Wikipedia:Editor review/Seraphimblade

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[edit] User:Seraphimblade

Seraphimblade (talk · contribs) I created an account some time ago, but mainly only logged on to read. Over the past couple of months I've decided to become more active in editing, and would like some feedback on how I've done. Seraphimblade 07:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Reviews

  • Mate I think you do a great job, and in particular I think you are an example to editors like myself who have a similar attitude in general to the Wikipedia (deletionists who place high importance on comprehensiveness and notability) on how to hold those views and still be civil and positive. Keep up the good work! •Elomis• 02:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I think you do a great job as well. I originally came across your name from an AfD. Your presentation was excellent and I have sought your advice on more than one occasion. I am particularly impressed how you can see both sides of an argument and provide a fair opinion. I can say this because in one instance your opinion was different from mine, but I respected what you had to say about it. Thanks for the help! Alan.ca 06:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Comments

Questions

  1. Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

Answer

  1. My first contribution was cleanup and NPOV work with the Google bomb article. I believe that the article has been improved significantly since that time.
  2. I have also done extensive work on the Fabolous article after finding it on the cleanup list. While it recently failed the GA process, it's getting close, and I plan to get it there.
  3. I intend more work on the Brine pools article (which I did not start) and on Salt tectonics which I did, though currently both are stubs I believe these are important topics which deserve more comprehensive coverage.

Question

  1. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

Answer

  1. During my cleanup of the Google bomb article, another editor disagreed with me regarding inclusion of information on Quixtar. I dealt with this issue by seeking mediation, which is currently in progress.
  2. Overall, I don't tend to get stressed. Obvious vandals and trolls, in my experience, are blocked after it's made obvious they have no intent to participate constructively. Genuine debates, on the other hand, are best resolved through consensus-and we all should remember that means "Sometimes consensus will go against me."

Question

  1. In your userpage you define yourself as a deletionist. What can you tell us about your inclusionist side? Is there any article that makes you feel proud about your additions? Have you ever started a new article?

Answer

  1. That's quite a good question. As stated earlier, I did start the article on salt tectonics, after finding that it was an uncovered subject. I've also worked quite extensively on the Fabolous and Google bomb articles, and wish to do some more with Brine pools (which is what encouraged me to research salt tectonics). I am quite proud of my contributions to all of these, and intend to do further work on them (especially Fabolous and the brine pools article, the Google bomb article needs to finish a mediation first and I'm not expert enough to properly interpret all of the sources on salt tectonics.) I also did a significant amount of work with Bomb damage assessment, leading to its very first classification being as a B article.
I would note, however, that I am also proud of my work on newpage patrol. There are, unfortunately, a lot of attempts to create spam and inappropriate articles. Newpage patrol is the best chance to catch these before they get in and are found by a person using "Random article". However, I believe that those who make good contributions are certainly the best we've got to offer-and I hope that the ones I've made have been good ones. Seraphimblade 14:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Question

  1. You have admitted that you have been in conflict with many editors on Wikipedia. However an Editor should remain civil, refrain from personal attacks and assume Good Faith. In all fairness, I am aware that many new editors in their first couple of months or so on Wikipedia have been in conflict with other editors. What is not acceptable is for such uncivil behavior to continue beyond the first couple of months or so after you have been guided to adhere to Wikipedia's peaceful culture. My question to you is, have you learnt and are now committed to fully adhere to Wikipedia's rules so we can monitor your performance in the future should you decide to go for an RFA? Lcnj 16:25, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Answer

