User talk:VampaVampa

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Hello, VampaVampa, 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:

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Category:Travelers in Asia Minor has been nominated for merging

Category:Travelers in Asia Minor has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 04:21, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Original research and POV editing in Cat predation on wildlife

In addition to this edit's [1] undue emphasis on old studies from the 1970s and 1980s, I also noticed this: (Songbird Survival) noted on its website in 2006 that "cats are frequently singled out as the primary reason for the disappearance of Britain's songbirds" and described the claim as unjustified. It decried the absence of numbers for cat predation on birds from the 1997 survey by the Mammal Society, and drew a comparison between the figure of 55 million birds killed annually by UK's suggested 9–10 million cats, derived from an estimate by Cats Protection, and the 100 million birds preyed on by the 100,000-strong UK population of sparrowhawks each year.... Did you really go back 20 years into their website's Internet Archive history to find this yourself? It looks like an attempt to discredit an organization's current views by posting apparently different views from decades ago, and that a lot of effort on your part apparently went into researching that. Geogene (talk) 16:07, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

You must be literally joking. VampaVampa (talk) 17:01, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not. Geogene (talk) 17:04, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

What is your ground for questioning the accuracy of the information I added other than accusing me of acting in bad faith? I had known nothing about Songbird Survival before yesterday and looked into the Internet Archive for further background on the organisation's claims. You are free to correct my wording or my way of reporting the facts, but the onus is on you to demonstrate concretely that the information added is inaccurate or the reporting biased. Likewise, time of publication is not a criterion for judging scientific contributions. Did the relativity theory change Newton's account of gravitation because of its date or because of its critical input? VampaVampa (talk) 02:04, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I've already explained this to you twice now, in the edit summary and on the article's talk page. WP:OLDSOURCES. As for the onus being on me, no the onus is on you to get consensus for the content, see the page link conveniently named WP:ONUS. Geogene (talk) 04:03, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

But I don't mind commenting on this diff some more An observational study of five free-roaming farm cats carried out over 360 hours during the winter of 1978–79 in Cornwall.... A WP:PRIMARY study of five cats over two weeks? In addition to being old, this is too small a sample group to take seriously. The selection of prey species was reported as consistent with contemporary findings from New Zealand (1971–73), which concluded that birds were a minor food source for cats except in novel island habitats is wrong, see the landmark 2013 paper in Nature [2]. The considerably lower degree of effort put in by inefficient hunters suggested that provision of "farm food reduced the need to hunt" is also wrong, some modern studies have found that feeding cats increases their hunting [3]. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country. is wrong because literature review I just mentioned said, that the negative effects of cats on wildlife is global in scope. Geogene (talk) 04:40, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I will reply to you on the article's talk page since you have now substantiated your objections somewhat. I will just briefly summarise my position here: the guideline on the age of reliable sources says that older research "may be inaccurate" (emphasis mine). It may have been superseded but that cannot be taken for granted, the guidelines do not authorise any such assumption. If the older research has been invalidated, then it will be easy (and relevant) to demonstrate that matter-of-factly. There is in fact no need to delete older information because it will add to the value of the article to have an explanation of why it is (allegedly, for now) incorrect or superseded, and thereby increase our knowledge of the topic. VampaVampa (talk) 19:01, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

