Talk:Tregami language

Stub

At the moment, this article is merely a stub. I have assigned a student to curate the article, developing a bibliography, adding resources from around the web and print materials, and otherwise improving upon it. I am myself going from profile to profile making minor formatting changes here and there.

The impression I get from this community, and particularly from kwami is that such efforts are actually quite unwelcome. That is to say, the moment students start making revisions to stub profiles, s/he summarily reverts them, usually with abusive language against the student. When I've gone to revert the damage s/he has done and improve upon the student's initial efforts, I am branded "disruptive" and an "edit-warrior" and threatened with expulsion. This kind of abuse is not at all conducive towards collaboration or building a community of users. Far from it. Chuck Haberl (talk) 01:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Any actual improvements are of course welcome. But turning articles into gibberish is not. I could spend hours cleaning them up, or I could revert them. I have cleaned up some of them, but there are so many that I've given up doing that. If you want improve the quality yourself, that would be great. But, if you're not going to take the responsibility of doing that, reverting is the easiest way for the rest of us to handle it. If you think particular info should be restored, but don't know how to do it yourself, you can bring it up on the talk page.

I see that you were doing something similar last year. Wikipedia is not a tutorial for teaching your students how to write, but that's what the sandbox could be used for. You might want to go over your students' articles while they are still in the sandbox, and critique them there, so that when they're posted they will withstand review. If they post garbage, they'll be reverted, and if you restore that garbage, you *are* being disruptive. By "garbage" I mean literal gibberish, fake categories, damaged templates, lists of irrelevant information, replacing sources with mirrors of those same sources, claims that show no understanding of the sources, and incoherent collections of unrelated factoids.

Also, if you want to be a responsible member of the community, you should introduce yourself and your class at WP:LANG, and provide a list of the articles your students are working on, so that incorrect edits do not escape notice. — kwami (talk) 01:57, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, but no thanks. I appreciate that you've taken it upon yourself to determine what Wikipedia is and what it isn't, but I'm hardly encouraged to pursue this any further.

There are 83 students and 83 articles which will be submitted by tomorrow. Please feel free to revert away (I'll just check over their work in the previous revisions of the pages that you've reverted back to stubs) but kindly refrain from your nonconstructive and abusive remarks in the future.

Since there are over a thousand unvetted submissions via the Sandbox (presumably because the responsible members of the Wikipedia community such as yourself have done your level best to discourage new contributors), it's best to eliminate this exercise from the curriculum and spare myself and my students from wasting their time here in the future. Chuck Haberl (talk) 02:24, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not taking it upon myself. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a writing tutorial. That should be obvious.

I don't know what you mean by "over a thousand unvetted submissions via the Sandbox". Each account has its own sandbox. There are several ways to indicate that an article is being worked on, so you have the time to fix it up before others revise it.

