Dranorter

Hi, I don't know anything about user pages but wanted to note a few things about myself!

I am a computer science student at Central Michigan University trying to write a few articles on some history of computing stuff, we'll see if I get the time.

(I didn't yet, but I'm not doing nothing with my account. Just doing little things mostly, getting my bearings, hopefully not stepping on any toes...)

I think Wikipedia is really cool but while I was doing research for a term paper I hesitated to add my writing to it in fear of my professor concluding I had plagiarized from Wikipedia. I would have liked to have my own private Wikipedia for the purpose of note taking, but, didn't bother to make one.

See, the thing is I think a 'private Wikipedia' could be a pretty ideal bookmarking tool. And then, turned into a social bookmarking tool, it could allow people to compare research and ultimately greatly facilitate both the creation of Wikipedia pages and the efforts of those who wish to look further than Wikipedia.

But such speculation is just silliness.

Valete et bene scribite.

...

One of the reasons I'm attracted to Wikipedia is that it can be seen as sort of a definitive information source within certain limits. If you want to know something, you check Wikipedia, and if it's not there, you add it-- whatever it takes. However, as I read Wikipedia guidelines I begin to realise there are several ways in which this is simply not what it's for. First of all there is the 'within certain limits': there are some articles/facts which are simply not notable in the way Wikipedia requires. Secondly, 'whatever it takes' is not allowed: original research cannot be directly added to Wikipedia. It must go through a lengthy process of becoming general public knowledge which can be reliably cited.

Streamlining the process of making something into reliable public knowledge would help, but that's a funny idea. Widening the concept of notability would have consequences I don't fully understand. My understanding 1) of the actual Wikipedia and 2) of my ideal Wikipedia is not nuanced enough yet to have an opinion. Dranorter (talk) 19:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The Senses

There are about eight articles which attempt to give an overview of the senses.

• Perception
• Perceptual system
• Sensation (psychology)
• Sense
• Sensorium
• Sensory nervous system
• Sensory neuron
• Stimulus (physiology)
• Stimulus modality
• Transduction (physiology)

There are some borderline cases:

• Five wits - Historical, and pretty good. In particular I like how authors were sure there were five, but didn't even agree on the list, and we're citing Aristotle who lists four. If I could find actual sources and connections, it would be awesome to include information on Tantric five sense models.
• General sense (anatomy)
• Modality (human–computer interaction)
• Modality (semiotics) - "Modality" here distinguishes e.g. writing from photos, which share the "medium" of light/vision.
• Philosophy of perception
• Sensory cue - Very close in spirit, but with a topic which allows things to be cut up more. It would be nice to add some "nontraditional" senses here.
• Sensory memory - Added proprioceptive memory. Ought to look for more. One citation suggested every sense except the vestibular sense has phantoms; maybe this is true of sensory memory too.
• Sensory neuroscience
• Sensory processing
• Sensory receptor
• Special senses
• Psychophysics

For the most part these articles each have glaring flaws. I have been spending a bit of time trying to make sure they reflect the following ideas:

• There are more than just 5 senses.
• Our senses are very "multimodal", and we often don't consciously know which "sense" gave us certain information.
• Vision is super complicated.
  • We don't actually know how many types of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (using melanopsin and other pigments) are in the eye or what they do.
  • We don't know what all the axons in the optic nerve are for. What types of information are they carrying?
  • Primary colors are a dumb idea.
    • The original study which established them failed to reproduce the full range of color.
    • "Red, green and blue" make poor summaries of the rods they're usually meant to refer to.
    • And as I said above, there are definitely other pigments involved in human vision, and we don't even know how many.
• Perceptual abilities such as face perception require dedicated brain areas, so from that point of view are a separate sense.
• There is some difference in sensorium from person to person, and from culture to culture. Not crazy postmodernist variation, but some.
• Discussion of different animal sensoriums should be linking to stuff like:
  • Comparison of sensory perception in species
  • Sensory systems in fish
  • Cat senses

Other ideas:

• Organize sensory nervous tissue by type. There is, um, zero mention of bipolar cells in sensory nervous system.
• Organize some material by interoception vs. proprioception vs. exteroception.
• It seems like there's some desire in many of these articles to mention animal senses and 'robot senses' (electronic sensory systems, including implants). So maybe that should be organized better.
• The article on illusions is organized according to the senses, and therefore could benefit from some of the same ideas. Particularly, it could include some of the illusions Thomas Metzinger induces upon "sense of self".
• There should be an article on affective touch. It's processed by a different brain area etc. Need to link to it as 'main article' from perception#social touch and from Somatosensory system#Neural Processing of Social Touch
• Reviewing the literature, it seems like it would be interesting to have an article listing Theories of Perception. Maybe I should just put that in Philosophy of Perception or something?
• The neural coding of individual senses could stand to be mentioned somewhere; the neural coding article should be linked.
• Other articles to link from more places:
  • Alliesthesia
  • Appetition — particularly regarding general sense (anatomy).
• Sensory neuron, Sensory receptor, and Sensory nervous system are all pretty dang similar.
• Localization of sensation would be a good article to have. It's redlinked from somewhere I think? Ah yes, Allochiria.
• There are various sensory disorders I had open in tabs. Really just want to make sure they're linked in sensory disorder places.
  • Allochiria
  • Sensory processing disorder
  • Derealization — also I think there was something in this I wanted to edit.
  • Sensory overload
  • Sensory Dysfunction Disorder
• Sensory processing feels rather like it should have its historical content merged into Multisensory integration, and the rest merged into Sensory nervous system.
• Incorporate more information about cranial nerves into Sensory nervous system.
• Are projection areas just an older term for topographic map (neuroanatomy)?

As for reducing the number of articles seemingly serving the same purpose, I have no particular opinion. Dranorter (talk) 05:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)