Thursday, August 18, 2005
At the end of the day yesterday I read /. piece on how the Spitzer Space Telescope infrared observational satellite was apparently confirming the long-held belief that we reside in a barred spiral galaxy type.
The /. piece also referenced a Wikipedia entry on barred spiral galaxies. I clicked on it hoping to find a comprehensive entry on the topic, but was dismayed to find only a stub article barely worth linking to.
So I decided to do something about it. In a few minutes I was able to cobble together a few sentences on what I knew, backed up with appropriate references. Printed out some refence material I could find on the subject to read on the way home. I already knew what a barred spiral galaxy was -- as an astronomy and space buff since I was a kid how could I not -- but I didn't kid myself on knwoing the why's and wherefore's of barred spiral development. So it was also a good excuse to dig a bit deeper into a subject I already knew something about.
Posted the final result after sending the kids to bed. It took a couple of attempts to get my edits in, as there was plenty of traffic to the site, and everyone is an editor, apparently.
It felt good to add something more substantive to the existing entry and am hoping that those who are more in the know about the subject than myself will vet the information. One of the dismaying things I found was that I was seemingly the only one who felt it necessary to add something substantive -- from what I could see, all of the other edits were just that: edits, adding cross-links to other Wiki topics and straightening out references. Nothing new added, just edits. Oh well, you have to make a start somewhere. Also felt good to remove the article's stub status, though it could clearly do with more work.
While I was at it, spent some additional time beefing up the Irregular galaxy entry a little bit on Wikipedia as well.
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