Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Dates

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Not exactly vandalism

Until recently I had been making fairly frequent contributions to the pages that list events, birthdays, deaths, etc for particular dates. A few weeks ago another user wrote to threaten me saying that he would simply delete items that he could not himself verify. I wrote to him to protest. However, he said that he has the perfect right to act as he has been and I notice that he is persisting in this behaviour, and I notice that he is treating items from people other than me in the same fashion. Since he does not warn others of his actions people other than me may be unaware of his deletions.

I willingly stipulate that some aspects of some of the items I submit are incorrect. However, this individual is deleting entire items when any part of them appear to be incorrect to him.

Obviously his actions are frustrating and discouraging. In my view, they also impede development of the 'pedia because they make it difficult to provide corrections.

What to do? I have looked in the FAQs, can't find an answer.

--BillBell 12:39, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How about giving us a clue as to who and or what pages you are talking about. Mintguy 12:46, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I believe the pages Bill is talking about are the daily pages (July 17 etc) and the alleged "vandal" is mav. Angela 13:19, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
See August 8 11:47, 9 Aug 2003 . . Maveric149 (more events; all checked for accuracy; removed a couple that could not be confirmed or were misplaced)
I think, this is a misunderstanding... You said "I wrote to him", but I can not find your comment on a talk-page. Where is the discussion? Fantasy 13:44, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
PS:Found it: User_talk:Maveric149/archive_14...
BillBell, it seems that you stopped to speak with Mav (he wrote the last line). I guess, Mav thought that you understood his arguments and that everything is ok. Mav is a person you can talk to. Don't stop talking to him,

if you feel that he did something he should not have done. I understand his line "I have every right to delete material that cannot be verified in order to preserve the accuracy of Wikipedia." that Everyone has this right, not only he. You as well. Just everyone can delete something, if it is not possible to verify. Did this help in some way? If you have more questions, just let me know! Fantasy 14:06, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Bill, Maveric149 is a very unpretentious person, therefore protective of this project sometimes in ways that may offend newcomers unintentionally. Wikipedia has its share of newbies and anonymous who ignorantly just cooy-&-paste other people's material like plagiarism or obscurely weird stuff about their great-great-grandfather or whatnot. And those people deserve to be offended a little. I'm certain you are not one of such vandal/experimental newbies. So, I'm positive that this misunderstanding can be worked this out in no time. And yes, we're allowed to make mistakes here, just not intentionally, i.e., claiming stubbornly what cannot be confirmed to be universal truth. We're Wiki, we correct each other's mistakes and improve! :-) --Menchi 14:32, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

Hah! Me a vandal? That's a laugh. What I'm doing is systematically going through each day page and confirming every fact and adding a great deal more. Your entries Bill, have been less than accurate to outright wrong, so I have corrected what I could, moved what was misplaced and deleted what could not be confirmed. You have had every chance to defend your work by providing references. So who is the vandal - the person who is adding incorrect data or the person who is deleting it? --mav 19:33, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

All I can say is that you seem to recognise yourself. You have deleted items from other people for which I was able to find authoritative sources. The one I remember in particular had to do with the Weimar Constitution. You deleted it, with your customary, cavalier "couldn't verify" and I found it, albeit in German, in the German Historical Museum web pages. Yes, I think you did read what I said (as someone kindly claimed above) and decided to ignore me. Who the hell are you to accord me "every chance to defend [my] work". I don't remember giving my life to you and I'm damned if I will put myself in the position of being accorded "chances" from he likes of you .
(a) AFAIK--take note, please--the 'pedia is not your property and we are not obliged to satisfy you alone, and (b) when you discard items, as I have said, it makes it difficult to know what was wrong with them or even that they have disappeared. Try to get with the programme, this was intended to be a co-operative project. You are not God. I believe that your ways of dealing with me are deliberatively provocative and bloody. --BillBell
So you verified it in German and I could not verify the entry while searching English webpages. Good for you - now put it back in. The (a) applies to you as well; Wikipedia is not a dumping ground of ill-informed and badly researched material. So when I see that I will either correct it or delete it depending on how salvageable it is. And when I see a pattern of bad edits from a single user I don't bother spending a great deal of time checking each of their facts (but I still check). Some users have such a bad track record when it comes to submitting correct information that they have been banned and everything they write is automatically reverted without checking; there comes a point when it just isn't worth it. I'm sorry if my checking and correcting of your mistakes bothers you, but you agree each time you submit that; "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." Got it? --mav
wikipedia:verifiability has a suggested procedure for removing stuff that a Wikipedian cannot verify, as well as hints on how to ensure that text one adds is easily verifiable. Martin 21:17, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Just to avoid a possible misunderstanding: Information on Wikipedia is usually not deleted permanently. Past versions of a page can be accessed using the "Page history" link and previous versions can be restored. Information is less likely to be removed if it is referenced (with an endnote, for example).—Eloquence 21:55, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

Sometimes I discover my own mistakes upon re-reading days later. But other times, I don't, and I'm glad that other mistakes of mine were found by others before me (if I could ever realize those are mistakes! ;-)) But once an uncertainty is discovered, it's either moved to the Talk page or "deleted" (but easily recoverable, as Eloquence points out). We can't leave possible misinformation on our website. --Menchi 22:07, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

