DavidMWalter

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Happy editing! W42 16:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Winsome Sears

You've been reverted three times on an addition you want included in the article. Under WP:BRD, its more than past time that you stopped trying to add it, and instead use the article talk page to create a discussion, and consensus, about the addition. Otherwise, I can only conclude you are edit warring and you open yourself up to sanctions. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• I have blocked you from editing Winsome Sears for a period of one week for edit warring. This means you can't edit it for a week. When the block expires, if you go back to edit warring, you will be blocked from ANY editing for an extended period of time. While you are blocked, you might want to read WP:BRD. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Notice

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

ic

Now that you've put up some info on your user page, that makes a lot more sense. Many journalists have difficulty adjusting to Wikipedia. Journalism is all about 2nd party writing, getting close to the subject; encyclopedias are 3rd party writing. Very different animals. To me, Wikipedia is already too topical, too fast to try to publish information. For newspapers, that is fine, but encyclopedias should be reflective and written after the dust has settled a little bit, when it is easier to tell what is really important. Since encyclopedia only summarize a topic, rather than write exhaustively, it necessitates being concise and only including the parts that really matter, and linking to more information for anyone that wants to dig deeper. Again, very different than journalism. I haven't seen many that have made the jump successfully, to be honest. I assume the reverse would be true as well. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:43, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Actually, Dennis is spot-on (as usual). He's one of the best admins we've had.

I left you a note on Talk:Winsome Sears. I think if you spend a little less time reporting like this is your article and a bit more time learning how we get things done, you will be incredibly successful here and actually enjoy it. Let me know if I can help. I had a pretty rocky start too. Toddst1 (talk) 02:19, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Dennis Brown, Toddst1, thanks for your further comments. I really do appreciate them. DavidMWalter (talk) 03:37, 24 November 2021 (UTC)DavidMWalter

Winsome Sears revisions - observations and questions

As I mentioned in an 11/24/21 comment on the Winsome Sears talk page, I’m writing an essay about my experience attempting to revise the page. I seek responses to the observations and questions below. The feedback will help ensure that the essay adequately and accurately represents divergent viewpoints.

Anything posted on this page potentially may be quoted or referenced in the essay. If you’d like to make either not-for-attribution or off-the-record comments, please send me a message using the “Email this user” link in the left navigation pane. Also use the email link if you prefer to have a phone conversation.

1. The consensus is that none of my proposed content should be added to the page – nothing about gay rights, nothing about gun rights, and nothing about national reaction to Sears’s campaign and election. Is that an accurate statement?
   
3. Why is the COVID-19 topic considered appropriate for the article but the controversial issues I wrote about are not?
5. It’s obvious, in hindsight, that being familiar with Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines would have resulted in a better interaction. However, I don’t get the sense that the final determination to completely exclude my content from the page would have been different had I been expert in the ways of Wikipedia. Agree? Disagree?
7. Among the policies and guidelines I read was “How to lose,” which includes this: “If you're feeling stressed by the dispute, take a break. Wikipedia is not that important, and it will be here tomorrow. Who cares what the page says for the next 24 hours? Plan something fun to do, catch up on your real life, and come back tomorrow, or next week.” My hunch is that even if I were to take a week off, a month off, or a year off, the consensus decision on my proposed Winsome Sears content is final and that revisiting the topic, at any point, would be branded as disruptive. Is that right?
9. My sense from reading the policy and guidance articles is that my Winsome Sears experience is the sort of thing that happens on Wikipedia so frequently as to be an endless source of annoyance and frustration for its veteran editors. It strikes me that, consequently, editors may sometimes end discussion while a newbie is still trying to find a compromise that will work. Yes?
11. My initial revision, which addressed only the gay-rights aspect, was tagged as “possible BLP issue or vandalism.” Vandalism?
13. The following policies and guidelines have come up: BRD, advocacy, edit warring, SPA, undue, structure, COI, timesink, presentism, wikilawyering, 5 pillars, disruptsigns, disruptive editing, tendentious editing, BLP, vandalism and consensus. Are there others you’d like to mention?
15. What other comments do you have?

