Quora is much more fun for me. Please don't be put off from wikipedia because of it - wikipedia can be fun too - but it can be frustrating at times, in ways that never happen on Quora.
I had a horrendous experience on Wikipedia last year. And just now - suggested an edit that is blindingly obvious to anyone who knows anything about biology which gets repeatedly hidden as soapbox / forum - mind you this is just on the talk page for the article.
The nub of it is:
If a microbe can withstand 5 kGys (5000 Grays) of radiation - then it will not be killed by 76 mGys (0.076 Grays) of radiation!
Add to that:
And also add to that, that a highly respected professor has recently said that he thinks Mars probably has many habitats for bacteria, "swimming pools for bacteria" as he calls it
You'd think it was an open and shut case. But no - not on wikipedia. Their guidelines would suggest it would be - but in practice - now it is not - not unless you can somehow win over their powerful editors who think that he can't possibly have said this, and that there is no way conditions on the surface of Mars can be anything less than lethal to all life, and won't listen to any evidence to the contrary.
BTW - the record for radioresistance on Earth so far is a microbe discovered in 2002 I think,
Thermococcus gammatolerans - an obligate aerobe from hydrothermal vents, the most radioresistant organism known, able to withstand 30 kGy of gamma radiation, and still reproduce
So - that's 400,000 years of Curiosity's measurements :). And it lives at the bottom of the sea in hydrothermal vents and hardly sees any cosmic radiation down there. So what Mars life could evolve to withstand, after billions of years of cosmic radiation, who knows!
Note - the Curiosity measurements don't include the high magnitude solar storms that happen only every few decades. Those can give the equivalent of a year's worth of surface radiation in a few hours. Nevertheless these hardy radioresistant microbes would hardly notice them. You are still talking about mere hundredths of a Gray, for organisms able to withstand thousands of Grays. Even the biggest solar storm in history, in the 1950s - they'd surely hardly notice (though we don't have radiation measurements for it). Mars Surface Radiation Exposure for Solar Maximum Conditions and 1989 Solar Proton Events
Say that on Quora and you'll get loads of people upvoting your answer, and comments on it saying "good for you for saying this".
And your opposing editor who says it is lethal will be downvoted and sink right to the bottom of the list of answers - as anyone with a modicum of understanding of the relevant areas of biology can see that what he says is nonsense.
I've written loads of answers on Quora now on this and related topics and had overwhelmingly positive support.
I've had some interesting conversations with other editors who have strong opinions that differ from mine - they have all been civil conversations however. And they are free to give their own answers to the same question.
Say this on Wikipedia in the talk page of an article that has been "owned" by an editor who is sure that life on present day Mars is impossible - and your posts - just on the talk page mind you - are repeatedly hidden as soapbox / forum.
And he continually makes nasty comments on your personality - saying you are obsessive and trying to twist wikipedia to fit your obsessive fantasies and suggesting you need professional treatment for your obsession etc etc.
And - all the other wikipedia editors - either they have been scared off by these tactics, or they believe him!
See here:
Talk:Life on Mars - Proposed Edit and Article
Go to the current talk page here
Talk:Life on Mars
And it is hidden - was hidden as soapbox / spam within hours.
You'll see that I've been posting about this ever since last year, from time to time, but to no avail. I am now labelled a troll for saying this, with this rather fetching icon:
Natural thing to do is to take it to moderation. If you come from an academic background - you might think that moderation involves other people looking at the primary sources and weighing up the evidence and helping to judge the case.
But no - that's not how it works at all. The moderators don't even look at the primary sources, and don't try to understand the issue in detail.
They just are there to help resolve personality clashes and to get you to talk to each other. If the opposing editor thinks you are a troll and refuses to discuss it any further - there is nothing they can do.
You might try to take it right to the highest level on wikipedia. That's what I did last year, naively thinking it would help.
But they are even less interested in primary source material at that level. It's only useful for dealing with real trolls and such like obviously disturbing behaviour.
In my case, I was seen as the one who was disturbing wikipedia because I was fighting so hard to keep the content included.
Up until spring last year the Life on Mars article had a section on the present day habitability of Mars, and the colonization articles had sections on the issues for Mars of contamination brought there by the colonization.
But over a period of a week or so - all this material was removed from wikipedia.
It was in reaction to an article I wrote "Concerns about an Early Mars Sample Return" about the possible harmful effects of returning samples from Mars that could potentially have unknown lifeforms, possibly smaller than Earth microbes and of unknown possibly alien biochemistry.
This may sound like science fiction at first. But that is exactly what NASA and the ESA would most like to find on Mars - lifeforms that have an alien biochemistry, not based on DNA. With many other possibilities that would be equally interesting such as - diverged from DNA based life long ago, e.g. before the Last universal ancestor of all present day known DNA based life.
