User talk:NScheinerman

Welcome!
Hello, NScheinerman, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Adam and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:40, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Epistemic democracy - suggestion
Hello, just been reading this. I have to admit that I found it a bit hard to understand what it was about. Wikipedia articles tend to start with a lead section saying in as few words as possible things like what the article's about, who defined the term and when and how useful a concept experts in the area find it, so that might be a good thing to add next - that's a link to a guide. Hope your project goes well. Blythwood (talk) 12:59, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

References converted
Hi, NScheinerman. I converted some of the references you added using the VisualEditor's automatic referencing system. Many of the sources had google book or JSTOR urls or barring that had DOIs which I could past into the tool to create the fully formatted references. I didn't need to convert most of them, you've already done a good job with most of your sources adding important data like date/publication/etc. so readers and editors can verify your work, but a few were missing info.

I see you've also run into another editor who removed your content because they suspected it was copy/pasted. Part of that comes from editors being very familiar with the tone and pacing of a mature wikipedia article--seeing blocks of text inserted that are different from that tone can throw up red flags even if the underlying content is fine or merely needs some work. One way you can avoid this is by not adding in new sections which are principally quotes (see this change). While it can be important to get some info on a subject and the person quoted may be saying something germane and with authority, they're rarely speaking to the same audience as wikipedia readers and never in the same way. So a reader might be helped by a short quotation which is particularly notable or explains a concept with unique succinctness but much longer ones are not a good substitute for you explaining the section in your own words.

Good work so far on the article and let me know if you need a hand with anything. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:13, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Edits to epistemic democracy
Hi, NScheinerman. I took a look at the changes you were referring to. It looks like they've reverted the article back to it's pretty poor state. I don't know their motivation but I suspect they were looking at the issues I noted above with a more jaundiced eye. Seeing huge chunks of text added which change the perspective and tone of an article can cause editors to overreact. From their perspective a lot of the time big tonal shifts in newly added texts signal bigger problems (plagiarism, actual nonsense, strong POV are all possibilities) which are hard to prune but easy to revert entirely. However, that's a reason to make the first revert, not a reason to keep the content off the page. There's a discussion on the talk page, which is brief and neither charitable nor enlightening. I recommend you start a new section and note that while there are some tonal changes, you think your edits fix problems with the article (they do). Don't re-insert your work at this point. Just start the conversation and find out what they're looking for. As you do that, add to the article (Again, I know and I'm sorry) in small chunks, trying to keep the ideas straightforward and clear.

I can drop by the discussion if you like (and if anyone is a jerk to you please tell me) but I have to remain neutral--i.e. I can't show up and advocate for your changes. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2016 (UTC)