User:Pointillist

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Pointillist is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.

[edit] My focus

I currently focus on noteworthy items that don't currently have verifiable articles. By "noteworthy" I mean items that:

  • relate to areas that are popularly recognised as issues or cultural trends
  • are recognised by specialists in reputable publications as having significantly advanced the state of the art in such area/s (even if they weren't popularly recognised at the time and so may have been overlooked by Wikipedia).

I try to fix such items when I find them, if I have the time to do the job properly. It seems to me that...

  • Articles on overlooked subjects tend to receive little or no peer review, so it is important to get them right first time. Unfortunately these subjects were probably overlooked because there was not an obvious source of verifiable material to support them, so it can take a long time to assemble an article to Wikipedia's standards. So I am only an occasional contributor of original articles.
  • As an example of my contribution, Wikipedia had no existing article on the designer Raymond Hawkey. Book covers are part of popular culture in that almost everyone buys 'airport' paperback thrillers from time to time, and Hawkey's design for front cover of The IPCRESS File (1962) has been described by specialists in reputable design publications as "the template" for all such book covers since then [which is arguable, but nevertheless verifiable]. The IPCRESS cover is mentioned by recent designers as a favourite and is already displayed in Wikipedia, but without a credit for Hawkey. In addition, covers by Hawkey are an indicator of value in the rare books trade. Furthermore Hawkey was a notable player in a related field (British newspaper design from 1959 to at least 1974). So I created an article on him.
  • Likewise, Richard Asher is regarded (BMJ obituary) as one of the last polymaths in medical science, comparable to Richard Feynman in his belief in transparency and doubt, and still regularly cited in expert papers. He significantly advanced the state of the art in several areas, but his Wikipedia article was still only a stub. I extended this with a much richer narrative biography supported by 12 extra citations and 7 online links to his writing.
  • Articles on more popular subjects seem to get factual review by other specialists, but are often missing citations and examples, maybe because the specialists think "yes, that's true" without considering Verifiability. When I spot this (mainly in technology or graphic design areas) I either add citations or tag the article 'refimprove', or both.
  • My additions to the Xerox Star and IBM Selectric Composer articles are simple examples.
  • A more complex situation is the final illness of Jane Austen. I was drawn to this when my minor edit "or Hodgkin's lymphoma" was reverted in good faith, on the basis that the majority opinion was that she died of Addison's disease, so the minority view should be assigned to a footnote. A key issue was whether the majority view was based on just one medical analysis originally published in June 1964. This analysis was reprinted in a literary review and the subsequent challenge in the original publication was probably not seen by the Jane Austen community. Repetitions of this challenge in 1995 and 2005 were discounted because the majority viewpoint was so well established. A good-natured debate on this followed, and now we have a substantial set of notes on all the competing viewpoints, supported by a set of medical citations that literary biographers might not have found. Of course, our job is not to decide what killed Ms Austen, just to catalogue the competing views. But that process, performed according to pure NPOV and Verifiability, is probably the most demanding academic exercise I have ever participated in. Indeed, it lead me to Richard Asher's comments on Pel-Ebstein disease, and Maurice Pappworth's observation that "Overwhelming evidence is not essential for correct diagnosis, and the absence of some expected symptom or sign often does not invalidate an otherwise reasonable diagnosis." (Pappworth MH. Diagnostic pitfalls: the sin of greed. A primer of medicine. London: Butterworths, 1978:32–33), both of which tend to make all the medical analysis somewhat irrelevant.

Time permitting, I hope to make further contributions like these in future. In the technology area, I am fortunate to have a library of original 35mm slide images of early 1980s office systems, which I intend to publish.

[edit] Verifiability vs readability of Wikipedia

Given that I believe whole-heartedly in verifiability, I try to use a lot of citations to support my edits. For exanple, the second paragraph of the Richard Asher article has 7 citations in 147 words (i.e. the ratio of words to citations is 21:1). On this basis a 600-word article should have rearly 30 citations. I know that few article achieve this ratio, let alone the 13:1 ratio in the first paragraph of "Notable articles by Richard Asher".

My concern is that when you achieve a verifiable density of citations the article becomes significantly harder to read. So there is a dualism: either skip the citations and you will probably get away with it or do the citations (which will take a long time if you do them properly) and your article will be unattractive to read, because the footnote references muck up the layout.

Am I alone in seeing some challenges of behavioural psychology here?

[edit] Key places for me

I've also come to understand that sometimes the best way to reduce visual clutter in a article is simply to delete all the explicit pixel widths from thumbnail images. Feels like breath of fresh air, and respects each registered reader's preferences. (last updated) Pointillist (talk) 23:05, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

1RR This user prefers discussing changes on the talkpage rather than engaging in an edit war.
incr This editor is an incrementalist.
This user strives to maintain a policy of neutrality on controversial issues.
This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know.
This user assumes good faith.
This user enjoys Baroque music.
lapsed This user is a lapsed musician.
C-3 This user is an advanced C user.