There are many scientific articles and studies about the risks here (including a detailed study by the National Research Council in the US and a few years later by the European Space Foundation)
The article also discussed work by biologists who say that there is no point in it anyway from a biological point of view, because we are likely to return samples that are of no more interest for biology than the controversial Mars meteorites we already have - if we just pick up random samples on Mars without first detecting present day or past life in them.
It also of course presented the views of Zubrin and others who think that samples returned from Mars will be totally harmless and don't need any precautions at all - and a wide spectrum of other views on the subject.
Though I say it myself, I think it was an excellent, well researched article :). Thoroughly done to the best of my ability - and with all the material carefully checked and multiple citations for every paragraph.
I posted some of the deleted material as two seperate articles on my Science20 site here
At first all went well, I was encouraged to write the article, by other editors on the Mars sample return talk page - and did a draft in my user space for comment - and then eventually published it in the main space - and the first comments on the new article were favourable.
But then it was attacked by an editor who was totally opposed to it and thought such an article should not be permitted in wikipedia.
Eventually, this article was deleted - and that was a crazy experience.
It was perhaps the most bizarre "Alice in the Looking Glass" type experience in my life :).
First, the deletion discussion did not discuss a single sentence from the article and did not talk about a single primary source. Just loads of insults hurled at me.
Instead the main opposing editor just hurled lots of insults at me, basically a whole lot of ad hominem stuff attacking my competence for writing anything on the topic.
And another editor from the Mars section also joined in - so I had two editors hurling insults at me in their deletion votes.
Also lots of strange things going on. For the first few days the editor who was opposed to me refused to let me edit the article. So the discussion was about a hugely trimmed and biased article with many errors in it written by the very editor who wanted the article deleted. When I tried to edit it, he reverted my edits.
Finally after a day or two of this - one of the moderators did step in and said the editor who proposed deletion can't edit the article during the deletion discussion - and then I spent a hectic day or two trying to get it back in shape again after all his edits (I was not permitted to simply revert his edits for some reason, some obscure wikipedia rule which they invoked, which I now forget - instead I had to start with his version of the article and gradually edit it back to the way I wanted it).
- Oh - yes I remember now - I had forked it off into a separate article in my own user space - because for some time, maybe a week or so before the deletion discussion he had reverted all my edits in the main space - so I couldn't work on it there. So then - that meant I had made a "fork" in my user space - that was frowned on - because it meant I was ignoring the work of other editors on the article that happened in between - even though the editor that proposed the deletion was really the only person who had done any edits in between except typos.
So, I was not permitted to take my user space article and simply substitute it back to overwrite his version, but had to start with his version and gradually edit it again from scratch.
I was still busy editing it back into shape when the deletion discussion closed.
Also other crazy stuff going on such as sections of the deletion discussion page itself getting edited and hidden by the opposing editors, hiding parts of the discussion that they didn't like.
Then just as it was getting towards the end of the time for the deletion discussion to close, a half dozen new editors piled in and they all voted against me.
And - when I looked at their edit histories - none of them had any previous history of editing the Mars section of wikipedia. They were editors in topics like soccor etc - totally unrelated topics.
But - these were the people who made the final decision on my article.
I wondered at the time if they might just be off wikipedia pals of the opposing editor who he asked to vote to support him - but of course you can't prove anything, and I can't say for sure they were.
Indeed - on reflection - it might be that they were just people who browsed the "deletion discussions closing" pages and looked at this and thought that it was a clear enough case to vote, by whatever logic they use - and voted against me.
Anyone can vote in this way on any AfD discussion in wikipedia. I could go and find a deletion discussion on soccor say (something I know nothing about) and vote to keep it, or to delete it, if I so wanted to - and nobody would say I can't do it.
It's not purely by votes - but - if lots of people pile in and say the same thing - that does tend to swing the debate.
I tried to re-open the AfD because of all these irregularities - but the moderator who closed the discussion (this is a third party who has no connection at all with the discussion, and who spends some of his time on wikipedia closing deletion discussions) - he said I hadn't got a chance of re-opening it as it was one of the clearest decisions he had ever had to arbitrate.
For him it was a really clear case - as almost everyone agreed to delete the article. And all the irregularities at the start of the discussion counted for nothing, apparently.
So - that is how articles get deleted in wikipedia - sometimes.
By a determined editor who uses a lot of insults and rhetoric and ad hominem allegations on the discussion page - and bunch of people who know nothing about the subject who get persuaded by his rhetoric and join in and vote against you on a subject they know nothing about.
Now - this is highly unusual - I have been involved in many civilized deletion discussions that do look at the source material - and do involve people talking to each other properly, and where the people involved in the discussion are clearly knowledgeable about the topic.
But when some wikipedia editors get worked up and motivated by rhetoric on the talk page for the discussion - this can happen - well has happened at least this once!