The one thing that bothers me is that someone might add something, I might verify it, and then mav might delete it because he wasn't able to verify it. So what gives? I am not going to make a special note to the talk page for every sentence that says "verified xxx" every time someone makes a modification. And even when we cite articles, we rarely/never use inline superscripts on *every sentence*. I think verifiablility is great, but it should be based on consensus like everything else. One person should not be able to just delete things at will because they didn't verify it. In that case I should be able to delete just about half of Wikipedia because I couldn't verify it. Maybe I just didn't know where to look. Much better would be to make a note in the talk page, which is what I generally do when I don't know anything about a topic and I don't know everything. I really don't like the idea that someone will delete my work just because they don't know where to look to verify it. -- Ram-Man 11:10, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
Sounds to me like "Vote for Deletion" for lines in Articles on talkpages. I guess, that would be unproportional more work...
A compromise: If (e.g.) Mav deletes a line, you cecked it and thought it was ok, you just put it in again with a comment on where you verified it. Would that work? Fantasy 14:43, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
A person needs a chance to defend their work, and they need to know about the dispute. All this *before* we go to the work of deleting it. Give people the benefit of the doubt unless they have a very well-known reputation of causing trouble. -- Ram-Man 16:32, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
I strongly agree with Ram-Man here. You should only delete things when you are reasonably sure they're wrong. But if you just can't verify something, that's no reason to delete (unless the user who added the information is already notorious for inaccuracies). Instead, put a question on the article's talk page, and if necessary, on the user's talk page. Then if the user can't provide a reference, it's OK to delete it. --Wik 15:08, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
What is the problem with deleting it? If the user has evidence, he can add it again, with a link to the evidence. The difference is:
  • The Post a comment - solution is more work:
    1. Mav posts a comment
    2. BillBell has to check, if someone posted a comment regarding his article.
    3. BillBell has to comment Mav's comment
    4. Mav has to check, if someone answered his comment
    5. If no answer: Mav has to delete the line in the Article
    6. If answer: Mav has to check if it is true, then keep or delete.
  • The delete-solution is less work:
    1. Mav deletes, if not verifieble
    2. BillBell has only to check, if someone deleted his line (easyer to spot then talk-pages)
    3. If BillBell has arguments, he adds them when reentering the line
    4. If Mav sees the line again with the arguments, he can decide if keep or delete.
It seems to me less work with the "delete" strategy.
Also keep in Mind: WIKI means QUICK. Wikipedia works, because changes are quick, not discussions and discussion. So delete, add again, that is quick. Fantasy 16:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Again I strongly disagree. I've worked on 30,000 - 35,000 location articles, as well chunks of articles in other areas. I *cannot* be required to watch every single on of those page just to make sure some person, like mav, does not come along and just remove my additions because the could not find a source. If they do disagree with what I've placed, then either a comment should be placed on a talk page or better yet, I should have a comment placed on my own talk page telling me of the disputed information. No one can watch all changes and we don't want articles where every single line has to be cited. If there is a dispute, it should be reached by consensus, not by a unilateral abuse of individual power.
If mav has truly been deleting things because he didn't find a source, then he is abusing his reputation and power. It's great if you can find proof *against* something, but if you simply can't find any information on the topic, leave it for someone who knows about it! If all my work here can be deleted at the abuse of one person, I don't see why I should even contribute to Wikipedia. -- Ram-Man 16:28, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
I happen to watch and monitor a few pages that I care about and in one case I had information deleted from the article (by carelessness) that I had *cited*. Had I not been monitoring the page, that accurate and valuable information would have been lost because no one else ever would have restored it. The last thing I need is a wikipedia policy that allows for this. Careless deletions are bad enough! -- Ram-Man 16:38, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

The situation for anniversary entries is very bad when it comes to verifiability so they are a special case; every single source I've used for day page updates (except for the History Channel website) has errors of fact or omission in about 1/3 - 1/2 of their entries. Therefore every entry has to be thoroughly checked. If the fact cannot be confirmed outside of other "this day in history" type pages, then I delete that entry. In fact most of the deleting I do before posting anything by just slugging through my information source. For any given day this usually only amounts to the deletion or moving of one or two entries along with updates to the other entries and the addition of a dozen or so more entries on top of everything else. It is especially important for me to be extra careful about just what to allow on a day page because I use those entries as a basis to update the corresponding year and subject pages for each event. The last thing I want is for Wikipedia's history articles to be infected by the rampant inaccuracies found in so many "this day in history" pages (including CNN's!).

Besides, everything is still in the page history; I exercise no special powers preventing anybody from resurrecting those entries if they can be confirmed by another person and I usually spend 5-10 minutes trying to verify an entry before giving up. For the sake of wikilove and my own sanity, however, I'll spend upto only 5 minutes trying to verify each entry for now on and then move the ones that could not be verified to the talk page. That way either the original submitter or somebody else might eventually be able to confirm or fix the fact. But I will not tolerate having unverified information in articles, especially when I'm spreading that information across many different Wikipedia articles. It would be irresponsible of me if I did not do this. --mav

Thank you for your explanation. I am glad to hear that you do put the deleted item in the talk page, as this was a main concern. Since I discovered the verifiability policy at Wikipedia I must say that I've had serious misgivings, especially when we discussed Yoism. I just want to make sure that we give people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible and don't go deleting things without allowing a good chance of verifying it. As for dates, as long as it stays a special case I'll be happy. But if it doesn't, you can bet I'll complain about it! -- Ram-Man 16:23, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)