User talk:Roughfish

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Roughfish, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Epipelagic (talk) 03:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Rough fish

Thank you for your contribution to Rough fish. However, this article already has limited encyclopaedic value, because it contains too many uncited statements. You have added further uncited statements. Can you please find reliable sources that support your additions. Thanks. --Epipelagic (talk) 03:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree. I added several "citation needed" tags to the article because the information was apocryphal. In my opinion much of this article should be removed as it is uncited, biased, and flatly untrue (unsupported by scientific research). I added one reference, but was unable to track down the actual author and other information about the book. I plan on adding this as soon as I can get access to a physical copy of the book, which is not referenced anywhere online (History of Commercial Fishing in the Upper Mississippi River, from which I derived the origins of the term).

I did not delete anything from the original, but I am of the opinion that much of this article is either irrelevant or untrue. I added citation tags for this reason, although I do not expect any citations to be forthcoming as the information I tagged is easily debunked by a casual perusal of peer-reviewed journals on the subject.

However, I think the article is valuable and should continue to exist. I think the "Damming Reservoirs" section is irrelevant and should be removed. I think the "state agencies have passed regulation X" should be removed unless a specific reference to a state statute is available as this has been repeatedly proven to be a myth. I have many more qualms about the information. I can cite many sources debunking the information in this entry in the scientific literature. In my opinion, the entry should be stripped back to a much smaller entry with no uncited references.

Well if you have got a handle on this and are willing to do the work, that would be most excellent. Let me know if I can give you a hand. Regards. --Epipelagic (talk) 04:43, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Found an online version of your reference :) --Epipelagic (talk) 21:48, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Excellent! That is fantastic. Thank you very much. I'll pick away at this, removing uncited sections and adding cited material as I find it. I need to dig into the Wikipedia protocols a bit more, as I am new to being a contributor.

My section removals were reversed; I opened a topic on the talk page justifying the removal of the sections in question.

Good work. I've reinstated your deletions, per your talk page justification. Be bold and don't hesitate to carry through any further changes you think are appropriate. --Epipelagic (talk) 03:44, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Epipelagic! I've finished my edits and will watch the page; it could expounded upon but I think that while it's not perfect it is at least cited and includes enough references to allow readers to view and explore the sources.

And thank you! You've done an excellent job :) --Epipelagic (talk) 05:18, 12 May 2010 (UTC)