Talk:Snail Shell Cave

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My Revisions On June 19, 2008.

I spent several hours yesterday adding many useful additions to this topic, and someone has removed those additions, saying that they violate a Copyright infrigement.

Also, material that was clearly in my own words was deleted too. I have been exploring this cave since 1963 and am very knowledgeable about it. The material that was quoted was clearly in parentheses.

The source of that material is NOT copyright, and is available to the general public. The material quoted was from Bulletin 64 (Caves of Tennessee) of the Tennessee Division of Geology. It is in the Public Domain. Trust me, I know. I used to work for them. Give them a call if you don't trust me. Their phone number is (615) 532-1500. The State Geologist is Ron Zurawski, a personal friend of mine. We went to college together.

Rather than delete someone else's HARD WORK, why not email them next time and find out if the material is Copyright, or not?

There was a lot of useful information there and it needs to be restored, but I see no point in doing all that work again, if someone is just going to arbitrarily delete it, without finding out if the material is Copyright, or not.

Larry E. Matthews (talk) 13:38, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The material you added is all still there. I merely added a code to "hide" those additions. Even if I had deleted it, it would still be in the article history.

See my edit summary and the note on your talk page for explanations of my reasons. State documents are generally not in the public domain. Copyright or no copyright, an 8-paragraph verbatim quotation is excessive. Can't you pull out the salient information and put it into your own words? --Orlady (talk) 15:14, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that 1) if the material is public domain it may be included here; 2) that there needs to be some verifiable indication that the material is in fact in the public domain (personal assurances of individual state employees not sufficing); and that 3) it might be a good idea to paraphrase or otherwise edit the entry, not for reasons of copyright but to ensure that the material is well-integrated into the article. JohnInDC (talk) 15:42, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes, I could rephrase all that in my own words, but since this exploration occured in the 1950s, I thought the original account was much more historically intersting. Therefore, I used the historical report on the cave and then added information about more recent discoveries.

It is sad that the entry on this significant cave is so short. Snail Shell Cave is listed as on of the Top Ten Most Endangered Karst Communities by the Karst Waters Institute. The cave has important endangered species living there and is unique hydrologically in Middle Tennesse. Exciting exploration by cave divers is currently underway.

Larry E. Matthews (talk) 17:20, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

To you, a person knowledgable about this cave, that material may seem historically interesting. However, to a reader unfamiliar with the cave, I fear that it comes across as long-winded, repetitive of the other text, and confusing. (For an example of "confusing", while the intro says that the cave has 9 miles of surveyed passages and is part of a system with 13 miles of passages, the quotation says 'Together with Echo Cave and Nanna Cave, it forms a vast underground complex of which 8 miles of passages have been explored.' My guess is that Echo and Nanna Cave -- which may or may not still have those names -- are part of the system that now has 13 miles of known passages, but it is a struggle to interpret this material.) As JohnInDC points out, this content needs to be integrated into the article.

As discussed in Wikipedia:Writing better articles and other WP guidelines, articles here are supposed to be concise and structured in a manner to communicate information effectively to the reader. (This is not a writing style that comes naturally to most of us, and it is contrary to earlier generations' notions of eloquence. I believe that in the Victorian era a monograph on a cave would have included entire quotations like that one, and no one would have complained about their inclusion, while readers would have disliked a Wikipedia-style article.) As a Wikipedia user, I would like this article to provide crisp factual information describing what is currently known about the cave, including its three entrances (as it happens, this source says there are four), its discharge locations and other aspects of its hydrology, its relationships to other caves, its notable dripstone features, and the biota that cause it to be called "one of the most biologically significant." The history of its discovery, exploration (including Barr's explorations and observations), dye trace studies, and other investigations also should be documented.

Looking through other Wikipedia articles about caves, I don't find much in the way of good examples to emulate. Many cave articles are short stubs. Lechuguilla Cave is a particularly thorough article, but much of the article is unsourced description. Many of the other cave articles focus primarily on history or commercial aspects, omitting information about the cave itself. --Orlady (talk) 19:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I have misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia. I thought, perhaps, that this was a place where a knowledgable person could share their knowledge on a particular topic. Since I have personally explored this cave since 1963 and since I am a Professional Geologist, I thought that some of my observations on the cave might be of interest to other persons. Clearly, I don't need to document my own observations on the cave. Perhaps what I wrote was boring to you, but I suspect that someone truly intersted in Snail Shell Cave would have found it fascinating. Even if you felt compelled to delete material that you (incorrectly) assumed to be Copyright, it seems strange to also delete the other information I supplied on this cave.

I don't think anyone will bother to type in "Snail Shell Cave" and read this link unless they want information on the cave. And, that is what I provided.

I feel in no mood, at the present time, to re-word that information to suit your personal taste. Don't hold your breath waiting for someone else to write this article. It probably won't happen.

What I wrote was only a beginning. I had intended to add much more information about the cave over a period of weeks.

Larry E. Matthews (talk) 21:12, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Join the club -- many of us once had the same notion. However, on the internet no one can tell if you are a dog or if you actually know what you are talking about, so Wikipedia insists on verifiability by requiring that content be sourced to published sources. Knowledgable people are much better positioned to contributed good sourced content than the ignorant, though...

Additionally, Wikipedia operates in the real world and must deal with issues of copyright (therefore, it can't published copied material unless that material is in the public domain).

--Orlady (talk) 23:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)