Perhaps bolstered by their success, as a reaction to this, the two editors who were most strongly in favour of deleting it in the discussion also (not as a decision made at a higher level but on their own initiative) - decided it was about time that the whole Mars section had a major purge.
Basically anything that I'd contributed to on the subject was removed, even if I had only done minor edits to it.
For instance - there was a section in both of the colonization articles about various issues and concerns with colonization. I had written most of one of these sections. In the case of the other one, I had added just a few sentences.
Both were removed completely and replaced with a shorter section titled "Challenges to be overcome" or some such.
Then the Life on Mars article had a section on present day habitability of Mars surface - and I'd added a few sentences to that section. That was enough for them to feel they had the authority to delete that entire section and replace with a new section that said life on the surface of Mars is impossible.
Several other things like that.
I protested about their actions to the moderators for my case, but to no avail.
Then having finished with deleting all this material in the Mars section - they then went on to merge the backward contamination with forward contamination articles (these are very different topics in the field - needing different methods of planetary protection) - and were aiming to remove those articles altogether.
By this stage there was a whole band of several editors involved in the process - most of them having no previous history of editing the Mars section of wikipedia and no specialist knowledge of the subject. Just got caught up in this frenzy to "Purge" wikipedia of all this stuff.
They intended to delete everything on planetary protection in wikipedia apart from the Planetary protection article itself. On the grounds that we don't need more than one article on the subject.
I couldn't stop them from deleting the backward contamination article but did finally manage to stop them from deleting the forward contamination article.
They also made some poor, badly informed and incorrect edits to the Planetary protection article itself - and there I made a very strong stand because it is one of the better wikipedia articles.
I was permitted to continue to edit Planetary protection on this topic, and gradually over a period of weeks and months - proceeding rather slowly as I didn't want to trigger another episode like the one that had happened - I got it back into shape. And looks fine to me now thank goodness, so wikipedia does have one good article on the topic. (Only some of it by me -it was already a good article before I started on it).
As a result, the standing policy seems to be that, since last spring, this material does not belong in the Mars section any more.
They have no problem with me editing Mars articles on other topics or editing wikipedia in other topics such as maths and music.
Basically it's an informal topic ban on the Mars section of wikipedia on the topic areas of:
They are permitted so long as they are presented as "challenges to be overcome" - and so long as they are kept very short - with the main material left in the Planetary protection article - and so long as they are not written in such a way as to suggest any possibility that the precautions needed might stop or delay human colonization of Mars.
Present day habitability of Mars seems to be absolutely forbidden as a topic, unless you add a qualification making it clear that it is impossible. That basically was the outcome of that week long purging of the Mars section last year. And it is continuing as an informal policy in the Mars section.
There was no formal ban -and no decision. It was just the action of two editors who felt justified in their actions as a result of labeling me a "Troll".
But I was strongly advised by the moderators to refrain from editing the Mars section on these topics last year, and to confine my work to the Planetary protection article.
I was advised that the moderation talks had come close to suggesting I was banned in this way - I was saved because one of the two editors left wikipedia when I started the proceedings so they couldn't go ahead - as he was one of the named parties in the controversy.
So that's why I have no confidence in the wikipedia arbitration process in this topic area.
I've posted about this to the
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology
(this is edited from that post)
But - don't expect any response.
As you see - did respond eventually, I posted too much onto the page - so they objected to that.
But now - have said that what I posted is original research and warned me against posting to the talk page again. So that's that, don't think they are likely to correct the article to mention Nilton Tenno's research.
I have had good experiences there. For the hexany article - there I was the person who created the article. It did have an AfD (Article for Deletion) discussion - but that was civilized and easily resolved.
Hexany
And my other discussions on music and maths were for the most part civilized and interesting - and never at all had anything close to the experiences I had in the Life on Mars article
In other areas it works really well and has excellent articles. For instance on alternative biochemistry for exoplanets, and on climate change and the global warming debate etc - areas where it is really hard to write a good balanced article.
In the last few years I've seen many areas of wikipedia slowly transform from poorly written, ill informed, speculative and flat out incorrect articles to excellent articles.
So - the process does work eventually. But it seems, it takes a good many years for articles to mature. Perhaps sometimes only when the original editors retire from wikipedia - or maybe get a whole lot of new editors who are interested and motivated to get the articles in shape and they can't compete with them.
I don't want to put anyone off from contributing to it. It's well worth doing.
I still edit it frequently. But if I were to find myself caught up in a dispute like this again - I'd bow out at an early stage.
My advice to anyone else who gets caught up in something like this - especially if it is a dispute about primary sources - unless it is really obvious - moderation is useless. They won't read the primary sources. And the moderators won't know anything about your topic area. It's not their job to do that.