As I asked when emailing you privately, we'd appreciate a list of the articles being edited, so we know what's going on. And I'm sure many of the submissions will be good quality - I'm just noticing the ones that aren't. — kwami (talk) 02:36, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if you all stopped trying to change the article that I've worked hard on. I provided a good amount of information and respective references regarding the language and its people that was not there before. It's all valid. I thought the whole idea of wikipedia was to provide valid and accurate information, which is especially valuable in this instance because its a moribund language. I don't understand why you're trying to undo my work. I understand it's excessive but all the details that I have provided are legitimate and not misleading. Nonetheless, if you're that insistent on keeping this as a stub because of some sort of emotional attachment to the article, I'd appreciate it if you did so after the 15th. Minnie Rahimi (talk) 06:15, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for trying to improve the article; I am sure your intentions are good. It unfortunately often happens that edits, including edits made with the best of intentions, are reverted on Wikipedia. That you worked hard on the article is not by itself a reason why your edits must remain in place. If you continue to edit Wikipedia and gain more experience of what it is like here, you will realize that sometimes you have to compromise with other editors, or else simply give up, in cases where consensus does not favor your position, which seems to be true here. It is not realistic to impose some arbitrary deadline after which your edits may be reverted. Your proposal suggests a basic misunderstanding of Wikipedia's purpose. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:30, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that working hard is obviously not a good enough reason for my edits to remain in place. HOWEVER, having my accurate and helpful information, that can be supported by well founded references reverted is unhelpful and unnecessary. In addition to that I have been using Wikipedia far longer than you probably think. This is Wikipedia. The article is on Tregami. I have provided accurate facts about Tregami. If you believe the information provided is incorrect or fallacious please go ahead and edit that information out but don't tarnish the content that I have provided simply because you don't like it. Neither of you are providing constructive criticism and are defending your actions by stating biased opinions like calling it "garbage" or saying that I have a "misunderstanding" of how Wikipedia works. If I do have a misunderstanding as to how to edit articles on Wikipedia then please provide unbiased, constructive critique. As editors it is our responsibility to work together to provide accurate and useful information about any of the topics on Wikipedia. Simply defacing my article because of a predisposing bias isn't encouraging or helpful. Furthermore, the consensus is actually 2:2. Minnie Rahimi (talk) 07:16, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Look, I'll be perfectly frank here. You wrote above that, "...if you're that insistent on keeping this as a stub because of some sort of emotional attachment to the article, I'd appreciate it if you did so after the 15th". That just is not how things work here. You cannot set arbitrary deadlines of this kind. It suggests that you are placing the interests of your school project over improving the encyclopedia; that can lead to various kinds of sanctions, and if you are really persistent, possibly an indefinite block for disruption. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:37, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Clearly you have no foundation for your argument because you are running out of sound reasoning. In addition to that you're not even addressing what I said in my previous message. The only reason I said to keep it up until then was because you became very territorial. I'm being cooperative here by saying to provide constructive criticism and suggesting to work together as editors to improve the article and here you are insinuating that you're going to block me simply because I'm being reasonable and you don't want to cooperate. The interest of my school project was to improve the encyclopedia, specifically the article on Tregami, which I did so. No sanctions. I willingly chose to work on this topic and I'm genuinely passionate about it because I'm Afghan myself. However, it would have been incompetent to provide information that I simply knew already without any legitimate references therefore I found information that was valid and provided that. I'm not causing a disruption I have been very respectful and you have just made a threat to block me. Wikipedia can have you blocked for repeatedly attempting to obstruct factual information and references that other users are providing in order to help the general readers here better understand the topic at hand. The information is valid as are the references. So lets be professional and mature and put our personal biases aside for the good of this article. If you have any constructive criticism to add in regards to the information that I have provided, by all means please share your thoughts and stop threatening me. Minnie Rahimi (talk) 08:13, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

It strange that you would call me territorial, given that I have never edited this article until very recently, and that you are the one who described it (on Kwami's talk page) as "my Tregami article." It is not your article; see WP:OWN. I am not insinuating that I am going to block you; not being an administrator, I do not have that ability. Your behavior has been grossly disruptive, whether intentionally or not. I am not "threatening" you by pointing out you could be blocked if you continue behaving this way; I am simply informing you of how Wikipedia works. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 08:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I have been nothing but civil and polite. I don't appreciate the efforts you've made to deface my revisions by repeatedly making unnecessary changes to them despite the content's validity. You didn't provide any constructive criticism in regards to the structure of the article despite me asking for it, but you have criticized me personally, plenty. You haven't been cooperative at all despite my efforts, but you have been making passive aggressive remarks, which is considered grossly disruptive. If you'd like to work on the actual content of the article I'm all for it, but if not please stop verbally harassing me. Minnie Rahimi (talk) 15:42, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Since no one else seems to be bothering, here are a couple of actual issues introduced in this edit and then repeatedly reasserted by you:

• The removal of Ethnologue and Glottolog tags is disruptive.
• "General information" is a poor subheader. "General" information ought to be either included in the lede, or under more specific headings.
• Removing links to related topics such as Katar (Afghanistan) is poor form, even if said articles do not exist yet.
• Terms such as "Ghaziabad District" should not be bolded (see MOS:BOLD).
  • This and many other terms would also be best wikilinked.
• "Is a close relative of X" is an empty assertion that would be better elaborated with actual details.
  • The wording also seems to be directly lifted from Encyclopaedia Iranica, which amounts to copyright violation.
• "Is passed down by word of mouth" is trivial and uninformative.
• Discussion of the professions of Tregami people of is out of place in a linguistic article.
  • Feel free to start the Tregami people article, though.
• The "See also" section is for links to other articles on Wikipedia; external links should go into the "External links" or "Further reasing" section.
• The current "External links" section is malformatted garbage, with non-functional links such as "Category:* languages". The current "Further reading" section is empty and serves no use.
• A useless duplicate "References" section. Once you have added {{reflist}}, there is no reason to re-iterate your sources.

You might regardless want to note that other editors have no responsibility to walk you thru policies, as opposed to you having a responsibility to familiarize yourself with them.

On the other hand, it seems uncharitable to me for other editors to paint the entire editing here as "garbage"; it's at most maybe a third. I'll see what can be saved here.

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:01, 8 May 2015 (UTC)