been sent a "welcome" message above, giving you some helpful links, so I won't repeat it. All I'll say is welcome (again) to Wikipedia and thanks for contributing. I hope you enjoy yourself here. DJ Clayworth (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Indigenous australians
reverted self here and at article need to have a closer look - i think there are some issues about the style and content - but have off wiki things to attend to SatuSuro 06:51, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't understand comment MrPooter (talk) 07:29, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Nothing to understand at this stage - will get back later sometime re whether the insertion in Indigenous Australians is more appropriate at the Tasmanian article rather than the main article - I need to re-read it all SatuSuro 07:47, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, ok, now I see. I hadn't realised there was a whole separate Tasmanian Aboriginal article. It is a tossup, but I thought the Windschuttle reference on the indigenous page needed context at this point anyway. The Tasmanian article does refer to the debate about prehistory to some extent, though in a cursory fashion. A link bth ways would obviously be useful.

I wanted to also add a new section to the Indigenous article "Aborigines and environment" but don't quite know how to do this. Do I do it up the top at list of topics, and does this automatically generate a heading lower down? MrPooter (talk) 09:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Sent email to try to explain a few things SatuSuro 09:37, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Australian megafauna
Hi, I reverted your recent edit to the page Australian megafauna. I did this for two reasons; It discussed what constitutes Australian megafauna. Since there is an existing active discussion on the subject on the talk page, I invite you to join that and contribute your opinions there before such a significant edit is made. I also reverted it because the edit was made in a confusing manner, where it left contradicting information within the article. Cheers! - T.carnifex (talk) 06:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

You have to be kidding me - the stuff on the talk page reveals a staggering lack of understanding of the topic, and endless confusion. I was trying to cut through all that by providing the context for the topic, which is by no means as straightforward as the article might suggest - that is, "the megafauna" isn't a group in any sense. I've spent some 30 years of my academic life working on and writing about this topic. You really just want to wipe it without letting the rest of the readers have a look? MrPooter (talk) 08:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mean it as a personal attack. I simply did what I thought was in the best interests for the article. The manner in which you inserted (what appears to be) your original research was done so in a way which might be confusing. Simply pasting a whole discussion into an existing page disrupts the readability of the article and makes it confusing for some readers, as they might continue on and find it contradicting. You can freely express your opinions in the talk page if you think you are able to help and improve the page, rather than just inserting something different. You could also create an essay page, where you might like to discuss the issue in that form. As an aside, I am curious as to what your 'academic life' is, if you don't mind me asking? Just wondering. - T.carnifex (talk) 09:24, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * See Writing better articles.


 * "What is the ‘megafauna’? They are the species that became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene period. Anything else about them? Anything suspicious? Well, they tend to be big, but that’s about it really."

No, I know you didn't. I was just a little taken aback to have what was intended to be a way of cutting through the confusion and errors of the talk page, and the article itself, and making a start on recasting it, arbitrarily removed after two days of working on it. I am a prehistorian and a biologist, combining to spend many years as a palaeoecologist, specifically excavating, analysing, and writing about the extinction of the megafauna. I'm not sure what the point would be of responding to things like confusing dinosaurs with megafauna, or (until I corrected it) having "megafauna" which became extinct after 1788, or thinking that the Pleistocene period is 50,00 to 16,000 years ago, or accepting a recent and contentious piece of research with dodgy methodology as demonstrating that humans did it and megafauna (!) were adaptd to aridity, or accepting as fact that megafauna didn't go extinct earlier in the Pleistocene, or bizarrely including "living megafauna" (though the concept is fine) with descriptions of kangaroo coat colour etc, or including goannas and carpet pythons (megafauna?!), or crocodiles (which are a different kettle of fish). Hard to see how to go about correcting all that a bit at a time. So I thought instead I would start with explaining that "extinct megafauna" is a concept (and a tautology) not a taxonomic category, a fact that considerably affects how you think about the extinctions. Then go on from there to look in more detail at the rest of it. I have added material to "Indigenous Australians" which is clearly related, and was about to have a go at "Australian archaeology" which as someone notes is inconsistent again. Then make sure that those three articles at least were consistent and have little overlap. Cheers MrPooter (talk) 09:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought the content was pretty good, but the encyclopaedic tone needed a lot of work, and it was under-sourced. If you can write the same a little more seriously, with sources to back it up (it is okay to cite yourself, so long as it is published not pers. comm.), I think it will stick.
 * T.carnifex: Where is this discussion you mentioned?
 * Hesperian 01:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Hesperian. I had included the 3 references that looked back to earlier work in order to form a starting point for people following back the arguments for this part of the discussion, but I'm happy to add more of the older ones. There hasn't really been any recent discussion of the topic, it just being assumed that the "megafauna" is some kind of natural group. "Encyclopaedic tone"? Regards MrPooter (talk) 01:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * See Writing better articles. Material like
 * "What is the ‘megafauna’? They are the species that became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene period. Anything else about them? Anything suspicious? Well, they tend to be big, but that’s about it really."
 * needs to be refactored to be less chatty. You might get away with writing like that in a pop science book, but it certainly wouldn't be accepted by an academic journal; we aim for a tone more like the latter. Hesperian 02:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, will do MrPooter (talk) 02:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Recent discussion here. From what I've read, an animal is classed as megafauna when it exceeds a certain weight. This "weight" is a bit iffy, there doesn't seem to be much agreement across the board. Scientific studies tend to steer away from using the term "megafauna" and instead use "large mammals" in the case of mammals, or something similar, and then define what they're calling large. I also think on the matter of the Pleistocene extinctions, taking the no bias approach would be the best idea. I happen to believe human involvement played a significant role in the extinctions, and disagree that Prideaux's work was dodgy. My personal opinions aside, I think getting both sides across is a good idea, so readers can make their own mind up, rather than only presenting one side of the story. T.carnifex (talk) 07:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course you are free to believe whatever you think the evidence demonstrates. What I am intending to do is set out that evidence and the implications and the arguments so people can make up their minds. I have a view, but it has been reached by sytematically examinig the evidence, and understanding the basis on which I hold the view. On the two specific points you raise. There is no weight criterion that works, although there have been attempts to determine one - this is one of the areas I discussed. The "megafauna" has a long history of being the term used in this area of discussion, which is why Wikipedia has an entry called that. And secondly, Prideaux's work, and a whole series of papers in a similar vein, does approach the question from the same viewpoint you do - humans must have done it, now let's find the evidence. The problem in general with this school is that they have defined the sites and the evidence they will consider in such a way that it excludes the analysis of sites with humans and megafauna coexisting, and therefore essentially removes any chance of finding evidence for late survival of megafauna. That is they are essentially creating the answer they expect. This is the kind of genuine blind spot you get when coming at the question from this standpoint. It keeps getting forgotten (because it was deliberately ignored from Rhys Jones onwards, who made it explicit) that the null hypothesis about late Peistocene extinctions, just like all the previous extinction episodes, is that climate (or something climate-related like the strike of a meteor) is the cause which is assumed. If you want to say that humans uniquely caused the late Pleistocene extinctions you have to demonstrate that with very good evidence, not pretend it is the default case, and that the climate supporters have to prove their argument. It's kind of an innocent untl proven guilty scenario, not the reverse. This is the kind of context that I am trying to provide for this article. MrPooter (talk) 11:28, 26 June 2008 (UTC)