So - you have to resolve things with your fellow editors. Or just give up.
You can do a RfC - a Request for Comment by experts - but in my experience it didn't work - just brings more uninformed comment by people who know nothing about the subject in detail. May work better for others, it could be worth a try.
In some ways giving up may be better, try again some months later. Okay so wikipedia has a major mistake in it for some months - but - someone else might fix it in between, editor might change their mind, something might happen. And in any case - gives you a break from thinking about it.
Maybe come to quora instead :).
If your editors are not interested in resolving things - if they just hurl insults at you when you try to find resolution - there is no chance really of doing anything.
You can make progress still if you can find allies, other editors who feel the same way that you do, and who are also editing wikipedia in your topic area.
But - often - even though you may care deeply and hate to see wikipedia become distorted and biased - sometimes there is nothing you can do.
Except walk away from that topic area.
I had to do that eventually. In some ways it might have been good to have just given up right away at the beginning when those two editors deleted my original article. Everything I tried after that just made the whole thing worse and worse until eventually I had to go away anyway.
It's like a ship taking in its sails and putting out a storm anchor to weather a storm. Some years later (in this case) the skies may clear and you can sail again.
In many ways it does work out eventually - but it takes so long - and wastes so much time for so many people - and puts many of them through frustrating and difficult experiences. And many get put off editing it altogether - after an experience like this.
I'm not the only one, quite a few have had similar experiences to this on wikipedia in one way or another.
If only - somehow - the process could be modified so that it is efficient at dealing with the true trolls and trouble makers - but is easier on those who are just trying to improve the encyclopedia and who have some knowledge or expertise in specialist topic areas.
And if only, somehow, it wasn't so easy for editors who are ignorant of basic facts in their subject area (such as that a microbe able to withstand 5 kGys would not be killed by 76 mGys) to rise to positions in wikipedia where they are respected as "authorities" by other like-minded but equally ignorant fellow editors - who often then will automatically support every action they take.
I've written many things here that would never be permitted on wikipedia. And you can write in a readable enjoyable way also.
Though you can write in a clear and nicely presented way in an encyclopedia, you can't have fun in the same way you can here :)
For instance my two most popular articles here right now are
Robert Walker's answer to Do math and physics geniuses really jot down their calculations everywhere in the room? If they do, why? In many movies, they seem to always do that when struck by inspiration.
and
Robert Walker's answer to Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours? Is mathematics absolute?
Neither would be permitted in Wikipedia. And quite rightly too for an encyclopedia - not saying they should be - but that's part of what makes Quora so much fun, that it's okay to write answers like that.
Another good thing about Quora is - that if you do write an answer that isn't very good - is no big deal.
You don't get lots of hate mail. You don't get people attacking you on the talk page. You don't get a deletion discussion. The worst that can happen - you might get a few adverse comments on your article.
Generally, all that happens is that it just quietly drops to the bottom of the list of answers and gets forgotten :). If it gets downvoted enough it gets hidden. And that's the end of it, simple.
So it's also a great place to try out ideas, and try presenting things in a new way - and generally - to experiment a bit and "learn your trade" as a writer on these topics.
Some of my answers here eventually end up on my Science20 blog.
Robert Walker's Blog on Science20
Also I think the question / answer format is clever and interesting.
Somehow answering a real question someone puts - I find anyway - that the result is a more lively interesting answer.
Even if the answer is - not exactly a question to solve a problem - but - more open ended like this one. Still - it really helps you to write better, somehow, I think.
I had a horrendous experience on Wikipedia last year. And just now - suggested an edit that is blindingly obvious to anyone who knows anything about biology which gets repeatedly hidden as soapbox / forum - mind you this is just on the talk page for the article.
The nub of it is:
If a microbe can withstand 5 kGys (5000 Grays) of radiation - then it will not be killed by 76 mGys (0.076 Grays) of radiation!
Add to that:
- Curiosity measured 76 mGys of radiation on the surface of Mars Curiosity measured 76 mGys of radiation on the surface of Mars - and that's during solar maximum when levels are at their highest - and averaged over 300 days of everything the sun threw at Mars
- it's about same as the levels recorded inside the ISS (shielding of thin Mars atmosphere roughly equivalent to Earth's ionosphere + magnetic field)
You don't need to know much about this to see that 5,000 is a larger number than 0.076 :).
Surface of Mars has same radiation levels as
Interior of ISS
- obviously not instantly lethal to microbes, indeed microbes are a major problem in a space station, they have to take many measures to prevent build up of harmful levels and biofilms.
- Chroococcidiopsis, one of the microbes we have on Earth best able to survive in Mars surface conditions can recover from a radiation dose of 5 kGy in 24 hours
- So for instance Chroococcidiopsis could repair about 64,000 years worth of damage in 24 hours.