  1. I don't believe, in general, that I have behaved uncivilly-although I've certainly learned a lot as I've gone along. In almost all cases where there has been disagreement, I've sought peaceful resolution (through the use of third opinions, and in one case, mediation). Of course, no one is perfect, and I am sure there are times I have not acted as well as I could have, but I do continually seek to improve, and generally believe that the consensus method is the best one for resolving debates. I would certainly hope that if there is a specific instance in which I did act poorly that it would be brought to my attention, but I believe that in general I have handled conflict well. It is inevitable that there will be disagreements, but it is not inevitable for such disagreements to turn into a personal issue between the people involved. Seraphimblade 16:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi... Your response is satisfactory to me... I assume that you implied that you are now committed to fully adhering to Wikipedia's rules so we can monitor your performance in the future. While I recall our dispute and your attempt to delete an article about a notable Lebanese entetainer, I took great pleasure from discussing the matter, reacching a consesus and defeating you the Wikipedia way (through consensus). Best of luck to you should you wish to pursue an RFA. Please let me know if I can be of help. cheerio... Lcnj 00:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I absolutely meant that, and while in that case you did turn out to be correct, I was quite impressed with the way you handled the situation as well. Thanks very much! Seraphimblade 00:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Question I recently made a new page (Mesoangioblast) and recieved an "unsourced" tag from you one minute after the page was created (while I was pulling together some references). Do you think that this sort of behaviour is a bit on the overzealous side? Dr Aaron 22:12, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Answer Not at all-quite often, the time when an article is created and newpage patrol catches it is the first time any necessary maintenance tags (cleanup, wikification, sourcing, and so on) can be placed. If the article were to remain unsourced, this would alert other users to the need for the information to be sourced-and in many cases, it is indeed another user who comes along to help with the needs. The maintenance notices are certainly not intended as an attack on anyone, just an easy way to categorize articles that might need some work, and is really no different then placing or categorizing a stub tag immediately. Seraphimblade 22:30, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Question Well, it seems you are quite fascinated with some people at Isaac Bear likeing some other certain people. From here, you seem civil, and it says you live in Seattle. Yet your completly wiping my schools page and putting on information that is A.) Illegal, metioning students names. B.) Somewhat true, but yet, only if you go to our school would you know this and C.) COmpletely uneeded on Wikipedia. If you do go to IBECHS, I would stop putting whatever your putting on here.

Now, If this is all wrong, please do correct me. Yet, the Isaac Bear page cleary shows YOU with the last edit, and a clearly vandilized page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.63.84.177 (talk • contribs) .

Answer (Note: Poster's comment refers to this page version) I fail to see where this version mentions students' names-if that were in there it would and should be removed immediately. It does mention teachers' names, however, this would already be publicly available information. I also fail to see any examples of clear vandalism in this version, could you please explain what you mean? As to personal knowledge of the school, I've none myself-I used a process called reverting to put the page back to an earlier version in its history. Large-scale vandalism or blanking of a page often necessitates the use of this process. None of that information was originally posted by me-it was simply in the older, non-vandalized version. Recent change patrollers often use the reversion process to remove and undo vandalism. Finally, I never wiped the page (as you can verify in the edit history)-aside from reverting the vandalized version back to a non-vandalized page. Seraphimblade 22:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions I don't understand why people proudly present themselves as deletionists. How can you judge the work of other people, who gave their time to create some pages, when you almost never created a page yourself? How can you destroy other people's work with no regards for the work they put in it? How can you judge a page's worth after only one minute and, especialy, how can you judge pages about subjects you don't know a thing about, like alternative music, punk rock and heavy metal? And why do you incessantly request multiple sources for everything even if such sources exist but not necessarily on the web? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Terveetkadet (talk • contribs) .

Answer I will answer in several parts here, as you ask several very good questions and I'd like to give each one the detail it deserve.

As to "how can you judge", I would pose a question in exchange-how can you not? Everyone who submits any type of work here agrees to have it judged and, if anyone so desires, modified by the world. You post an article here today, it might be rewritten into a form you don't even recognize tomorrow. That, in my opinion, is one of the strengths of Wikipedia, not one of its weaknesses. Every time one does anything from a minor spelling correction to a total article rewrite, someone else's work is being judged and changed.

