User talk:Bosula

Hello, Bosula! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages.

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Happy editing! Peaceray (talk) 20:00, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi Bosula! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

• The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
• The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
• The Teahouse new editor help space
• Wikipedia Help pages

-- 13:54, Monday, November 6, 2023 (UTC)

Hi Tony. I've commented here rather than at Talk:Insecticide#Systemic Insecticides as some of what I want to say is not relevant to improving that article. First, you asked about whether using my real name has had any disadvantages. I've found none but I did originally edit as Mikedt10, which I retain as a WP:VALIDALT, but use sparingly. Anyone who bothered to look could easily find out that I retired from Syngenta JH but as I have essentially no Internet presence other than at Wikipedia I'm not bothered by any potential harassment and wise enough to ignore any that did occur. The advice for younger editors sensibly suggests they use a pseudonym but even given my widespread posts at the Teahouse, Help desk and reference desk I've only ever had the sort of low-level hassle that all long-term editors occasionally see.

I'm not sure whether you are aware that pesticides and GMO are among Wikipedia's contentious topics that tend to generate nore heat than light in many cases. For that reason, I rarely edit the articles that are at the forefront (e.g. insecticides, pesticides, herbicides etc) but prefer to do a more chemistry-focused job on individual compounds (see my userpage) and to create lists like list of fungicides which have little text that could be considered controversial. I'm aware that articles like insecticide and pesticide development are in need of modern citations and updates: if you want to improve them, please go ahead (carefully!). Make sure that anything you add is well cited, preferably to secondary sources, and note that you can happily delete anything not properly sourced. This guideline, while not always relevant to pesticides, is well worth a read. Your recent edit to insecticides has the problem that you removed material with, in effect a citation in your edit summary. I think that it would have been better to have improved the text in the article to say something like "Some contact insecticides, such as many pyrethroids, also have residual activity." with reference to doi:10.1002/14356007.a14_263.pub2, for example.

By all means ask me any further questions here in this thread as you gain experience: Wikipedia has a steep learning curve! I'll put this page on my watchlist. Best wishes. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:47, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello Mike, Thanks for the tip I'll keep my code-name in the meantime. Yes I understand and agree that editing a contentious topic needs to be done carefully. One big problem I see is correcting statements like the one about contact insecticides not having long lasting activity. Someone understands systemic insecticides to mean long lasting insecticides and writes that contact insecticides are degraded rapidly. You gave a good example to show the opposite, but is it an exception to the rule? Are systemic insecticides longer lasting? I always imagined the opposite to be true. A compound taken into the plant is subject to metabolism, but a compound on the surface is subject to the elements, and has to be tough to survive. Where would one find data comparing the half-lives of systemic vs contact insecticides, which would justify deleting a sweeping statement, or making such a statement in the first place? There was no data given in the first place to show that the statement was true. Someone can casually make such a generalisation, and then to correct it you have to be holier than the pope. But I see that in a contentious environment it is less likely to cause trouble if you modify a statement rather than deleting it, which irks me a little since it junks up wikipedia.

By the way thanks for the link to Kirk-offner. I may use it for the "discovery" part of Pesticide. All the best. Tony Bosula (talk) 13:39, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Just figured I'd stop in here rather than make a new section, but I'll also second Mike's advice above. Back when I commented in November about not using real names, I mostly said that because I'm one of the main science editors that has stuck around the GMO/pesticide and have dealt with some harassment due to that. It's not as bad as it used to be, but even in the past year I had to deal with an editor hounding me about what my personal identity may be despite what I say on my user page stating I don't have anything even close to Mike's old connection mentioned above much less being paid to promote pesticides, etc. as sometimes insinuated. Unfortunately the topic can attract some major battleground attitudes, which often takes time or energy away from editing topics like you highlighted.

So with that, it's great to see someone else interested in this topic and doing a lot of good work from what I can see so far. I just recently undid one of your edits I wanted to comment on though, and that's having to do with WP:MEDRS. Essentially, if we're going to add anything related to research and human health, it should be from secondary sources like reviews since there are issues with using primary sources. IRL an expert can absolutely use those, but there's more musings on that on my user page when it comes to use on Wikipedia.

