Talk:Santa Susana Field Laboratory

Community Involvement

This section says it's for community involvement, not specifically government groups. SSFL Workgroup is technically no longer a government group either, but to remove it and Parents Against SSFL wouldn't give an equal opportunity to the groups in the community who want the AOC cleanup. PPG no longer exists.

The SSFL Workgroup is a community group which is currently supported by the Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, nuclear watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap and Parents Against SSFL. https://www.ssflworkgroup.org/the-work-group/

REMOVED: PPG – Public Participation Group

The CA-DTSC: SSFL Project, the lead regulatory agency for the site cleanup, is forming a new [Sept. 2010] PPG – Public Participation Group, in response to their community 'Listening Sessions' held earlier in the year and the proposed Listening Session Response Plan. Applications from all the 'stakeholder' I.P.s – interested parties: the public, community groups, neighbors, local environmental and cultural groups, and others are being accepted currently [Sept. 2010]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Melbumstead (talk • contribs) 17:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

All my July 10 edits reverted

Hi SSFL wiki page community! Can I please get some input from other editors on an issue I'm having?

Yesterday I made a number of edits to the page. I am new to Wikipedia editing, so I spent some time first reading the various guidelines for editing to make sure I'm doing it right. I believe my edits were in the spirit of Wikipedia editing, and that they were substantive, beneficial contributions to the page: adding context, correcting inaccuracies, fixing dead links, etc.

To my dismay, I discovered that every single one of my edits was then reverted. There seems to have been some confusion: I edited a section at the beginning, @Adflatuss moved that section to its own section later in the article, then I gather that @FlightTime got the impression (because significant content was missing, moved to further down the page) that I had simply deleted that content without offering any reason. If you look at the edit history, you can see that in fact I did not remove that content but merely made some modifications to it. @FlightTime then proceeded to revert not just this edit but all of the edits I made on this page yesterday. I tried discussing it on @FlightTime's talk page but received only a short, condescending response that seemed to misunderstand the edits I made. I have received no response from @FlightTime since.

I put substantial work into my edits yesterday, and it was upsetting to see them all reverted! I understand that Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and I am happy to discuss the merits of my edits and modify them as needed! To me this seems like misconduct on the part of @FlightTime, but I don't simply want to restore my edits and kick off an edit war. As I said, I am new to Wikipedia editing, so I'm not really sure how to proceed in this situation.

Any advice or help from other editors would be greatly appreciated! I'm hoping to see all the edits I made yesterday restored, and any potential problems discussed and modified on an edit-by-edit basis.

Thank you Freakychakra987 (talk) 16:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The lead is a summary of the article. One tip is to avoid the common practice of adding new content and citations to the lead. Improving the lead of an article like this with passionate editors is challenging. Patience is needed as blanket reversions of novice editors by experienced editors happens when only undoing a few of the edits was necessary. There will not be a blanket restoration which can be frustrating for such carefully crafted initial edits. This talk page is the proper forum rather than having individual conversations. It can take awhile to get the hang of editing on Wikipedia and it is not uncommon for new editors to get discouraged. I hope you stay. Happy editing. 〜 Adflatuss • talk 17:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful response! In this case, the lead is misleading, so I was trying to correct it with a minimum of editing. The lead implies that the community's health concerns are merely beliefs with no empirical support, and that "experts" have rebutted this – yet the source quotes only one expert, the text in the lead subtly but significantly misrepresents what that expert says, and the lead fails to mention other significant empirical studies that create a fuller picture of the cancer risk linked to the site. To me these seem like important changes – is Wikipedia culture simply to not try to make improvements because it will rock the boat?

As for the blanket reversion... is there no other recourse? Am I wrong in thinking this was misconduct on the part of the editor? Is that editor simply allowed to go on acting like that with impunity?

Finally then – what is your advice for how I should move forward? Shall I try to... make my edits again? What if they are blanket reverted again?

Thank you very much for taking the time to address this situation, welcoming a frustrated new editor to Wikipedia and helping me handle what seems to me like blatantly anti-Wiki conduct. Freakychakra987 (talk) 03:32, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

You can thoughtfully and conservatively edit if you keep in mind the comments here on the talk page. You have picked a challenging article to begin editing on Wikipedia. Don't take it personally yourself or about other editors. Most editors are working on multiple articles and sometimes don't return and engage. Cheers, 〜 Adflatuss • talk 19:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

A couple of policies to read are WP:NOR and WP:PRIMARY. These pertain here because some of your changes were ones in which you interpreted the PRIMARY source (study), (or picked statements to include) rather than relying on what the SECONDARY source (newspaper article summarizing the study) said. ---Avatar317^(talk) 21:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this helpful response. I'm a little confused as to how I can do this better in the future. I read the policies you pointed me to, and it seems to me I did what the policy recommends. For instance, quoting from the policy: "summarize what they say in your own words, with each statement in the article being verifiable in a source that makes that statement explicitly." Most of my edits did just that, not offering interpretation but summarizing the source referring to statements explicitly made in the source. Additionally, some of my edits were changes to existing summaries of primary sources, where the summaries were misleading (i.e. failing to include some of the biggest findings of a study, for instance). I understand that there can be disagreement over what an "accurate" summary of a source is, but in this case I took care not to add any spin or interpretation, but simply summarize the key points of the source. What am I supposed to do when an editor disagrees with my summary and, instead of discussing it with me, simply reverts my edit? Freakychakra987 (talk) 03:22, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Here are my more extensive thoughts:

Thank you for not edit warring and instead discussing your changes. You will find that this will serve you better longterm than if you had started edit-warring.

Be aware that on articles covering contentious topics (like this one), experienced editors are often wary of a large string of edits by a brand new editor which appear to change the point-of-view of an article, and this may generate large rollbacks like what happened here to your edits. An article's POV may need to be changed based on what sources say, but a brand new editor pushing lots of changes quickly which change POV generates red flags. (I edit in the anti-vax space, and new editors often show up wanting to "correct" Wikipedia's coverage of some of these people or their ideas because they don't like them being called "conspiracists" or "misinformation" pushers, even when sources characterize the individual as such.)

I also watch the Sodium Reactor Experiment article, and I thought that all your edits there were good, thank you for those edits.

I recommend you re-do your edits to this article but maybe one per week, (this is my interpretation of Adflatuss "conservatively edit" suggestion) thereby giving others time to vet each one, and reducing the appearance that you are here just to "fix" an article that doesn't conform to your POV.

Thanks for your contributions and patience. ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:26, 14 July 2024 (UTC)