Gtn001

Hello, Gtn001, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Yunshui, and I am your Online Ambassador for Bucknell's History of Ecology course. My job here is to help you to work within Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, to answer any questions that you have about editing here, and to act as your advocate in the (unlikely) event that you find yourself in a dispute with another user.

You are welcome to contact me at any time by leaving a message on my Wikipedia talkpage or by emailing me. I will usually respond to any messages within 24 hours (though I aim to be faster!), but if you need more immediate help, you can ask questions of experienced editors at The Teahouse or get live help via Wikipedia's IRC channel (connect here).

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Introduction to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• Wikipedia's Simplified Manual of Style
• Basic Wikipedia Markup

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. Once again, if you need help with any aspect of Wikipedia, please just ask; it's what I'm here for. Enjoy your course! Yunshui 雲‍水 08:35, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Edit Bucknell University page?

Hi Grant! The link to Bucknell's Wikipedia page on your userpage made me think--should one of us in the class update the Bucknell Wikipedia page to highlight the work we are doing on Wikipedia in this class? I'm not sure if that would be considered promotional, and thus not in line with Wikipedia's standards. But, then again, it is a moment in history that we should record--the first class to be working with Wikipedia at Bucknell. Perhaps under the Student life tab? This is a conversation we can take up more in class and perhaps on the Bucknell talk page. What do you think? --Enstandrew (talk) 11:34, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Professor, That sounds like a great idea, but I am not completely sure whether it would be allowed by Wikipedia. However, I'm sure there are people in class that would love to have contributed to the Bucknell Wikipedia page. Gtn001 (talk) 00:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)Grant Nissly

Hi guys. No, don't do that, please. There are three good reasons not to add the information. Firstly, there won't be any reliable sources to verify the information (I doubt that the New York Times, for example, has written an article about your class project). Sources are required for everything you add, here. Secondly, the information isn't encyclopedic - general readers who want to find out about Bucknell don't need to know about the class, any more than they need to know about any other classes there. Thirdly, you have a conflict of interest when writing about Bucknell; it's generally best to avoid writing about topics that you are closely related to or affiliated with, at least until you understand Wikipedia's guidelines fairly thoroughly.

What you can do, on pages which you are editing as part of your course, is place a notice on the article's associated talkpage (not the article itself!) to tell other users that it's being edited as part of your assignment. Use the code {{course assignment | course = Education Program:Bucknell University/History of Ecology (Spring 2014) | term = 2013 Q3 }} Yunshui 雲‍水 11:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Yunshui! This was a good reminder for us in the beginning of class about the principles of Wikipedia and what constitutes a neutral perspective and encyclopedic information. We had the feeling this was not an acceptable addition to Wikipedia, but also wanted to get the word out about our course, too. We will use the code you provided when we select articles and start to think/work on them. Have a great day --Enstandrew (talk) 11:36, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Reminders for class on Tuesday, 2/4

Hi Grant! A quick note to check in and share some reminders. How have the Wiki readings been going? Do you have any questions about them? We will be evaluating Alexander von Humbold'ts Wikipedia page on Tuesday in discussion, so be sure to review the Evaluating Wikipedia article quality brochure. Also, remember that you have two other things due Tuesday: creating a User Page and introducing yourself to an online ambassador or another student through their Talk Pages. You have some basic information on your user page, but I'd like you to spruce it up--make it more of an introduction, as other Wikipedians will be getting to know you through this page (see mine for an example). Let me know if you have any questions! --Enstandrew (talk) 18:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Grant

Hello Grant, my name is Octavio and I am also in the History of Ecology Course. Hope you had a nice weekend and see you in class tomorrow! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aoc001 (talk • contribs) 04:53, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Moved your page

Hi Grant. Just letting you know that I've moved your list of references to User:Gtn001/The struggle for existence, rather than leaving it as the talkpage for a non-existent article. Talkpages without associated articles are routinely deleted, and I didn't want your work to be lost. You can carry on using the User:Gtn001/The struggle for existence page to formulate your draft article, or I can move it directly into your sandbox or to a draft page if you'd prefer. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:51, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Struggle for Existence Outline

In the most basic form, the struggle for existence refers to the constant competition between organisms to live. Originating in the late 1700s, the phrase “struggle for existence” first came to use in Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus’s use of the struggle for existence came through his study of economics and people, not nature. Malthus knew that with limited resources on earth, there would be competition among people to exist and survive (1).

In addition to Malthus, Charles Darwin famously used the phrase “struggle for existence” in his book On the Origin of Species; the third chapter of this book is entitled “Struggle for Existence.” However, without the thoughts of Malthus, Darwin’s theory would not look as it does in On the Origin of Species. Before reading An Essay on the Principle of Population, Darwin continued to believe in perfect adaptation, as stated in the “Essay of 1844.” With Malthus’s idea of the struggle for existence, however, Darwin was able to change his view of adaption (2). From Malthus, Darwin claims that the struggle for existence idea allowed him to see that favorable variations would be preserved and unfavorable conditions would not leading to new species (1). In support, Darwin, around 1855, makes note that the struggle for existence helps produce diversification – leading to Darwin’s principle of divergence (2).

Similar to Darwin, Alfred Wallace uses the phrase struggle for existence when discussing the issue of slavery in 1853 (4). With influence of Malthus, Wallace comes to a similar conclusion of the idea of the struggle for existence and the effects it has on the overall population by the year 1855 (4). Wallace combines the idea of the struggle for existence with variation to make a reasonable argument for the “survival of the fittest” idea that was developing in this time period (1).

While the idea of the struggle for existence was developing in the western world at this time period, it is important to note the global interpretation of the struggle for existence, especially in Russia (5). In Russia, the idea of “mutual aid” was used to explain evolution rather than the struggle for existence (5). Additionally, T.H. Huxley developed the phrase further in a similar time period. In the wake of Darwin, Huxley did not agree with Darwin on natural selection, however, he did agree that there was a struggle for existence in nature (3). In the present day, claims have attempted to be made that over geological time macroevolution does not occur as a result of many short-term results. This attempts to show how the struggle for existence is not as important in the macroevolutionary scale (6).

1. Petersen, William. Malthus. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979. 2. Ospovat, Dov. The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838-1859. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 3. Paradis, James G. T.H. Huxley: man's place in nature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. 4. McKinney, H. Lewis. Wallace and Natural Selection. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 5. Todes, Daniel Philip. Darwin without Malthus the struggle for existence in Russian evolutionary thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 6. Bennett, K. D. Evolution and Ecology: The Pace of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	That's a pretty damn good bit of work for a first-ever Wikipedia article; well done! Yunshui 雲水 11:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

DYK for The struggle for existence

Allen3 ^talk 02:59, 12 April 2014 (UTC)