Feel free to ping me if you ever want a second set of eyes, ref improvment, etc. on pesticide related content. I have a huge to-do of things I've noticed of the years that need work, so it's great to see someone else catching similar things. KoA (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello Koa, Thanks. I take your point. In fact that citation is even worse than you write because the paper deals with the correlation between organic food and cancer, and the authors got the compounding factors I listed from other publications. Anyway it is no problem to get reviews,, which I will do. I simply didn't have them when I got home from the library, and didn't want to wait.

Pesticide poisoning is a very serious matter, and is outside of my area of expertise. In the page;pesticide there is too much detail about exposure and determination of exposure. Much of this belongs in page:pesticide poisoning, leaving a much shorter overview in page:pesticide, but I cannot really do this.

I think it is good that I wrote that I worked for decades in the pesticide industry. People can drill into my background and not be able to pull out "dirty washing", On the one hand people can consider I have been "bought", but because of that experience I am an expert in agrochemistry. Mike's advice to edit carefully was wise. As you so kindly mentioned I edit slowly one small bit at a time, trying to explain each time the problem with the original text.

In general my inclination is not to write new pages. I think there is too much written. Things should be succincter, leaving the details to pages dealing with those details, Bosula (talk) 13:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I noticed you have been editing some health-related articles, and I wanted to say that a bunch of us hang out at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, and you're welcome to join us. It's also a good place to ask questions about finding good sources for medical content or writing style. There are also groups like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Environment and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Agriculture, which may be more closely related to your editing interests, but the medical group is bigger, and there's some overlap. Feel free to put any groups you're interested on your watchlist, or stop by to say hello some time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello WhatamiIdoing, thanks for the tips. I will look at these talk pages with interest. Bosula (talk) 13:30, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Tony. Just to say that I completed the move/merge to IRAC just now, as suggested by DMacks. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:38, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Mike. Looks good. Some of table does not have pages to link to, so I will look at that. Bosula (talk) 15:17, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Probably you are more expert in plant science than I, but compounds that are lethal are not antifeedants? Is there a source for that?--Smokefoot (talk) 16:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

In fact I was a pesticide chemist for >30 years, mainly working on natural products, some of them plant derived insecticides. We always regarded antifeedants very differently to insecticides, which is why I criticised the page in the first place. But the real knowledge I got recently, after our short exchange on the talk page, by going through the reviews on the topic. And I regard the writers of these reviews as experts, not myself. These guys describe the meticulous studies they went through to distinguish between insects getting repelled by taste rather than smell. They are really very specific. We can't then start bundling everything together. When they talk about the much studied azadirachtin they talk about antifeedant and insecticidal activity, as if they were two different things.

But in answer to your question. Poul (a top man in the area, several reviews and books) in ref 3 writes "The reason not to include postingestive inhibitors in the antifeedant concept is that these inhibitors demand feeding during a longer period than preingestive inhibitors, which may already have caused significant and possibly mortal damage to the plant, when the insect finishes feeding." Mind you even then he is not talking about insecticides, but compounds that stop an insect from feeding after some feeding occured. So no I can't get you a definition that says an antifeedant is different to an insecticide. But how can I find a definition of an apple that says it is different to an orange? But read a review or two yourself, and you will see the way they think and write about antifeedants. Bosula (talk) 19:48, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi there! I'm Squawk7700. I wanted to talk to you about your recent redirect on Douglas Gresham. The way the situation stands there isn't really a consensus for either merging or not, which in the long run may cause a lot of problems again. I understand that the situation can be irritating and annoying, especially since there is not a lot of participation in the discussions you initiated. In order to bring the discussion to an end for once and for all, what do you think about starting over with a new merge proposal, but this time also tagging the two articles (see: WP:M2) so that it can be listed at WP:PM? This way you hopefully get the attention of other volunteers allowing a strong consensus to form. Kindest Regards Squawk7700 (talk) 00:50, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Hello Squawk7700, OK. I am interested. Let us see what happens. I'll revert the redirect and tag the pages as you recommend. Bosula (talk) 16:13, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Hello again @Squawk7700, thanks for fixing the tagging on the source and target pages. I notice the proposed merge is not listed at WP:PM. Should I be doing something on that page? If I understand the instructions in WP:M2 and the info on WP:PM the listing should be done automatically twice a day. Can you advise? Regards, Bosula (talk) 17:08, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey, no problem I enjoy helping. About the listing, would you mind checking again, the merge is listed as number 52 for me. Maybe you will need to Help:Purge the page. Rgds Squawk7700 (talk) 17:18, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

