User talk:ArtLit

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[edit] Welcome

Hello, ArtLit, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --Thw1309 10:15, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Donald Meltzer

Dear ArtLit, it is very easy to reach another user if you know his name. If you want to find my userpage, you simply type User:Thw1309 into the search field. It is easier, if you find an edit on a talk page (discussion). As you can see, the usernames are coloured in light blue. you only have to push such a blue name and you will be directed to the userpage of this user.

I checked your article Donald Meltzer. I can assure you, most of the persons adding these tags know exactly as much about Donald Meltzer as I do, absolutely nothing! The reason of these tags is not the content but the style of your article. It sounds like being written by a fan or a friend. You have to try to use a neutral tone. There are special articles to shwow you, how to write an article. Please try Wikipedia:Guide to layout. Anywhere there is even an article, explaining which words are forbidden because of lack of neutrality. Another problem are references. You have discribe the source of your whisdom in a way to enable a complete idiot to walk to the next library and to check your source. This means author, title, edition date place and page. The end of the belief in your neutrality was reached, when the users found your name on several of the reference, they reacted like Pavlov´s dog. You please press on Bearian. That´s the guy who added the tags, press on discussion, then on edit this page (on top of every page you will find the words
userpage/article discussion edit this page + history move watch pressing userpage or article, you will find the main page of this article. pressing discussion, you will find the taklpage of this article or user. pressing editthis page will open a writing field on the actual page pressing history will show you, who made changes pressing watch will swhow the changes on this article on your watchlist) Now ask him, what he does not like about your article. If he gives you a good answer, you can change your article. If he does not, polish the style and remove the first four lines of the talkpage of the article. This will make the tags disappear.

There is one thing, you have to learn about Wikipedia. The moment, you save your edit or article, every idiot can can add his nonsense. As long as you give them no chance to attack, as you did with your "fanstyle" it is possible, to ask the administrators for help against vandals.

I hope I could help you. --Thw1309 11:37, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. One thing I don't understand, is, how can you tell who has put the tags? Is it part of the general editing process that anybody can put tags on anyone else's article? ArtLit 15:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I think you answered your own questions above, and on the talk/dicsussion page of the Donald Meltzer article. None of the tags are negative, per se. Yes, anyone can put a tag on, but in practice, only experienced editors and administrators do so. They are warnings to a possibly uneducated public about taking such articles, especially biographies, with a grain of salt. The process starts with a Conflict Of Interest warning generated automatically by the system itself - by what's a called a "bot". It's done on a weekly basis or so. It caught you because you quoted yourself. I reviewed it and place on the tags in response to that. I'll "wikify it" and remove a tag or two. P.S. If you see my userpage, you can see my own interests and biases. Bearian 16:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Firstly, Bearian, I have not answered my own questions, they have been answered by someone else, who has been extremely helpful. However you have not answered my question to you, on your usertalkpage, to specify in detail your objections to my article.
  • Secondly, I am not playing some schoolboy game of 'getting caught' but writing a serious article on a specialised topic. I have made professional contributions to the topic published in respected journals. So have many other people - and a significant number of their contributions are referenced in the article. I am also a trustee of a registered English charity on the topic hence my name on its website.
  • I note from your user page you profess an interest in psychology and psychiatry. I don't know whether this indicates any actual qualifications you may have in those fields or not. However such an interest does not mean you know anything about the British object relations (Kleinian) school and in some persons can indicate hostility towards it.
  • You name yourself an 'experienced editor' but you have only been contributing for 4 months. The way you have wikified the article shows you do not understand the purpose of the words and have not even checked the links, one of which is red. To give one (of several) examples, 'supervisor' in the article refers to an academic supervisor not to a factory supervisor as in the Wikipedia entry under that heading. Wikipedia guidelines for making links are: "If I were reading the article, would the link be useful to me?" On that basis I have reverted your links apart from the date link for which there is a special guideline, and I have retained the original links I put in, which would actually help a new reader to get a grasp of the subject. This is the function of any encyclopaedia. The article will look less wikified but the links will actually be meaningful.
  • You say you are worried about the effect on a 'possibly uneducated public'. At the top of your own user page is a non-grammatical and meaningless sentence. Perhaps you should edit your own work more carefully before correcting other people's on behalf of the non-educated.

Put me down with the others on your list of people (are they all professional women writers?) with whom you have a personal conflict of interest. ArtLit 13:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


It is easy to find the user, who added a tag or an edit. On the page, he changed, you press history. There you will find all edits. On the highest edit you press last. then you see the content of this edit. You only have to do this with every edit and you find the right one.--Thw1309 16:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A fresh start

I do not know about your research or about your motives, so please let me explain my edits and my motives.

1. The "COI" tag indicates that there may be a possible conflict of interest between an author of the article and the subject of the article itself. I placed it there because I saw you were on the board of the charity, and because the Bot identified you as such. Being on the board that advocates this theory could be seen as a conflict of interest. So could "Peacock language" -- the laudatory words of a fan. As my (now deleted) essay states, I have a relaxed standard of what constitutes a COI than many others. I did not intend it as a personal attack.