A suggestion

I understand you probably like cats. I had one too. But bringing the content dispute to ANI and personalizing the dispute was a bad idea. I would suggest you to stop it, possibly apologize, and wait until the ANI thread will be automatically archived. Happy editing. My very best wishes (talk) 00:27, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I reject your suggestion and your attempt to make the dispute about myself. Happy editing to you too. Or perhaps you want to let me in on why it "was a bad idea"? VampaVampa (talk) 00:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Here is the story. You wanted to include new content on the page [4]. But your insertion was reverted by other contributors for whatever reasons they had. Importantly, they clearly stated their reasons on the talk page. This is a typical content disagreement. Obviously, you did not have WP:Consensus for inclusion. After that you have several choices. One of them would be just move ahead, edit other pages, and forget about it (that is what I would recommend in this case). Or you could follow Wikipedia:Dispute resolution procedures. Going to ANI to blame others, as you did, will only waste the time of other contributors, cost you a lot of nerves and perhaps result in a block for WP:BATTLE. After quickly looking at these discussions, I would definitely assume good faith with regard to other contributors and you. My very best wishes (talk) 01:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Of course reporting such account on ANI, as another contributor did [5] was fine, but even that caused a prolonged discussion involving other people and fostering conflicts. My very best wishes (talk) 01:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. Are you aware of any similar previous ANI disputes that might make the bad aspects in your story more obvious to me? VampaVampa (talk) 01:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:BOOMERANGs are frequent on ANI and especially WP:AE. Speaking of which, you can check the thread on the top [6]. My very best wishes (talk) 01:41, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Given a clear consensus on article talk page against your edit, I think starting an RfC would be meaningless. "Impartial" - I have no idea what you mean. No one is impartial. My very best wishes (talk) 14:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I object to your repeated attempts to pressure me into dropping the dispute. Since you offer no arguments pertinent to the dispute, I cannot call them attempts to persuade. VampaVampa (talk) 18:01, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. Just remember, prior to posting any RfC, try to phrase clearly and concisely what exactly do you suggest. While reading these discussions, I was thinking "tl;dr, tl;dr, what a hell", and I am still not sure what exactly you disagree about with others. That's why I did not offer any "pertinent arguments". My very best wishes (talk) 21:14, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

June 2024

Hello, I'm Doug Weller. I noticed that you made a comment on the page WP:ANI that didn't seem very civil, so it may have been removed. Wikipedia is built on collaboration, so it's one of our core principles to interact with one another in a polite and respectful manner. If you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Doug Weller talk 09:27, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

As you asked on my talk page what comment this was about, it is your comment that included " I did not ask for advice on whether you think I should accept emotional blackmail and character assassination from other editors." Doug Weller talk 15:15, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough, thank you. VampaVampa (talk) 15:58, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Contentious topic alert - BLP

You have recently made edits related to articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles. This is a standard message to inform you that articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles is a designated contentious topic. This message does not imply that there are any issues with your editing. For more information about the contentious topics system, please see Wikipedia:Contentious topics. Springee (talk) 21:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Cat predation

Hi, I've been trying to help with this cat predation article and at this point am having trouble keeping up with the sheer speed at which text is being written. I was reading the talk page yesterday and it seemed to me like your position is fairly close to mine, and EducatedRedneck seems to agree with most of my thoughts. But then later you complain about them disagreeing with you all the time. Would you mind giving me a very short summary of your position regarding which facts are correct and how the article should be changed, so that I can better understand what's going on? Iamnotabunny (talk) 14:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi, it does seem that our positions are fairly close and I appreciate your input and your testimony in the ANI thread. I think you will be much better off reading published work than asking me about the current state of my knowledge, which is ultimately based on making sense of those publications. I have not said EducatedRedneck disagrees with me "all the time", but that they seem to have a different attitude to the subject, which would be at the level of values, not facts or method. It is difficult to be more precise about that without an explicit discussion about values, which would have little relevance to editing the article, because what editors need to find a consensus on is ultimately the state of scholarship. That said, the ethical positions of various scientists involved in the debate would be worth covering in the article. But for that we would first need an acknowledgment that there is a debate, which I think is sufficiently demonstrated by some very recent articles on the subject (Lynn et al. 2021, Turner 2021 and 2022, Badenes 2023).