You are right. I didn't expect to find so many and only looked in the last couple of dozen. Thanks again and Merry Christmas. Bosula (talk) 17:24, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Wounderful and Merry Christmas from me too Squawk7700 (talk) 17:27, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Hello again @Squawk7700, may I ask for your advice? Since the tagging and listing at WP:PM there have been only two editors joining the discussion. “The Grid”, who suggests Gresham is not notable and “Maineartists”, who vehemently suggests he is, supplying claims and links, which as I answered do not fulfil any of the criteria in WP:notability. I have analysed and evaluated his claims carefully. Is there an understanding or usus amounst editors, that WP:notability is unneccessarily strict, and we don’t have to abide by it? Then on 29 December he unilaterally deleted the section I merged on 1st November, writing “Do not reinstate until consensus or vote has been achieved” and then stopped answering. You can see the discussion on Talk:Joy Davidman and Talk:Douglas Gresham. How can I reach a consensus? How should I proceed? I would be grateful for your opinion. Bosula (talk) 12:14, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Hey there! To address your first question, as far as I am aware there is no such thing as a consensus not to follow WP:NOTABILITY, and if there was a consensus to loosen it a WP:request for comment would have been started and passed to actually loosen the guideline. And if that can't be done as is the case there is no consensus to change the guideline and therefore it stands. The discussion is a tough nut to crack, with "only" two users participating you can't really get to a consensus, be that in favor or not. What in a way is correct is that if a content conflict emerges the usual way to handle it is to reinstate the content to what it was before the conflict emerged until a consensus is found, however in my opinion that edit summary was unnecessarily WP:BITEY. What you could do now is to try and WP:PING the editor who stopped replying and asking him for his opinion on your last comment. If you have a look at Wikipedia:Canvassing you can see what behavior is allowed and what is not allowed when trying to make more users aware of the discussion. You could for example try to alert an active wikiproject who concerns itself with a related matter.

Lastly I just also wanted to tell you about WP:NOTAVOTE just so you know about it since in the discussion the word "vote" was used multiple times.

Kind Regards Squawk7700 (talk) 11:33, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks yet again Squawk7700. I'll check the projects and collaborations. See if there are people who focus on notability (people) or anything else related to Mr Gresham. Bosula (talk) 20:32, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

Do you think inviting comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography would be suitable? Bosula (talk) 22:11, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

Looks good to me :) Should you want to make your life a bit easier you can use Template:WikiProject please see. Also should you want you could find a TV related wikiproject such as WT:FILMBIO as you see fit. Kind regards Squawk7700 (talk) 22:25, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

Hello again @Squawk7700. This is not going well. There were no responses from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, and the usual type of exchange otherwise. Do you think it is a good idea to go to WP:AfD going for deletion rather than merging? Bosula (talk) 21:46, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi. Honestly I don't really know - I'd probably walk away now, but if you think that the article really does not comply with policy you can take it to AFD. Hope this helps. Squawk7700 (talk) 09:46, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Hello @Squawk7700. Although the article does not comply I will leave it for now. The experience I made has been unpleasant, and I don't expect to meet congeniality with an AFD for a BLP. I will for now remain with scientific topics, where all the editors I have until now disagreed with, have argued reasonably and decently. Bosula (talk) 11:23, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Genetically modified crops, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

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Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 20:57, 25 January 2026 (UTC)