User talk:Spiral Wave

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Welcome!

Hello, Spiral Wave, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Sr13 03:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Sr13. I'll try to absorb all that! Spiral Wave 12:02, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Just wondering if you were still planning to make your changes to Solar nebula and Formation and evolution of the Solar System. Serendipodous 23:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Cool. No worries. Serendipodous 02:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for all your help

I wanted you to know it was appreciateed. :-) Serendipodous 12:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Please, I need your help again. I had provided a link to galactic tides on the assumption that someone with a better grasp of astrophysics than I would fill in the gap. It didn't happen and now an FAC reviewer has demanded that I create a live link to it. So I tried; but having absolutely no grasp of the finer points of astrophysics I am not sure my twenty-minute crash course on galactic tidal forces was enough to create a cogent or accurate article. Could you give it a quick run through? It's only a stub. Thanks. Serendipodous 14:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow. That was... beautiful. Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you, thank you thank you. You really got the point across very clearly, which is certainly more than I can say for what I wrote. Serendipodous 19:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear, what have I created? lol. I just got a message over at my userpage from a Dr. Submilimeter: "I saw your work at galactic tide. Since you seem to be on top of the subject, could you please rewrite interacting galaxy?"

I don't think I have the heart to tell the guy that I have absolutely no knowledge of the subject whatsoever, but seeing that the combined efforts of we two guys, who, by our own admission, know nothing about this topic have managed to create an article that passes for authoritative, would you be interested in joining me on this appointed quest?Serendipodous 16:41, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't been much help on this, but in truth this has gone way over my head, and I don't think I can work at such depth. I can say that there is little in the "Interacting galaxies" article that isn't in "galactic tide", and that "Galactic tide" could use some subsection headings. The simplest solution would be to merge the two. Serendipodous 07:45, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! You deserve this. Serendipodous 22:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah well. It was worth a shot. Still, enough people thought it was good enough to personally promote it without a review, which was nice. I'll have a look and see how I can niggle with it. Serendipodous 20:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Spiral, do you think you could help tidy up the mess that is Pluto#Orbit? I think you might be uniquely qualified to help. Thanks.Serendipodous 15:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, should have been more specific; the main problem is simply that none of us poor editors have any background whatsoever in dynamic solar system physics and some knowledge of the subject would certainly come in handy in any rewrites. For instance, explaining how the Kozai mechanism affects Pluto's orbit, or what its relation to long term effects is. I thought, with your background in solar system formation, you might have some ideas how to make the section cohere. A lot of what you see in that section is a combination of academic fudging and wild ass guesswork. Appraisal by an experienced eye would be much appreciated. I've changed the title of the relevant section on the talk page to make it more obvious.Serendipodous 06:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again Spiral; I hope it wasn't too much trouble. Serendipodous 06:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I add my thanks to Serendipodous's. Your edits were a massive qualitative improvement. Deuar 15:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey Spiral. There's been a complication over at Pluto's FA nomination page; one of the nominators wants a fuller description of what the Kozai mechanism is. Serendipodous 19:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Spiral, I have to ask for your help again (I seem to be leaning on you like a cane- sorry). I'm engaged in a debate on Wikipedia: Requested moves over the whole solar nebula - planetary formation - nebular hypothesis insanity. I've made my case, cited my sources (seven of them) and I am currently in the process of getting my rhetorical ass kicked. I think we both agree that the current situation is untenable, so if you wouldn't mind, could you stop by and offer your expertise? Thanks. Serendipodous 09:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Sigh. I'm not sure what to do; I don't think anyone's going to respond to your comments on Solar nebula. Even if the current setup is actually, demonstrably, factually incorrect (and I think we've shown that it is), it seems there's no stomach for the massive number of page moves a correction would require. And so we see Wikipedia leading us on into the age of terminal misinformation. Serendipodous 09:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] You, yourself and Wikipedia

I don't want to sound rude, but your criticism of Wikipedia as a "philosophy" is the typical coming from a person who knows very little about this pseudo-pseudo-anarchy.

"Bad" edits (which includes vandalism) are countered very fast due to the huge side of the Wikipedia community and Wikipedia bots. Obvious vandalism lasts about 30 seconds on average, I've heard. More subtle vandalism isn't that hard to track nowadays, since particularly sensitive statements are either referenced or carefully kept under control. Ultimately, Wikipedia will never be 100% reliable., nothing is 100% reliable, and there is no such thing as a reliable source of information. It is not something to trust inherently as an authoritative source, funny one, so I see you trust particular sources due to their reputation, when someone should only trust scientific proofs (isn't that a form of argumentum ad hominem fallacy?).

Wikipedia references its statements, which is the best thing an information database can do. Most encyclopedias don't, you accept their statements as the truth... Encarta says "this is this way" when Wikipedia says "John Doe says this is this way".

Regards. --Taraborn 22:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

My apologies... Your essay sounded to me like saying the typical something not written in the old way (paying professionals) can't be good, which is nonsense. But now I've seen this is faraway from being your case :P Let me understand what you mean... Do you mean Wikipedia is particularly vulnerable to untrue but convincing, hard to refute and most times even being good faithed edits? Does that imply that other sources of information, by their nature, are much less vulnerable than this one? I'm not sure, but those kind of mistakes seem hard to check to me in any circumstances... imagine a lecture... the professor corrects many mistakes due to the students' comments, but I guess those are the "obvious" ones, we can't correct an error in something new to us.

You said theory is okay, but practice is flawed. How would you improve practice?

Thanks for your response, it wasn't any long nor tiring to read, I actually found it interesting :)

See you. --Taraborn 15:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)