A charity in the UK is not allowed to advocate theories. It has to demonstrate benefit to a named group of people. I don't see any examples of peacock language. Knowing the subject would be unfamiliar to most people I made an effort to keep it straightforward. But when it comes to psychoanalytic concepts, technical jargon cannot be avoided.ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

2. The "controversy" tag indicates that a reasonable person might not know that some or all of the ideas written about in the article are not universally accepted, e.g. Evolution. That may be true though I might I agree with both Evolutionary and Kleinian theories, or if there is a solid scientific consensus.

I don't see any reference to evolution in the article. However no ideas are universally accepted. People are still arguing about Plato and Aristotle.ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Just to help clarify the issue here. One reason "controversy" tags are added to articles is because editing them can cause what are called "edit wars." Editors are so invested in one particular side of an issue, that they cannot stand back and dispassionately write an article. Evolution and Intelligent design (because of the controversies over those topics in the United States) have led to difficulty in coming to a consensus on how to write the article. The same is true for something like Scientology. I don't think that anyone would argue that "no ideas are universally accepted;" it is simply that some ideas seem to get under people's skin more and make them even more irrational than they usually are. I'm not sure I would tag this article as "controversial," though. I doubt such debate will erupt on it - it is more likely to do so on the pages about psychoanalysis itself. Does that help explain the issue more clearly? Awadewit | talk 16:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

3. Various tags are used to give a heads up to possibly biased or difficult-to-read sources -- "Expert", "References", and "Verify" for example. They are not negative, but merely notices that not all citations have been checked by someone at Wikipedia. That is a second type of peer review, and is distinct and different from, the normal academic method. It is more akin to Cross examination.

A good start - if sufficiently interested - might be to check some of the references.ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

4. I used to teach Psychology, as a teaching assistant, two decades ago. I now teach Business Law and Paralegal studies. I have a J.D. and a B.A. Every Attorney or Solicitor is an amateur psychologist. When blogging and typing on user pages in Wikipedia, one does not always use perfect grammar. I have taken your suggestions to heart.

I am not a psychoanalyst myself but an author and literary critic. I shall make a user page at some point.ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

5. Wikipedia is not just a web site, but a community. That's why many a Wikipedian writes "in" or "for" Wikipedia, rather than "on" a site. Please, accept my apologies, and please stay in Wikipedia. You may find it is a very nice hobby. Bearian 19:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I shall do my best to contribute to other sites. If I don't do as much as I would like it is because of time, and because of my fairly basic level of computer literacy - which means that all this stuff takes me longer than younger people who were brought up with the technological revolution. ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My reply

Sorry, I don't understand your question. I thought anyone can edit user talk pages. Duane Otani 00:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

replied on their page.ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Meltzer talk page

I have posted my review on the Meltzer page. I have also reinstated the previous debate. On wikipedia, you cannot erase others' comments because you do not like them or even because you believe the discuss to be closed. The debate has to remain for others to see when they come to the page - it is a historical record (I am sure you can appreciate the value of that). Talk pages are archived once they become too long, but they are never altered to eliminate editors' comments (unless those comments are illegal in some way). The wikipedia ethos is to assume good faith and respect other editor's comments. At times, you will have to deal with some opinions that you disagree with (perhaps much more radically than the ones you have encountered so far), but you cannot erase them from the talk page (please see Wikipedia:Etiquette). You might also take a look at WP:OWN. It describes the multiple authorship process at wikipedia in some detail. No one "owns" articles here and no one person gets to determine their structure, etc. Other people will contribute to the article - you will have to work with them, for better or worse. Don't worry too much about all of this. The first article I seriously edited for wikipedia (Mary Wollstonecraft), I was accused of plagiarizing because my writing sounded too sophisticated. It was disheartening, but I engaged in a productive discussion with the editor and we now actively work together. Once you learn the ropes here (and there aren't many), it is really quite fun. Awadewit | talk 17:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I did realise the talk history remains, but I thought talk pages were edited in the same way as articles - I didn't realise they were automatically archived at a certain point. Also I was aware of the multiple authorship concept - what annoyed me previously was the fact that the article had evidently not been read so the edits were irrational. I have no problem with disagreement as such. Multiple authorship from interested or informed people is in itself a good idea - whether for content or for style or technical features. ArtLit 11:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I understand your frustration with irrational edits. I should warn you, though, that many edits on wikipedia are (in my opinion) from interested people, not informed people. That can sometimes produce friction between the informed people and uninformed people. Wikipedia requires a lot of patience sometimes. But some of the most rewarding experiences are turning the interested into the informed. I have found wikipedia to be a lot like teaching at times, except most of the editors I encounter actually want to learn. Awadewit | talk 15:52, 11 June 2007 (UTC)