As to requesting sources-non web sources such as books, newspapers, etc., are great! No sources whatsoever is not-WP:V and WP:RS speak quite clearly to that. I would -love- to see more offline sources added to Wikipedia-there's not a thing wrong with going to your local library, if you really want to learn in-depth! The trouble is when someone just writes, and says "Trust me, it's true"-I have no idea who they are, what their credentials are, or whether they got their information out of a highly-respected journal or heard it from a guy that heard it from a guy. On the other hand, if they cite that they got it out of Dr. Joe Blow's paper about prokaryotes which was published in Nature, I can easily go check that Dr. Blow is a well-respected Ph.D. with 25 years experience in the field (and that he said what the article says he said!) Without WP:V and WP:RS, we might as well read Usenet as Wikipedia for our "facts"-anyone could post anything. To become more then that, we must start asking the basic question of any scholar or researcher-"Where did that information come from?" It also helps readers-our goal is to summarize the information, not present it all, and source cites provide a great resource for the reader who wishes to do more in-depth research.

Judging a page's worth after one minute? All newpage patrollers are called upon to do that. It's not hard to judge that someone placing "(#*% ALL OF YOU!" on a page is vandalism, and it certainly doesn't take even a full minute to analyze and decide that. Similarly, it's not hard to judge that a page that contains "We are (leaders|innovators|highest-rated|etc.) in the field of..." is blatant spamming, or that "The demo tape's almost done, visit our myspace!" is a non-notable band, or that "John Doe grew up in Sometown, Someplace and currently attends Some High School. He is 15 years old. His best friend is Joe Schmoe." is a non-notable bio. Of course, there are quite often more "borderline" cases-most of the time with these, I'll place maintenance tags on it. Sometimes I go back to work on it myself, sometimes someone else catches it in that category and they do. Sometimes, it turns out there's not enough to say and not enough sources to write from, and the article gets deleted.

And that brings us around to deletion. A touchy subject that one is, but any writer realizes that, when one is going over the first draft (and of course, Wikipedia is ever the draft, always in flux) sometimes a lot of cuts must be made-and sometimes it's best just to scrap the whole thing and start over. Sometimes it's best to take a whole section out and leave it out. I really apparently am pretty good at judging this, and know a thing or two about it-people pay me to read their papers, CV's, college application essays, what have you. Generally, what this is for is to look at details and provide feedback from an outsider-"Fluff, you don't need five paragraphs about being a Boy Scout. Confusing, I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this paragraph. Self-contradictory-it says here you started martial arts in 1996 but here it says your first tae kwon do lesson was in 1995." It is not only necessary to mine and dig for diamonds-this is necessary, to be sure, but they don't come out of the ground very pretty! It is then the job of cutters to cut away all that is not necessary until the gem shines brightly. Why, in this case, would the miners and cutters be opposed to one another? Without either one, there is no sparkling diamond at the end of the process. But all too often, we see inclusionists and deletionists seeing themselves as "at odds"-the miners say "I worked hard to bring all that rock out of the ground, how dare you cut away part of it!" while the cutters tend more to say "Hey, quit bringing all that extra rock out anyway!" However (to extend the analogy until it screams), sometimes a piece of rock is brought up, and the cutter, upon assaying it and studying it, must say "There are no gems in here, this entire piece is waste rock." No amount of trying to "cut" that piece into a diamond will work-there simply is nothing there. The same is true of advertising, non-notable bands/people/companies, and so on-there is simply nothing of encyclopedic value in those, any more then there is in the page of profanity cut-and-pasted one hundred times.

I understand this can be difficult. It's not even easy to scrap one's own writing and start over, let alone have someone else bring up the need. But our warning is clear-"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." This is a collaborative effort-and deletionists and inclusionists should see one another as collaborators, not as competitors or enemies. But in any collaborative effort, you better bring along your thickest skin-sometimes someone else will have a better idea, sometimes your idea will get shot down, sometimes you won't get your way. If a person can't handle that-well then, this is not the place for that person! If you put anything here, it's going to get hacked away at, and maybe even deleted-but the work as a whole, the encyclopedia we're building, will be improved. This is the main thing.