By facts I would understand any concrete findings that have gained universal acceptance among scientists, including local or universal phenomena, causal mechanisms, and statistical estimates. There is no doubt that feral cats are domestic in origin, that cats were introduced by humans into various novel environments at different points in time, that they are generalist and opportunistic predators that can survive independently of humans, that they have caused a number of extinctions of species, that the number of owned domestic cats is growing in some countries and likely globally, that ground-nesting birds are particularly vulnerable to cat predation, that there are very many cats out there which kill very many animals in absolute terms, and that human-occasioned habitat destruction and climate change is exposing wildlife to cat predation in previously unseen ways. Many other claims, however, remain unproven or contested, or only have been been proven in very specific situations and depend on other factors. That is not necessarily just a matter of isolating variables through adequate study design. It is very probable that except for unique habitats with fauna that evolved without similar predators (islands, Australia, NZ) cat predation on a scale detrimental to wildlife directly depends on human-caused environmental damage and is secondary to it, therefore can only be successfully addressed by targeting the underlying primary cause. Possibly the most important unproven claim is that cat predation, independently of other anthropogenic factors, poses a "primary" threat to wildlife survival globally and that outdoor cat presence is unsustainable as such, which seems to depend e.g. on projections of continued cat population growth and continued wildlife habitat loss, but seems not to be demonstrable without those unstated assumptions about the future. There are hardly any studies that attempt to test population-level impact on wildlife, let alone do that. And that is where scaremongering rhetoric and risk management steps in under the banner of science, sometimes in a vitriolic cat-baiting manner that has to give grounds for concern.

The article could be improved in many ways, e.g. by adding precise references to findings and arguments present in scholarship, estimates of cat populations and predation size in various countries, more national examples, and a historical background of human attitudes to cat predation (incl. advocacy and lobbying) and research on the topic. It could also benefit from sections on methodology, on the ecological context for the impact of cat predation, or on factors modifying cat predation (behavioural, seasonal, nutritional, habitat- or life cycle-related), as well as from a list of endangered species currently preyed on by cats. VampaVampa (talk) 09:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

This all sounds like a good idea, provided, as goes without saying, that we can find good sources that straightforwardly say these things. I wasn't aware of the Turner and Badenes papers, guess I have some reading to do now. By the way, if you're interested, I started a topic on the talk page trying to figure out how we can separate out, roughly, "areas and conditions where cats have huge impact" from "areas/conditions where that is less likely" (regardless of whether this ends up being mainland vs island, ecologically naive vs otherwise, evolutionarily distinct vs otherwise, ground-nesting birds, etc). If you happen to know of other sources that weigh in on this, it'd be very much appreciated. Iamnotabunny (talk) 12:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

There are a ton of published academic sources (I've found full texts of 750+ of varying relevance, mostly from the last 20 years) and it will take time to go through them. All my proposals above for adding content to the article come from having seen relevant information, even if the coverage will necessarily remain uneven across countries. Some papers are useful in contesting certain claims that extreme conservationists make, such as that feral cats live poor-quality lives and putting them down would be to reduce their suffering - a recent Danish paper based on necropsies shows that ferals live fairly healthy lives in that country. I could do a list here or on the article talk page, let's see how it goes. It will need to be well-organised and structured by topic/country. There was also the idea of having a table, although Wikipedia tables are a pain to edit e.g. if you later find you want to add a column. VampaVampa (talk) 12:44, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it'd be helpful to post sources in the article talk page, perhaps in subsections by main topic. No need to make it too fancy. Having some idea of how many different sources say what and how reliable each one is will help us stay within WP:DUE. Iamnotabunny (talk) 18:42, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds like a good idea. I will aim to do an initial post in the next few days, although it looks I will have to replace hardware this week, which may slow things down, so please bear with me. VampaVampa (talk) 09:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

No worries! Wikipedia will still be here in a couple weeks. I'll need the time to read through the literature, anyway. You seem to be ahead of me on that. Iamnotabunny (talk) 13:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

P.S. I think the ANI thing would go better for you if you withdraw the charge of stonewalling (not applicable because discussion that feels unfair is still discussion) and make a short comment demonstrating a commitment to avoiding false accusations in the future. It is common to use * '''Comment''' for this.

Ways forward with Orlando Figes

Hi V, it's been nice agreeing so comprehensively with someone at Orlando Figes! I'm losing patience with the whole thing a little bit. I don't want to get into a whole dispute with MVBW, who I think is well-intentioned but also very over-zealous and dug into their position. I've tried to get some outside attention on the issue from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. I think it might be worth going to some relevant wiki-projects to get more eyes on the discussion, however I'm going to be much less online for a week or so. If you have the time and inclination to do so, I think that could help move us towards a productive resolution. If not, and things haven't improved by then, I will hopefully do it when I get back. Samuelshraga (talk) 14:28, 20 June 2024 (UTC)