And also add to that, that a highly respected professor has recently said that he thinks Mars probably has many habitats for bacteria, "swimming pools for bacteria" as he calls it
Nilton Renno is a mainstream researcher in the field - a distinguished professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at Michigan University - who lead the team of researchersThere is no doubt at all that he is a notable and reliable primary source on this subject according to the wikipedia guidelines - and his papers also.
For instance, he received the 2013 NASA Group Achievement Award as member of the Curiosity Rover " for exceptional achievement defining the REMS scientific goals and requirements, developing the instrument suite and investigation, and operating REMS successfully on Mars" and has written many papers on the subject.
You'd think it was an open and shut case. But no - not on wikipedia. Their guidelines would suggest it would be - but in practice - now it is not - not unless you can somehow win over their powerful editors who think that he can't possibly have said this, and that there is no way conditions on the surface of Mars can be anything less than lethal to all life, and won't listen to any evidence to the contrary.
MORE ABOUT RADIORESISTANCE
BTW - the record for radioresistance on Earth so far is a microbe discovered in 2002 I think,
So - that's 400,000 years of Curiosity's measurements :). And it lives at the bottom of the sea in hydrothermal vents and hardly sees any cosmic radiation down there. So what Mars life could evolve to withstand, after billions of years of cosmic radiation, who knows!
Note - the Curiosity measurements don't include the high magnitude solar storms that happen only every few decades. Those can give the equivalent of a year's worth of surface radiation in a few hours. Nevertheless these hardy radioresistant microbes would hardly notice them. You are still talking about mere hundredths of a Gray, for organisms able to withstand thousands of Grays. Even the biggest solar storm in history, in the 1950s - they'd surely hardly notice (though we don't have radiation measurements for it). Mars Surface Radiation Exposure for Solar Maximum Conditions and 1989 Solar Proton Events
WHAT HAPPENS ON QUORA
Say that on Quora and you'll get loads of people upvoting your answer, and comments on it saying "good for you for saying this".
And your opposing editor who says it is lethal will be downvoted and sink right to the bottom of the list of answers - as anyone with a modicum of understanding of the relevant areas of biology can see that what he says is nonsense.
I've written loads of answers on Quora now on this and related topics and had overwhelmingly positive support.
I've had some interesting conversations with other editors who have strong opinions that differ from mine - they have all been civil conversations however. And they are free to give their own answers to the same question.
WHAT HAPPENS ON WIKIPEDIA
Say this on Wikipedia in the talk page of an article that has been "owned" by an editor who is sure that life on present day Mars is impossible - and your posts - just on the talk page mind you - are repeatedly hidden as soapbox / forum.
And he continually makes nasty comments on your personality - saying you are obsessive and trying to twist wikipedia to fit your obsessive fantasies and suggesting you need professional treatment for your obsession etc etc.
And - all the other wikipedia editors - either they have been scared off by these tactics, or they believe him!
See here:
Talk:Life on Mars - Proposed Edit and Article
Go to the current talk page here
Talk:Life on Mars
And it is hidden - was hidden as soapbox / spam within hours.
You'll see that I've been posting about this ever since last year, from time to time, but to no avail. I am now labelled a troll for saying this, with this rather fetching icon:
MODERATION ON WIKIPEDIA IS USELESS HERE
Natural thing to do is to take it to moderation. If you come from an academic background - you might think that moderation involves other people looking at the primary sources and weighing up the evidence and helping to judge the case.
But no - that's not how it works at all. The moderators don't even look at the primary sources, and don't try to understand the issue in detail.
They just are there to help resolve personality clashes and to get you to talk to each other. If the opposing editor thinks you are a troll and refuses to discuss it any further - there is nothing they can do.
You might try to take it right to the highest level on wikipedia. That's what I did last year, naively thinking it would help.
But they are even less interested in primary source material at that level. It's only useful for dealing with real trolls and such like obviously disturbing behaviour.
In my case, I was seen as the one who was disturbing wikipedia because I was fighting so hard to keep the content included.
DETAILS OF WHAT HAPPENED ON WIKIPEDIA LAST YEAR
Up until spring last year the Life on Mars article had a section on the present day habitability of Mars, and the colonization articles had sections on the issues for Mars of contamination brought there by the colonization.
But over a period of a week or so - all this material was removed from wikipedia.
MY "CONCERNS ABOUT AN EARLY MARS SAMPLE RETURN ARTICLE
It was in reaction to an article I wrote "Concerns about an Early Mars Sample Return" about the possible harmful effects of returning samples from Mars that could potentially have unknown lifeforms, possibly smaller than Earth microbes and of unknown possibly alien biochemistry.
This may sound like science fiction at first. But that is exactly what NASA and the ESA would most like to find on Mars - lifeforms that have an alien biochemistry, not based on DNA. With many other possibilities that would be equally interesting such as - diverged from DNA based life long ago, e.g. before the Last universal ancestor of all present day known DNA based life.
