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User:Shyamal/rambles

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Apart from a general interest in the natural history of India; the history of studies on the land, fauna and flora; and specifically a long term target to improve entries on Indian birds, I tend to meander off into other linked topics that come up. I may also edit content that I find based on what comes up in real life discussions or reading. When I am reading up on a topic in more traditional and so-called reliable sources such as books and journals, I usually check the state of the relevant Wikipedia articles and see if I can improve them. Natural science topics are somewhat easier to improve than those on politics and religion, but even here, identifying poor research is a key skill that is missing in some parts of the world. One cannot fix problems if one cannot recognize them.

Apart from birds, I am interested in a history of environmental consciousness in general, natural history of India and the history of science (and scientific ideas). Some of the articles that I have tried to improve (or have been interested in) are listed here.

Naturally Wikipedia is a massively collaborative environment and we need more qualified people out here. Some qualified people feel daunted by the system while a few feel it is infra dig to collaborate with commoners. I am happy to help anyone in the former category and have run editing workshops especially for those with a scholarly/academic background. Some training material National Museum Copyright basics Using Zotero

Outreach and training sessions I have helped with:

I am happy to help in any other such exercises, especially for universities, librarians, and researchers.

Article clusters

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These include organizations, zoologists, geologists, botanists, orientalists, Indologists and polymaths. I have a soft corner for lesser known characters but some are difficult to cover with Wikipedia's notability policies. The following are entries that I am interested in, or have contributed extensively to and although I try to make them as comprehensive as possible, they may not be in the best possible shape that an encyclopaedic article can be in.

Conflict of interest

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I have known, met, or corresponded with a few people whose biographies I have edited. I have been careful in writing about them and have tried to restrict my additions to only on that which has already been published - these are Salim Ali (heard once when I was in school), S. A. Hussain (knew), Zafar Futehally (knew), Himmatsinhji M. K. (corresponded), Amotz Zahavi (listened to talks), Nicholas Barry Davies (listened to talks and went on a field trip), Lavkumar Khachar (knew). I know Henry Noltie. I have done some first-hand research on Allan Octavian Hume and Brian Houghton Hodgson (thanks also to WMF for aiding and abetting this by paying for a trip to London) and that cannot be found here. Some notes may be found at my blog. My work in statistical computation has sometimes led to contributions, for instance on the biographies of Mahalanobis and C.B. Williams.

My ORCID Google Scholar

Others

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General statistics

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Tools

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Useful guides

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