EsaTyystjärvi
Welcome!
edit
Welcome to Wikipedia, EsaTyystjärvi! I am I dream of horses and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or by typing {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
- Introduction
- The five pillars of Wikipedia
- How to edit a page
- Help pages
- How to write a great article
- Manual of Style
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome!
Thanks for your great work on photoinhibition, we need more scientists like you on wikipedia! Smartse (talk) 14:49, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Chlorophyll
editHi EsaTyystjärvi
I noticed that a new account called All202! has today added text and reference to the article Chlorophyll a, referring to your recent JBE paper. The wording is essentially identical to that which you added to Chlorophyll on December 30th and it is obvious that the account is either a sockpuppet of your own account or has been created by someone known to you. This is a really bad idea and is the sort of thing that gets people banned from Wikipedia. I have already said that I will add the text and reference to relevant articles after others interested have had the opportunity to comment at the Talk Page of Chlorophyll. I plan to give other editors a week to make their comments before doing that — there is no urgency. Meanwhile, I strongly suggest that you abandon the All202! account. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:41, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
Dear Michael, I am very sorry. I have sent my paper to a couple of people in the field of photosynthesis research. I have also told them about my finding that this strange idea about chlorophyll reflecting light is particularly widespread in Wikipedia and asked them, if they agree, to try to correct this thing in Wikipedia - now that there is a reference that they can cite. I asked them to do their own judgment, of course (they are all scientists with a long career in photosynthesis research). But surely I did not provide any wording or mean that they should copy my words, which means that if somebody uses the same wording, she/he must have viewed the History sheet of the Chlorophyll page and thought that my wording is the easiest way to go).
The person who did the change in the Chlorophyll a page told about it to me. She is Alexandrina Stirbet, an author of several highly cited papers in the field of chlorophyll fluorescence. I know her but we have never published together.
Most scientists never look at Wikipedia articles about their own field, and I think that is why this error is so widespread in Wikipedia. If Wikipedia was a scientific journal, I could simply ask for the evidence about chlorophyll reflecting light to be presented. But I have understood that in Wikipedia that does not work, as Wikipedia should show the consensus. Therefore I thought that the right way to go is to show in Wikipedia that the consensus really is (and was already much before my paper) that chlorophyll does not reflect light to any significant degree. I think that consensus means that most scientists in the field agree.
But how to show consensus?
I thought that the right way to go would be to ask scientists in the field to tell their opinion by correcting Wikipedia pages. In addition, I also asked them to register to Wikipedia and to come to this Talk page. However, I did not realize that if they do changes as an unregistered users, then nobody knows who did it.
I appreciate Wikipedia very much. I understand now that this is not the right way to show the consensus. Is it ok if I ask researchers of the field to register and express their opinion on this Talk page only? My career in photosynthesis research started in 1980's, and therefore I know many many senior researchers of the field, so unfortunately, virtually all would be "people I know". However, I cannot imagine a scientist taking sides in a scientific dispute of his/her own field simply because they know somebody.
EsaTyystjärvi (talk) 11:38, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation! Wikipedia is indeed about consensus but foremost it is about verifiability. That means that the existence of a source for a claim will always take precedence over someone's personal belief that something is true. Talk pages are used when editors here disagree on how to present sources in a neutral way and/or to represent the perhaps conflicting views in those sources (especially in politically charged areas). We rarely need to get into such arguments for scientific topics, thankfully, although I have seen some amazing to-and-fro debates going on (see WT:ELEMENTS for examples). I don't know where the "strange idea" regarding chlorophyll came from and it should not have been added to any Wikipedia article without a citation to a scientific source that confirmed it was the case, which it doesn't seem to have.
- Anyway, what I'm going to do later today is to be WP:BOLD and re-insert the citation to your publication as justification for alterations to the text using similar wording to your original addition. Then if anyone objects (unlikely now, as user Plantsurfer has already been alerted to my proposal and made no comment) the discussion will take place on the relevant Talk Page(s). Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:53, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
- I've made the changes now to Chlorophyll and Chromophore, which used the same picture. It will be interesting to see if foreign-language versions of Wikipedia which use that image also get changed (my language skills are not sufficient to do those). In thinking about why the misconception arose, I wonder whether my ex-PhD supervisor, Alan Battersby was partly responsible. He always lectured on "The pigments of life" and if you look at the article on pigment the mechanism of the colour we see is very much because of what is reflected, not what is absorbed or transmitted. Hence chlorophyll and so on are probably better described as dyes: "The dyestuffs of life" doesn't sound so romantic.... Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)