Talk:Gina R. Poe

Simultaneous edits (oops, it happens :)

So apparently User talk:ColdDeepLake and I were both editing this article at the same time. I don't think there were any editing collisions, but you might want to check. I will hold off on editing this article for a while, but perhaps if we are both going to be doing a lot of edits we should coordinate through the article's talk page.

My feeling is that our combined efforts will be sufficient to justify the removal of the copy edit template. There are still some problems with the references, however. Johnnie Bob (talk) 21:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Problems with references

1. While editing, it was noted that the reference titled "Brainwave Basics For Peak Achievement Training" no longer exists, so an alternate will need to be found.

2. Also the reference titled simply "umich.edu" does not appear to be authoritative where cited, since it is just an employee performance evaluation. It also conflicts with the encyclopedic nature of the article (Wikipedia is not for resumes) :) Johnnie Bob (talk) 22:22, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Removal of copy edit template

It is my belief, given substantial improvements made recently by many contributors, that the copy edit tag may now be removed from this article. Please provide comments, opinions and other thoughts below. If there seems to be an agreement (or lack of objections), I will make the change (or somebody else may do so). Thank you :) Johnnie Bob (talk) 13:21, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi. To me, this still reads like a resume. I have an issue with citation 33 which is drawn directly from the subject's webpage. I strongly recommend keeping the template in place for now. ColdDeepLake (talk) 18:01, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, and you are of course free to perform any edits to correct non-encyclopedic content and improve the article as you see fit. And yes, there are definitely problems with some of the citations as mentioned in Talk:Gina R. Poe#Problems with references. As for citation 33 specifically, my opinion is that it can be removed completely since it only refers to a listing of publications and the publications themselves are self-referencing. --Johnnie Bob (talk) 19:45, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I feel like an overarching problem here, which leads to the article sounding resume-ish or promotional, is that there seems to be excessive detail in sections 2 and 2.1. Is my assessment accurate? Looking at similar articles on scientists (including women scientists), I don't see any which go into this amount of detail. However, I don't want to remove a significant proportion of this detail without consensus. Can anyone comment? Thanks, Ovinus (talk) 23:28, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Ovinus, my only comments are (1) please keep the link to M. Barry Sterman, even though it points to a nonexistent page. Wikipedia:Red links explains why we do this. (2) I think that much of what you removed in section 2 should stay in the article. But I didn't want to undo your changes just yet, because I think we need some kind of overall plan as to what needs to happen with this article to make it more encyclopedic in nature. Let's all think about this and somebody can start a new thread in here for that discussion on that. Also, be advised that (again IMO), the citations need to be looked at very critically, each and all of them, since some of them are now nonexistent, many are autobiographic or self-serving in nature, and others are business records from the subject's employers. The results of that evaluation should probably be written up here in yet another thread for discussion.

Any other thoughts out there? By anybody? --Johnnie Bob (talk) 23:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I am removing the copy edit template from this article. Thank you to all who contributed to the edits. There is still much more to do with the article as a whole, but at least it doesn't read like a resume anymore :) --Johnnie Bob (talk) 12:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions for edits

Obviously the article needs to be copy edited for promotional language (since it was templated as such). Therefore I suggest that the major impetus to editing should be towards that objective. Following I have taken the liberty of providing my own personal thoughts and suggestions. If anybody else wants to add or subtract from this you are encouraged to comment below. While these may seem "obvious" they should nevertheless help to keep all of us working on this focused on the same goals.

• Any material in the head section that does not directly speak to subject's scientific accomplishments in neuroscience (for example, subject's current position of employment, etc.) should be moved to one of the subsections below that section.

• Please do not remove any material that does not directly speak to subject's scientific accomplishments, but rather move it to lower and lower subsections based on it's importance. For example (in my opinion), subject's work in various advocacy programs is less important than her contributions to neuroscience but more important than any of her teaching work, previous employment not connected to her primary scientific emphasis, or undergraduate work. Yet it should all be included somewhere in the article, as long as it can be adequately supported with appropriate citations.

I may very well be adding my own thoughts to this as time goes on (just as anyone reading this talk page is also encouraged to do), but I wanted to get my thoughts down in writing while they are still fresh on my mind.

Comments? --Johnnie Bob (talk) 21:59, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Hey Johnnie! First of all, thanks for the info about red links above—I'll keep it mind. I agree with your first point for sure. As to your second idea of keeping all the material, I think this makes some sense. My issue with the large amounts of detail, upon reflection, was more with the way the detail was presented rather than the detail itself. I agree that if the detail is not totally trivial and has a corresponding reliable source, it should be kept. To the end of the detail's presentation, I think that certain words and phrases should be mostly avoided. The word "explore" is used a lot, for example, while I think "research" or "experiment" should be preferred, depending on the context; it's less ambiguous too. Also, certain claims like in the last paragraph of section 2.1: "Poe and her colleagues were the first to measure ..." aren't even found in the corresponding source. Yes, the source shows they did this measurement, but it doesn't state that this was the first such measurement.

In general, I'm trying to understand why this reads like a promotional piece by comparing it to similar articles. I think it is less promotional than it once was, but it still feels promotional. Phrases that feel particularly promotional to me include:

"In addition to her academic work, ..." (I think this is kind of redundant anyway)

The words/phrases to be avoided I described above

"Continues to explore"

"This research was used to select the best pilots to become ... "

As to this last one, I'm not sure, because it sheds light on her research's importance. Maybe replacing "best" with another word would suffice here.

Anyway, I'll try to edit the article in line with what I'm describing here. I'm still a bit of a noob, so any comments are appreciated. Thanks, Ovinus (talk) 01:36, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

On further examination, the B2 bomber sentence comes from a very poor source (see https://web.archive.org/web/20190817185207/http://peakachievement.com/professional/BrainwaveBasicsforPeakAchievementTraining.htm) and I can't find a good source for it. See https://www.google.com/search?q=Dr.+Barry+Sterman+B2+bomber. Ovinus (talk) 01:46, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, all of the references really need to be looked at critically. Some of them are really bad (or not really relevant)(or not authoritative), etc ...

So then you will look at all the material you removed previously and find a good home for it in the article? Thanks so much ... John --Johnnie Bob (talk) 02:03, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Hopefully, yeah. A lot of the material doesn't seem to have any good source, though. For example, I can't even find a good source that she worked with Dr. M. Barry Sterman, see https://www.google.com/search?q=%22poe%22+%22barry+sterman%22. So I'm not sure what to do about this... leaning towards removal. Ovinus (talk) 02:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I've worked on this for longer than I thought it would take, but to me the article no longer feels promotional. I have vetted the sources; I think they are all sufficiently reliable. The one source I feel uneasy about is "Poe Lab" (https://poe-sleeplab.weebly.com/), but the text on that page seems relatively factual (in contrast to some of its child pages). Things that need to be done are fixing up an exceedingly technical sentence in section 2.1 that I marked, and cleanup of sections 3 and 4. Also, the lead seems a bit strange; the second sentence needs a source or needs to be put into the rest of the article. Sincerely, Ovinus (talk) 03:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Oops, umich.com is another questionable source. Thankfully the information attributed to that source should be easily found elsewhere... I hope! :P Ovinus (talk) 03:54, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes Ovinus (talk) I agree. By the way there are two duplicates of this citation in the article, the other one is titled "Promotion Recommendation ..." Perhaps they should be consolidated. Thanks for all your work on this :) --Johnnie Bob (talk) 12:31, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

I have removed the source from the article; in fact it was used to cite some incorrect information. I also tried to better format the last two sections. This was fun! Ovinus (talk) 14:06, 27 August 2020 (UTC)