Oh, as to something I know nothing about? Well, first off, I listen to all the genres you listed, so I would take care presuming what a person knows. However, WP:OR is quite clear on this-our personal knowledge does not matter and should never be used! What matters is what we can find from reliable sources, not what we "just know, it's true, trust me!" What we are judging is an article against its -sources-, not an article against our -own personal knowledge-. In more then one case, I "knew" something in an article was false, and went looking through the sources so that I could explain why I made the "factual correction"-only to discover that my knowledge was wrong or out of date, and that the article was right all along. I learned something those times, and that's good! But if I'd written from personal knowledge, instead of looking at the source-first, I learn nothing, and second, I would introduce false information into the article! That's why it is critically important to source and to write only from sources. Now, of course, when an article has no sources (or the only sources are highly untrustworthy, such as primary ones), this becomes in effect a "divide by zero" problem. "How well does an article summarize its sources?" is the only question. When the answer is "It has none to summarize anyway!", then its sources are some anonymous person on the Internet who decided to post something. (And yes, we're all anonymous-I can start posting under the name Scraggle McGee and claim it's my real name, but it isn't.) Is that something you'd believe without question on Usenet? Slashdot? Counterstrike chat? Then why should anyone be expected to take it seriously here?

So, to sum up why anyone presents themselves proudly as a deletionist. You mine, I cut-both are important roles, both result in a gem at the end. Without either of us, all we've got is a lump of rock. Seraphimblade 15:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


Comment I don't care having my work modified at all, I understand how wikipedia works and it's one of the beauties of this system that anybody can edit any article. What I hate is having my work DESTROYED or having someone trying to destroy my work by submitting it for deletion. Especialy when it's submitted by someone who doesn't know a thing about the subject and submits it for being "not notable". THAT'S the problem.

I don't know a thing about jazz. So you can be sure that if I looked at all the articles about jazzmen, I'll find some that would not be notable in my opinion. Maybe some of them don't have a lot of references etc. Will I submit it for deletion? HELL NO! Cause I don't know a thing about jazz and because that's not because I don't think a certain artist isn't notable that he or she is not... Notability is VERY SUBJECTIVE. So I will leave the article about the jazzman there cause someone else might be interested in it. That is not my f*&king business to delete it. Someone worked hard to do this article so who am I to toss all this work in the trash?

I quote sources when I can, when I have the time. Paper sources too. But I'm a professional journalist and I've been since 1989 and I'm also a radio show host. I probably know way more than you about the importance of sources for accuracy in information. But what if I get my info, for example, from former Suicidal Tendencies bassman Louiche Mayorga? Or from former Beowülf guitar player Mike Jensen? Or from former Neighborhood Watch bass player John Flitcraft? I know all those guys and got A LOT of info from them, corrected A LOT of misconceptions about all those bands with that info. Isn't it the BEST SOURCE POSSIBLE? In journalism, you can't have a more reliable source than when it comes straight from the horse's mouth. Where does that info come from? Damn... I ask that question EVERYDAY and you can be sure that everything I write, I'm sure of. On the job AND on Wikipedia.

Newpage patrollers... What a ridiculous concept if you want my opinion. I understand that stopping vandalism is important but what I have a problem with is when I start a page about a band like I did a few days ago and after one minute, it is tagged for "speedy deletion" because I hadn't put references yet. The page IS important and notable and the requester finally removed his request for deletion but why was I supposed to put everything there at the same time? So what if there's no reference? Put a tag asking for references or prove me wrong and correct the page but damn don't trash it unilaterally just because no source is stated! I have contacts with Paul Shull, manager for Die Mannequin, talk to him regularly so don't you think the info I get from him is trustworthy? I handle everything here like I handle my job at the newspaper and my boss never trashed one of my articles without finding a problem in it and proving me wrong. The bottom line is: don't trash what you don't know anything about, you might trash something of value.

