User:Kent G. Budge

This Wikipedian is deceased. His user page is preserved here in his memory.

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Kent G. Budge is away on vacation and may not respond swiftly to queries.

Well, not exactly a vacation. I was seriously injured in a car crash on 20 August; I'm told the first responders did not think I would survive. I'm now home recuperating, but my editing will be light to nonexistent for the next month or two. Mind the store while I'm out.

About me

Yes, my name is really Kent G. Budge. Back in the day, I used to have lots of fun with my initials. Nowadays, not as many people get the joke. Thank goodness.

I have edited Wikipedia in the past under a pseudonym, but eventually retired that username, took a long Wiki-vacation, and began posting under my actual name when I was ready to edit here again. So far as I know, that violates no Wikipedia policies, since the previous account remains firmly retired and since I was editing a nearly completely disjoint set of articles back then from what I edit now. (My interests shift from time to time.)

I have a theory, for which there is some supporting evidence, that I behave myself better when I'm not hiding behind a pseudonym. I have a second theory, for which I don't really have much evidence either way, that others behave better towards me when I'm not hiding behind a pseudonym. I recognize there is a chance that someone, somewhere, will take advantage of that openness to try to make life miserable for me, for whatever twisted reasons, but I judge that chance to be low and worth the risk to be "me" here.

My Ph.D. is in astronomy. I don't actually edit astronomy articles much. I got frightfully burned out on astronomy by the time I finished my doctorate, something that is not unprecedented, and I've been doing computational physics for most of the decades since. I don't much edit articles relevant to computational physics, either, for various reasons. I mostly edit articles on geology, which has become something of an amateur passion for me the last few years. (Long story.) It's a sister field to astronomy, but I can't claim to be an expert.

As a non-expert, I try to live by a few rules:

I try not to argue with actual experts in their field of expertise. I try to accurately capture their expertise instead in my edits. If I get something wrong, and you as an expert spot it, I very much welcome polite corrections on my talk page. I especially welcome being pointed at good sources I've not come across before. I love learning about this stuff.
I am keenly aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and try to remind myself from time to time that I sometimes don't even know what I don't know. Previous comment, rinse, repeat.
Nevertheless, I have reason to think I have decent reading comprehension, some skill at writing and copy editing, and some knack for absorbing new information. This is reflected in my edits of general Wikipedia articles, which I strive to make more comprehensible, complete, and properly sourced.
The biggest pitfall for any editor who is not on the cutting edge of a field is determining due weight for a finding or hypothesis. I can determine that something is supported by multiple reliable independent sources. This doesn't necessarily translate into that something being an expert consensus or even a majority view. There isn't an easy solution for that.
In the narrow area of New Mexico geology, so far as I can tell, no experts are editing Wikipedia. They're off discovering cool new stuff instead. That's great. My contribution is to try to capture their findings in good Wikipedia articles.
Everyone makes mistakes. I once reverted a citation edit because I misread author1-link= as author1= and understandably really irritated the other editor. Make allowances. I'll try to for you.

Potential COI disclosure and disclaimer

I am employed by Triad National Security, LLC. However, I am not paid to edit Wikipedia, and none of my edits reflect the views of Triad, the U.S. Department of Energy, or the U.S. Government. I typically refrain from editing articles related to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Triad, or the U.S. Department of Energy, other than routine vandalism patrol and uncontroversial edits such as changes of leadership.

What is Wikipedia?

I suppose every editor has a slightly different answer to this question.

It is an encyclopedia, from which a reader unfamiliar with a topic can get a decent introduction.
It is a collection of information nodes (via Wikilinks) that allow a really curious reader to traverse a whole set of related articles in a subject area he finds fascinating.
It is the human-curated index to the wealth of human knowledge available on the Internet, complementing non-curated robotic search engines like Google or DuckDuckGo.

I think most other editors are comfortable with the first two roles. The third may be controversial, since it facially contradicts the idea that Wikipedia is not a link farm. I don't believe thoroughly citing articles to what is available in reliable sources on the web necessarily contradicts that, but the line is fuzzy.

I believe articles should be written accordingly. The first sentence of a lead section should immediately tell the reader whether the search term he entered led him to the right article. The first paragraph of a lead section should provide (at a minimum) a dictionary definition of the topic of the article. The lead section as a whole should make a reasonable assumption about what kind of reader would enter that search term, and provide a quick introduction to the topic. The remainder of the article fleshes out what is in the lead. It provides wikilinks and references for further in-depth self-education.

Writing good leads is a special skill that not all Wikipedians have. I'm struggling to master it myself. I believe it is vital to the long-term success of the project.

Not all articles should be written at the same level. An article like Volcano is going to be visited by a huge audience ranging from school children who barely know what a volcano is to experts curious what Wikipedia has gotten wrong this week. We cannot fully accommodate those extremes. There is a simple English Wikipedia suitable for younger students. But an intelligent high school student who is genuinely curious about volcanoes should find the lead comprehensible, interesting, and informative.

On the other hand, an article like Alkaline magma series is only going to bring in readers who already know something about geology. It's just not a search term many people will stumble across. The article lead should still be comprehensible, interesting, and informative to, say, an undergraduate geology student, or a dedicated amateur rockhound (cough cough). It cannot reasonably be expected to bear the weight of background explanation required to make it comprehensible, ineresting, and informative to a middle school student who stumbles across it while working on a class report.

Articles must be amply and reliably sourced. Otherwise, Wikipedia fails to be the human-curated index of the Internet it should be. It is practically a truism at the laboratory where I work that Wikipedia is only good for basic introductions to non-controversial topics ... and as a list of citations pointing the reader at the greater wealth of information that can be found on the Internet. I accordingly believe that editors should be looking for excuses to add citations (to reliable sources, of course) to Wikipedia articles. And, given the choice between a paper that is behind a paywall and one that is not, the editor should choose the latter; and given the choice between a book not available on the Internet and a paper that is (whether or not it's behind a paywall), the editor should choose the paper. (Of course, one can always embrace the power of "and" ...)

Non-controversial topics: There are some topics so radioactive I will not touch them. For example, hydraulic fracturing is well-written, interesting, heavily sourced, and dreadfully unbalanced. So far as I am concerned, it is a lost cause. I don't edit such articles, because I need to keep my blood pressure low, and there are so many interesting subjects that are not particularly controversial that I can make contributions to.

A response to a College Teaching study critical of Wikipedia STEM articles

My writings elsewhere

The Pacific War Encyclopedia

This is referenced in a number of articles in Wikipedia. It shouldn't be. While I am proud of my work, it is nonetheless a self-published tertiary work, and is not a reliable source under Wikipedia's policies. Read and cite the sources I used instead. They're at the foot of every one of my articles.

Wanderlusting the Jemez

Not referenced anywhere I know of in Wikipedia. Keep it that way. While I hope you find my blog interesting, and visit it regularly, it's another self-published work.

The Science of the Planted Aquarium

Ditto.