There are many scientific articles and studies about the risks here (including a detailed study by the National Research Council in the US and a few years later by the European Space Foundation)
The article also discussed work by biologists who say that there is no point in it anyway from a biological point of view, because we are likely to return samples that are of no more interest for biology than the controversial Mars meteorites we already have - if we just pick up random samples on Mars without first detecting present day or past life in them.
It also of course presented the views of Zubrin and others who think that samples returned from Mars will be totally harmless and don't need any precautions at all - and a wide spectrum of other views on the subject.
Though I say it myself, I think it was an excellent, well researched article :). Thoroughly done to the best of my ability - and with all the material carefully checked and multiple citations for every paragraph.
I posted some of the deleted material as two seperate articles on my Science20 site here
- Mars Sample Return - Legal Issues and Need for International Public Debate a
- Mars Sample Receiving Facility and sample containment (did some more work on it after the article was deleted).
ALL WENT WELL AT FIRST
At first all went well, I was encouraged to write the article, by other editors on the Mars sample return talk page - and did a draft in my user space for comment - and then eventually published it in the main space - and the first comments on the new article were favourable.
THEN ONE EDITOR SINGLE HANDEDLY LEAD A CAMPAIGN TO DELETE IT
But then it was attacked by an editor who was totally opposed to it and thought such an article should not be permitted in wikipedia.
Eventually, this article was deleted - and that was a crazy experience.
It was perhaps the most bizarre "Alice in the Looking Glass" type experience in my life :).
First, the deletion discussion did not discuss a single sentence from the article and did not talk about a single primary source. Just loads of insults hurled at me.
Instead the main opposing editor just hurled lots of insults at me, basically a whole lot of ad hominem stuff attacking my competence for writing anything on the topic.
And another editor from the Mars section also joined in - so I had two editors hurling insults at me in their deletion votes.
Also lots of strange things going on. For the first few days the editor who was opposed to me refused to let me edit the article. So the discussion was about a hugely trimmed and biased article with many errors in it written by the very editor who wanted the article deleted. When I tried to edit it, he reverted my edits.
Finally after a day or two of this - one of the moderators did step in and said the editor who proposed deletion can't edit the article during the deletion discussion - and then I spent a hectic day or two trying to get it back in shape again after all his edits (I was not permitted to simply revert his edits for some reason, some obscure wikipedia rule which they invoked, which I now forget - instead I had to start with his version of the article and gradually edit it back to the way I wanted it).
- Oh - yes I remember now - I had forked it off into a separate article in my own user space - because for some time, maybe a week or so before the deletion discussion he had reverted all my edits in the main space - so I couldn't work on it there. So then - that meant I had made a "fork" in my user space - that was frowned on - because it meant I was ignoring the work of other editors on the article that happened in between - even though the editor that proposed the deletion was really the only person who had done any edits in between except typos.
So, I was not permitted to take my user space article and simply substitute it back to overwrite his version, but had to start with his version and gradually edit it again from scratch.
I was still busy editing it back into shape when the deletion discussion closed.
Also other crazy stuff going on such as sections of the deletion discussion page itself getting edited and hidden by the opposing editors, hiding parts of the discussion that they didn't like.
Then just as it was getting towards the end of the time for the deletion discussion to close, a half dozen new editors piled in and they all voted against me.
And - when I looked at their edit histories - none of them had any previous history of editing the Mars section of wikipedia. They were editors in topics like soccor etc - totally unrelated topics.
But - these were the people who made the final decision on my article.
I wondered at the time if they might just be off wikipedia pals of the opposing editor who he asked to vote to support him - but of course you can't prove anything, and I can't say for sure they were.
Indeed - on reflection - it might be that they were just people who browsed the "deletion discussions closing" pages and looked at this and thought that it was a clear enough case to vote, by whatever logic they use - and voted against me.
Anyone can vote in this way on any AfD discussion in wikipedia. I could go and find a deletion discussion on soccor say (something I know nothing about) and vote to keep it, or to delete it, if I so wanted to - and nobody would say I can't do it.
It's not purely by votes - but - if lots of people pile in and say the same thing - that does tend to swing the debate.
I tried to re-open the AfD because of all these irregularities - but the moderator who closed the discussion (this is a third party who has no connection at all with the discussion, and who spends some of his time on wikipedia closing deletion discussions) - he said I hadn't got a chance of re-opening it as it was one of the clearest decisions he had ever had to arbitrate.
For him it was a really clear case - as almost everyone agreed to delete the article. And all the irregularities at the start of the discussion counted for nothing, apparently.
So - that is how articles get deleted in wikipedia - sometimes.
