User talk:Guthriewinters

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[edit] Welcome

Welcome to my Talk page. Feel free to leave any comments, questions, or suggestions regarding my contributions.

[edit] RE: Mill Valley

(Copied from my profile) You removed a section of the "2008: Consecutive sewage spills" text, yet gave vague reasoning. What is speculative about saying that 5 million+ gallons of mostly-raw sewage, combined with an oil spill of global infamy, contributed substantially to the environmental degradation of the S.F. Bay? It would be speculative to say that it did not do this. It was left uncited because it only takes a bit of common sense and some basic biological principles to affirm that fact, and one (hopefully) should not need to seek this in any literature. The impact is important and undeniable. It is also discussed by every other article cited in that section. What was your reasoning? What would it take to make you "believe" something like that? o0O [GUTH3] O0o (talk) 07:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing vague about "Removing speculative and unsourced statement". Yes, it may make sense that such a spill must have had some negative impact on the ecosystem. But this is an encyclopedia of facts, not "common sense" statements and speculation. And there is a huge difference between such a common sense assumption and the statement, "these sewage spills contributed substantially to the environmental degradation of the San Francisco Bay Area". Now if there are reputable primary sources out there that state that this spill did in fact "contribute substantially to the environmental degradation of the bay area" (I would think this would either have to come from a scientific report or quoted scientist), please by all means source them. Cheers! Newtman (talk) 07:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I may have assumed in my statement that your hasty removal of that sentence stemmed from indignation or that you were of the more reckless sort of Remover who goes immediately for the new edits, especially on touchy subjects. Your defense of the removal is quite valid. o0O [GUTH3] O0o (talk) 20:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd strongly recommend that next time you assume good faith or at the very least check the contribution history of someone who's edit you're unsure about it. We're all on the same side here, and there's already enough negativity to go around on wikipedia ;) Newtman (talk) 21:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Since you want to keep discussing the issue, I will point out that there are many more unsourced and speculative statements on the same page that, in your assiduous dedication to the removal of anything remotely POV, you have missed, such as "Mill Valley is known as an artsy town." I grew up there and I know it as nothing of the sort, whatever "artsy" means in the first place. That is a flagrantly unencyclopedic thing to leave up, yet it stays. When I carry out such a thorough review of a page that I remove statements like the one you removed from my edit, I make sure that I remove all such statements on the page in order to avoid glaring contrasts between sections, like the one that now exists between my sewage spill entry (bare bones, free of "POV" thanks to Newtman) and the "artsy little town" stuff. o0O [GUTH3] O0o (talk) 17:55, 26 March 2008 (UTC)