Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Newsletter/017/Story 1

Editor spotlight with Dunkleosteus77
Hi, here are some questions for your consideration. If you feel any questions aren't particularly interesting, feel free to strike and propose something else. If I'm missing anything, add in questions that you think are relevant. Thanks, Enwebb (talk) 17:53, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I had previously thought of you as an editor mostly interested in cetaceans, but lately it seems you're particularly focused on hominids. How would you describe your interests?
 * I've always been interested in hominins as a kid (after I'd moved on from dinosaurs, of course), so it was only natural that I'd end up here 1 day. It all started when I was in my college-mandated paleoanthropology class last Fall, taught by Guillermo Algaze. Guillermo admitted that he's mainly into Mesopotamian research and thus he wouldn't consider himself an expert on the subject. I'd say we got pretty tight; I remember 1 time I was walking back to my apartment with my groceries in tow, and Guillermo drives past me, honks his car and waves hi to me, and I was like "Yo, Guillermo!", and this other time before class (I always the only one who sat in the front), he sat next to me and he goes on about how "the anthropology department is fucking stupid".


 * Anyways, one class, he said that humans literally ate Neanderthals into extinction, and I thought that's too wack to be true, so then I went to Neanderthal to see what was going on. For some reason I had this vivid memory of Neanderthal being an FA (probably a Wikipedia-related dream), and since I was already looking it up, I figured I might as well start rewriting the article, and that's where I got started on hominins. It was fun because I was able to correct him in class sometimes because I'd often just read the study/studies he was referencing the day before class. After, like, half a year, I finally found the study Guillermo was originally talking about a skull at Les Rois Cave, and the authors actually said that cannibalism was possible but in their opinion highly unlikely, and it's also dated to 7–12 thousand years after most researchers believe Neanderthals went extinct.  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * This year so far, you've nominated many hominid articles for Good Article and Featured Article&mdash;Dryopithecus, Paranthropus, Neanderthal, Denisovan, and Gigantopithecus, among many others. What's the current status of hominid articles on Wikipedia? Are you considering a Good or Featured Topic in the future?
 * The plan was to get Australopithecus to GT with 15 child articles (at broadest definition, including Paranthropus, Kenyanthropus, H. habilis, and H. rudolfensis), with Paranthropus also a GT but possibly FT. Assuming my GAs go over well, that only leaves Australopithecus, Kenyanthropus, and Australopithecus anamensis to write. I'm gonna wait until the dust has settled for my pending nominations before continuing with those 3 (unless someone wants to beat me to them *wink wink*).


 * I remember I wrote Gigantopithecus because I randomly remembered that 1 scene from Walking with Cavemen where it shows up and it's this weird puppet thing and it's hilarious. That show's a hell of a lot more fun to watch now than as a kid now that I know a lot about hominids.


 * I wrote Danuvius guggenmosi because someone said they just created it and asked for some quick review, but I ended up writing the entire thing. I did the same thing with Ooedigera and Archelon. Anyways, that led me down a rabbit hole to Dryopithecus, Nakalipithecus, and Chororapithecus before I came up with the australopithecine gambit.  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Often, people create artificial distinctions of "humans" and "animals". As an editor who has worked on human and non-human taxa, have you had any interesting observations about how scientific literature (and Wikipedia) covers humans as organisms? Are there differences in how these articles (human taxa, non-human taxa) are written and structured?
 * Well there wasn't actually any hominin articles at quality status, so for archaic human articles (at broadest, all Homo), I decided to do use headings like Demographics and Culture instead of Range and Behavior/Paleobiology because I was worried that a general audience would consider use of the latter terminology (even if it were used on human) an indication that they were inferior or in any backwards and required further evolution. This is the typical place one's head goes when thinking about human ancestors. I find that typically studies (especially the more recent they are) try to point as many reasons to think of them as more human than animal, and really try to emphasize cultural aspects (sometimes they really grasp at straws to this end, though).


 * For australopithecines, I went with the generic terminology with Paleobiology and Paleoecology because all talks of australopithecine culture are quite debated, and in my opinion quite dubious to begin with. I very rarely see the word culture or associated words used with australopithecines (for example, Homo burials vs australopithecine funerary caching). The only evidence of australopithecine culture is Lomekwi (which even monkeys can manufacture), some vague cutmarks on animal bones, and of course the Makapansgat pebble  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Creating and editing templates can be intimidating for editors. Where did you get the idea for African hominin timeline? Do you think more timeline templates would be beneficial on Wikipedia articles about taxonomic groups?
 * There is so little resolution on early hominins that a selecting a cladogram (like we usually do) would have had a POV problem, but I knew that it's helpful to have some graphic. A lot of the articles already had Human evolution during the Pliocene, so I decided to clean it up. Originally I was going to do all fossil hominins, but I figured that was getting really cluttered, and since I was focusing on early hominins and they all lived in Africa, I just limited it to Africa. Maybe later I'll do a European hominin timeline(?) All in all, I think timelines give a fantastic background for the reader; it certainly helped me a lot with getting the chronology straight in my head, and I found myself having to go back and look at it pretty often while researching  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * What are your hobbies besides editing Wikipedia?
 * When I'm not doing Wikipedia, I'm generally found watching Netflix or Amazon Prime. I go to UCSD as a Mechanical Engineering major (going to be a Sophomore this coming quarter), so while school's in session, classes take a lot of time. I'm also getting a minor in Marine Science and Business, but business is really easy, and given how much I've worked with with cetaceans and just really everything else I've done on Wikipedia, marine science is a breeze. I didn't used to read fiction just for the fun of it, but then I started writing Neanderthal and I heard about the Earth's Children series and I thought it was really cool, and they stock it at the school library, so I've been reading that (overall I'd say it's a pretty cute story).  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Anything else you'd like us to know?
 * I guess I'll tell you guys about my personal life. I started editing Wikipedia because 1 day my 7th grade teacher was ranting to us about how great Wikipedia is, and then months later I decided to make an account (predominantly because I was bored), and then for some reason decided to write Whale. And now I'm here. I have an older brother who's going into surgical residency at University of Miami since it was the only school that accepted him (he hates being a doctor and is desperately trying to escape), and I have a twin sister at UC Berkeley who's majoring in data science (she was originally premed, but my brother told her to get out of there). I was vegetarian until I was 14 when my brother came back from college and introduced us all to meat (but my parents are still vegetarian). We all lived in Seattle, but my dad was commuting to Portland, Oregon, on the weekdays for his job by the time we'd all left for college, so my dad asked for a transfer to Austin, Texas, predominantly to escape the income tax.


 * Also I shamelessly put a link to my Wikipedia page on my resumé and every application I fill out  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)