Oh yeah? People pay you to read their papers? You know what? For almost 20 years now, people have paid me to WRITE papers and edit myself too so I guess I am also pretty good at judging this. I have lengths to respect when I submit an article to the newspaper, I gotta say what I have to say in a certain length, depending of the space so you bet I know what "mining" is but I also damn know what "cutting" is. The editors sometimes cut or re-arrange my articles and I have no problem with that but they NEVER trash it or change the "spirit" of what I wrote.

The editors at the paper are not "deletionists", they are... editors. Nobody is paid to trash other people's work. If a journalist is not good, they simply don't give him important tasks. I repeat, I have NO PROBLEM with people editing my wikipedia entries, especialy if they add something good to the article, but having it trashed? No way! That's what a deletionist does: he deletes. And I will NEVER understand that. Use your brain and try to IMPROVE the article instead of deleting it. If you're not able to improve it, then go elsewhere. You think the article is unsourced? Why not trying to ADD SOURCES instead of trashing the whole thing. That's what I do. When I saw the TSOL entry, I radically improved it. It took me more time than trashing it but Wikipedia is WAY BETTER than if I had trashed it. There's another band that I like (and that I won't name cause you're a deletionist and you might trash the article), for which the article is HORRIBLY written with info badly copy-pasted from another site. I have the intention of improving it radically, maybe almost rewriting it all while keeping the important info. But in the meantime, I sure won't delete it! Why should I? Someone else could improve it too!

And if you like this little mining-cutting analogy, well, have you ever asked yourself how many "gems" are lost because some ignorant deletionist threw them in the trash instead of taking the time to find it inside the rock?Terveetkadet

Response Thanks again for your response. In answer to some of the questions you raise-no, I would not consider your personal knowledge (or mine!) to be a reliable or verifiable source, it would instead be original research. No one reading the article would have any idea if you are who you say you are, or where that information came from. (Please note, I'm not saying you're lying, as I don't believe at all that you are-simply bringing up the problem that there's really no way to verify this.) And let's presume there were-even then, band members and especially band managers have a vested interest to place their band in the best possible light-if the manager's not doing that, the band ought to fire the bum! However, it's our job to present them in a neutral light given information which is verifiable. (On the other hand, of course, you could always cite the newspaper articles which you have written! These would be entirely reliable and verifiable sources.) But even Stephen Hawking's ideas don't get published here before they get published in a journal-only after.

Verifiability and no original research are longstanding, established policies. Notability, on the other hand, can be a bit contentious. I would like to direct you to User:Uncle G/On notability and to the "Notability is not subjective" section under the notability guidelines-they say this far better then I would. If independent third parties have seen fit to provide coverage of the subject, it's notable-regardless of whether any individual editor might think it's silly or stupid or trivial. On the other hand, if the only source material available is primary or self-created/self-published/personal knowledge, the subject is not yet notable. That doesn't mean it'll never be, and to go into the next answer, "gems" are never lost. Deletion is reversible, and recreation of an article on a subject which was at one point non-notable but has become so is always possible!

Finally, you seem to take the issue a bit personally. I would certainly encourage you not to do so-as stated earlier, this is a collaborative effort, and as with any such that means that sometimes an individual collaborator is overruled or things do not go h(is|er) way. That's not anything personal-simply a recognition of the fact that in such projects, unanimous support is rarely if ever achieved, and sometimes a clear consensus must prevail even when a minority continues to disagree. Of course, that works both ways-sometimes a few people wish to delete an article but the consensus is that it should be kept! Certainly, there is clear consensus that some articles should be deleted-from there on out, it's simply a matter of hammering out which ones and under what circumstances. Seraphimblade 00:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


Yeah... like a kid still in school will teach me lessons about the reliability of sources, neutral points of view and stuff like that... Come back when you've worked for a daily newspaper for 15 years...Yeah, I know I have a bad attitude but that's how I am... And I just can't stand square policies and square states of mind... Terveetkadet