I enjoy writing the answers, sometimes share them with my friends, enjoy the research and often use them as a basis for articles for my Science20 blog and kindle booklets.
I actually came here from wikipedia originally, where you can spend many hours on an article, and often get no appreciation at all. I got a lot of work on planetary protection removed from wikipedia in one short period of a week or two by some editors who felt it shouldn’t cover planetary protection of Mars in articles on colonization of Mars, except briefly as “a challenge to be overcome”.
That’s even though I wrote that material in response to a request on the page itself to expand that section of the article. That’s still the situation as you can see here: Human mission to Mars The two sentences there about forward and backward contamination of Mars are all that’s left of a section I wrote on the topic there in response to a request from other editors to expand on a very short stub about issues with human colonization of the planet.
There’s rather more about planetary protection now in Colonization of Mars but for a while after all that planetary protection material was deleted, there was nothing about it in that article at all. I wrote that section but only a long time after the previous material there was deleted.
After a lot of fuss, I was permitted to work on the article on Planetary protection which is perhaps 50% my work, and the article on Interplanetary contamination. This was a matter of internal politics, the work removed was well cited. They didn’t mind it so much there (though the editors who deleted most of my work tried to rewrite and delete much of those two articles too, until another editor stepped in and stopped them), but they didn’t like to see it included directly into the articles on human colonization
I also got sections on prospects of microbial life on the surface of Mars written by myself and other editors deleted, and to this day, the article Life on Mars says that surface microbial life is impossible, which is way out of date, about eight years out of date ,predating Phoenix. I’ve tried to correct that, just with comments on their talk page, and got labelled as a troll for doing so
They just don’t read the citations. It’s political again I think, the problem being that if Mars does have habitats for surface life, then you have to take much more care for human missions, and may not be able to land humans on the surface at all without risk of contaminating them with Earth life, which makes the evidence of potential surface life habitats there something that colonization enthusiasts, some of them, would like to ignore. Though of course for many the search for life is one of the main points of interest for Mars, so it is then exciting to think that this life may be present even on the surface.
They come up with decade old arguments to disprove this research, which they find convincing, even though the research suggesting the possibility of present day surface habitats on Mars is much more up to date than the old articles they use to try to refute it. And of course it’s not the place for wikipedia editors to do peer review of the research and decide what to mention and what not. But my arguments to that effect on the talk page are just ignored.
So it was with great relief that I was able to write here freely, not just cited research also, I can also offer my own personal view on the matters too, which you can never do in wikipedia, and suggest innovative solutions etc. Also other editors can comment on your answers, can write their own answers, can suggest edits, but they can’t just remove your answers because they don’t like them or because they don’t fit their political agenda or their ideas about the future.
Wikipedia doesn’t have upvotes, just an option for other editors to thank you for an edit. With that background, truly, I just don’t care how many upvotes they get, except that it gives some idea of which ones are most interesting to readers here, which may sometimes be an incentive to write them up as articles on Science20.
I enjoy the comments on my answers here, and often comment on other answers too, and engage in conversations about the topics. And it’s great when my answers get corrected too. I don’t think many of my answers have been downvoted, at least not enough downvotes to get hidden. Do you get notified of downvotes? If you do then I haven’t had any.
This BTW is a summary I did and occasionally updated on the status of present day research into the possibility of present day life on Mars. I proposed it as a wikipedia article but they won’t accept it. I did it as a kindle booklet instead for now, as well as publishing it on my Science20 blog.
And as a free online booklet: Places on Mars to Look for Microbes, Lichens, ...
I ended up writing here instead, on my Science20 blog, also invited to David Livingston’s “The SpaceShow” radio program and podcast, where I’ve been guest four times now. Robert Walker | The Space Show
If my work hadn’t been deleted from wikipedia probably none of that would have happened and I’d still have been writing occasionally on wikipedia and that would probably have been all I did. But it’s much more fun writing here and on my science20 blog, and it’s lead to many things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
So that’s my background, perhaps you can understand how with that background I really couldn’t care less about upvotes, except as a sign of interest in one of your answers. But if you don’t get any upvotes I don’t think that means that people are uninterested. It might not get many views in the first place and there are many things that can lead to someone reading an answer, and though interested in it, not upvote it. I read many answers and only occasionally upvote them, and when I do so it is rather random I think. It means nothing if I read an answer here, and forget to upvote it.
MORE ON WIKIPEDIA
There are battles raging behind the scenes on wikipedia talk pages often about things so tiny you wonder how anyone could be passionate about such a topic: Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars
Although much of it is good, there is some that is definitely politically motivated. It’s good in some areas, e.g. things like dates, times, orbital elements etc, generally get those right. Also high profile political articles tend to be reasonably balanced, e.g. the articles on climate change are good because they have had many experienced eyes on them. But low profile articles can often be quite biased. They often represent the views of a single editor, who may be the one who does nearly all substantial edits of the article and may sometimes not be willing to listen to anyone else in that topic area unless they agree with their views (and may reverse their attempted edits, easy to do in wikipedia). Not that they are intentionally biased, I don’t think, just that they can’t see their own biases and think they are defending the integrity of wikipedia - at least the ones I’ve come across. And I think often not interested in reading citations in detail or they misunderstand them without realizing that they have misunderstood.
I think quora helps a lot there, as instead of trying to present all viewpoints from a single perspective in an “objective” article, you get answers from people who actually hold those viewpoints themselves, just saying things as they see it. Often speaking from their own experience too, where it’s something experiental. E.g. an airplane pilot talking about how to fly a plane and what all the controls mean. Even if an article on wikipedia is written or edited by a professional airplane pilot, they would not be permitted to say so in their article, or to include details from their own personal experience.
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