By a determined editor who uses a lot of insults and rhetoric and ad hominem allegations on the discussion page - and bunch of people who know nothing about the subject who get persuaded by his rhetoric and join in and vote against you on a subject they know nothing about.
Now - this is highly unusual - I have been involved in many civilized deletion discussions that do look at the source material - and do involve people talking to each other properly, and where the people involved in the discussion are clearly knowledgeable about the topic.
But when some wikipedia editors get worked up and motivated by rhetoric on the talk page for the discussion - this can happen - well has happened at least this once!
FOLLOW UP REACTION TO THE DELETED ARTICLE
Perhaps bolstered by their success, as a reaction to this, the two editors who were most strongly in favour of deleting it in the discussion also (not as a decision made at a higher level but on their own initiative) - decided it was about time that the whole Mars section had a major purge.
Basically anything that I'd contributed to on the subject was removed, even if I had only done minor edits to it.
For instance - there was a section in both of the colonization articles about various issues and concerns with colonization. I had written most of one of these sections. In the case of the other one, I had added just a few sentences.
Both were removed completely and replaced with a shorter section titled "Challenges to be overcome" or some such.
Then the Life on Mars article had a section on present day habitability of Mars surface - and I'd added a few sentences to that section. That was enough for them to feel they had the authority to delete that entire section and replace with a new section that said life on the surface of Mars is impossible.
Several other things like that.
I protested about their actions to the moderators for my case, but to no avail.
Then having finished with deleting all this material in the Mars section - they then went on to merge the backward contamination with forward contamination articles (these are very different topics in the field - needing different methods of planetary protection) - and were aiming to remove those articles altogether.
By this stage there was a whole band of several editors involved in the process - most of them having no previous history of editing the Mars section of wikipedia and no specialist knowledge of the subject. Just got caught up in this frenzy to "Purge" wikipedia of all this stuff.
They intended to delete everything on planetary protection in wikipedia apart from the Planetary protection article itself. On the grounds that we don't need more than one article on the subject.
I couldn't stop them from deleting the backward contamination article but did finally manage to stop them from deleting the forward contamination article.
They also made some poor, badly informed and incorrect edits to the Planetary protection article itself - and there I made a very strong stand because it is one of the better wikipedia articles.
I was permitted to continue to edit Planetary protection on this topic, and gradually over a period of weeks and months - proceeding rather slowly as I didn't want to trigger another episode like the one that had happened - I got it back into shape. And looks fine to me now thank goodness, so wikipedia does have one good article on the topic. (Only some of it by me -it was already a good article before I started on it).
STANDING POLICY IN MARS SECTION - SINCE LAST YEAR
As a result, the standing policy seems to be that, since last spring, this material does not belong in the Mars section any more.
They have no problem with me editing Mars articles on other topics or editing wikipedia in other topics such as maths and music.
Basically it's an informal topic ban on the Mars section of wikipedia on the topic areas of:
- Present day habitability of Mars
- Risks that humans can cause "harmful contamination" of Mars in the sense of the Outer Space Treaty by introducing Earth life to the planet
- Potential harmful effects of returning biological material from Mars.
They are permitted so long as they are presented as "challenges to be overcome" - and so long as they are kept very short - with the main material left in the Planetary protection article - and so long as they are not written in such a way as to suggest any possibility that the precautions needed might stop or delay human colonization of Mars.
Present day habitability of Mars seems to be absolutely forbidden as a topic, unless you add a qualification making it clear that it is impossible. That basically was the outcome of that week long purging of the Mars section last year. And it is continuing as an informal policy in the Mars section.
NO FORMAL BAN - NO FORMAL DECISION ON ANY OF THIS
There was no formal ban -and no decision. It was just the action of two editors who felt justified in their actions as a result of labeling me a "Troll".
But I was strongly advised by the moderators to refrain from editing the Mars section on these topics last year, and to confine my work to the Planetary protection article.
I was advised that the moderation talks had come close to suggesting I was banned in this way - I was saved because one of the two editors left wikipedia when I started the proceedings so they couldn't go ahead - as he was one of the named parties in the controversy.
So that's why I have no confidence in the wikipedia arbitration process in this topic area.
I've posted about this to the
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology
(this is edited from that post)
But - don't expect any response.
As you see - did respond eventually, I posted too much onto the page - so they objected to that.
But now - have said that what I posted is original research and warned me against posting to the talk page again. So that's that, don't think they are likely to correct the article to mention Nilton Tenno's research.
HAVE HAD GOOD EXPERIENCES ON WIKIPEDIA ALSO
I have had good experiences there. For the hexany article - there I was the person who created the article. It did have an AfD (Article for Deletion) discussion - but that was civilized and easily resolved.
Hexany
And my other discussions on music and maths were for the most part civilized and interesting - and never at all had anything close to the experiences I had in the Life on Mars article
In other areas it works really well and has excellent articles. For instance on alternative biochemistry for exoplanets, and on climate change and the global warming debate etc - areas where it is really hard to write a good balanced article.
In the last few years I've seen many areas of wikipedia slowly transform from poorly written, ill informed, speculative and flat out incorrect articles to excellent articles.
So - the process does work eventually. But it seems, it takes a good many years for articles to mature. Perhaps sometimes only when the original editors retire from wikipedia - or maybe get a whole lot of new editors who are interested and motivated to get the articles in shape and they can't compete with them.
I don't want to put anyone off from contributing to it. It's well worth doing.
I still edit it frequently. But if I were to find myself caught up in a dispute like this again - I'd bow out at an early stage.
IF YOU GET CAUGHT IN A DISPUTE LIKE THIS IN WIKIPEDIA
My advice to anyone else who gets caught up in something like this - especially if it is a dispute about primary sources - unless it is really obvious - moderation is useless. They won't read the primary sources. And the moderators won't know anything about your topic area. It's not their job to do that.
So - you have to resolve things with your fellow editors. Or just give up.
You can do a RfC - a Request for Comment by experts - but in my experience it didn't work - just brings more uninformed comment by people who know nothing about the subject in detail. May work better for others, it could be worth a try.
In some ways giving up may be better, try again some months later. Okay so wikipedia has a major mistake in it for some months - but - someone else might fix it in between, editor might change their mind, something might happen. And in any case - gives you a break from thinking about it.
Maybe come to quora instead :).
If your editors are not interested in resolving things - if they just hurl insults at you when you try to find resolution - there is no chance really of doing anything.
You can make progress still if you can find allies, other editors who feel the same way that you do, and who are also editing wikipedia in your topic area.
But - often - even though you may care deeply and hate to see wikipedia become distorted and biased - sometimes there is nothing you can do.
Except walk away from that topic area.
I had to do that eventually. In some ways it might have been good to have just given up right away at the beginning when those two editors deleted my original article. Everything I tried after that just made the whole thing worse and worse until eventually I had to go away anyway.
It's like a ship taking in its sails and putting out a storm anchor to weather a storm. Some years later (in this case) the skies may clear and you can sail again.
I'D LIKE WIKIPEDIA TO WORK BETTER
In many ways it does work out eventually - but it takes so long - and wastes so much time for so many people - and puts many of them through frustrating and difficult experiences. And many get put off editing it altogether - after an experience like this.
I'm not the only one, quite a few have had similar experiences to this on wikipedia in one way or another.
If only - somehow - the process could be modified so that it is efficient at dealing with the true trolls and trouble makers - but is easier on those who are just trying to improve the encyclopedia and who have some knowledge or expertise in specialist topic areas.
And if only, somehow, it wasn't so easy for editors who are ignorant of basic facts in their subject area (such as that a microbe able to withstand 5 kGys would not be killed by 76 mGys) to rise to positions in wikipedia where they are respected as "authorities" by other like-minded but equally ignorant fellow editors - who often then will automatically support every action they take.
QUORA THOUGH IS MUCH MORE FUN :)
I've written many things here that would never be permitted on wikipedia. And you can write in a readable enjoyable way also.
Though you can write in a clear and nicely presented way in an encyclopedia, you can't have fun in the same way you can here :)
For instance my two most popular articles here right now are
Robert Walker's answer to Do math and physics geniuses really jot down their calculations everywhere in the room? If they do, why? In many movies, they seem to always do that when struck by inspiration.
and
Robert Walker's answer to Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours? Is mathematics absolute?
Neither would be permitted in Wikipedia. And quite rightly too for an encyclopedia - not saying they should be - but that's part of what makes Quora so much fun, that it's okay to write answers like that.
LOW QUALITY ANSWERS ON QUORA - NOT A PROBLEM
Another good thing about Quora is - that if you do write an answer that isn't very good - is no big deal.
You don't get lots of hate mail. You don't get people attacking you on the talk page. You don't get a deletion discussion. The worst that can happen - you might get a few adverse comments on your article.
Generally, all that happens is that it just quietly drops to the bottom of the list of answers and gets forgotten :). If it gets downvoted enough it gets hidden. And that's the end of it, simple.
So it's also a great place to try out ideas, and try presenting things in a new way - and generally - to experiment a bit and "learn your trade" as a writer on these topics.
Some of my answers here eventually end up on my Science20 blog.
Robert Walker's Blog on Science20
ANSWERING REAL QUESTIONS
Also I think the question / answer format is clever and interesting.
Somehow answering a real question someone puts - I find anyway - that the result is a more lively interesting answer.
Even if the answer is - not exactly a question to solve a problem - but - more open ended like this one. Still - it really helps you to write better, somehow, I think.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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