---

Please enter your responses below, including the number of the observation/question you're commenting on. DavidMWalter (talk) 22:46, 27 November 2021 (UTC)DavidMWalter

• I'm just going to answer #1 in a very general way. Keep in mind, there are no experts here, but I've edited here for 15 years, over 60k edits, and became an admin in 2012. "Consensus" isn't a hard, fixed thing. It isn't singular. There is what is called "local consensus", ie: the feedback from people editing the page, and "global consensus", which is based on feedback from outsiders. When you have an RFC (request for comment), it is broadcast in many places over the wiki and attracts people who are not currently editing the article. Their comments are based on experience from similar articles. It is a larger audience. Sometimes the local consensus and global consensus are the same, sometimes they are not. Currently, there is a small consensus against the edits. What you have to understand is, that doesn't mean they won't be included. As I've said before, encyclopedias are very different than journalism.

In a situation like this, often there is more discussion, and maybe some of the material is included, the parts that are more than talk of the day. Next year, all of it might be in there. If there is one thing that is absolutely certain, it is that consensus changes. It is fluid. Because we have such strong policies on the biographies of living persons (WP:BLP) you will find that, on average, we err on the side of being conservative when it comes to including material that is contentious. This is actually very normal for an encyclopedia. Any encyclopedia. Including material is often a give and take, mixed with patience. Or any editor can start an RFC to get a larger audience to opine. Often this is the best solution. What you can't do is edit war over it. WP:BRD is the gold standard when it comes to adding contentious material and how to deal with it. While it is an essay, it is build on policy and is treated as policy to a large degree.

You can't come in to Wikipedia, put in a couple hundred edits, and begin to understand the culture and politics involved. For starters, there isn't a singular culture. We have a large number of editors from India, the Arab regions, South America, and all parts of Europe. Culture clash is common. Going to other articles, to the talk pages, can make you feel like you are on a whole different website. What binds us is a set of fairly standard policies, and the common goal of creating a free (as in beer, and in speech) educational tool that is free from bias, hyperbole and errors. It is a lofty goal, to be sure, but it's the same goals we had back when Wikipedia was new.

Finally, I've seen journalists write about Wikipedia, experiencing it for a few weeks and making grand assumptions. I've declined interviews because that isn't my thing. I've seen a lot of things published that simply missed the mark in a very big way. They didn't understand the scale of Wikipedia, nor the motivation of those that edit, beyond the superficial reasons. Anyway, I'm not one to discourage, but I would be surprised if you had enough experience here to write a balanced article. You'll be the first if you do. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:21, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Two Possible Answers, and an Unpleasant Comment

I will try to respond to a few of your questions, not in the order in which you have asked them. One question that is different from any of the others, and I can sort of answer, is 6. My first thought was that you might be due an apology, because someone bit a newbie with a comment that had an aspect of a personal attack, because your edits were not vandalism, and we know that they were not vandalism. Then I looked to see who had tagged your edit. Your issue has to do with bot-like behind-the-scenes automation. It was technically "not incorrect" because your revision was to a biography of a living person, and it was a massive edit to a BLP. That question turns out to be about behind-the-scenes automation, and I don't know who should address it.

I don't really know what you are getting at with question 4. It is an unpleasant hostile question, because it is implying that Wikipedia editors have their minds made up about everything and that our opinions do not change.

As to question 7, the policy that you haven't listed is one of our most important policies, which is neutral point of view, which is easy to understand superficially, but has subtleties and is probably the policy that takes the longest to understand in depth. Your edits were reverted because of due weight and balance, which are aspects of neutral point of view. Neutral point of view is the second pillar of Wikipedia. It is known as a non-negotiable rule, but understanding how we interpret it is probably the most important part of understanding the culture of Wikipedia.

Some of your questions are of the nature of "When did you stop beating your wife?" I will refer you not to an essay or guideline, but an article. Please read sealioning.

Read what User:Dennis Brown has written a second time. Then read neutral point of view a second time. Then read them a third time, or don't read them; but if you ask questions where you have your mind made up as to what answers we will give you, then you are sealioning. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Comments by Toddst1

Comments removed along with revoking permission to use them. Toddst1 (talk) 04:49, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks

Dennis Brown, Robert McClenon: Thank you for your responses. I appreciate them, as I do all of the feedback I've received on this topic.

Essay

Wrapping up, here is a link to the essay I wrote: https://www.washingtonblade.com/2022/02/11/wikipedias-sanitized-winsome-sears-article/ DavidMWalter (talk) 16:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

That article has now been added under "This article has been mentioned by a media organization:" at Talk:Winsome Sears. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:22, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

My thoughts as an uninvolved editor: the hostility with which your edits were met is unfortunately characteristic of the toxic culture on Wikipedia, and there is not much faster you could plausibly be expected to learn the norms of Wikipedia. Your changes were reasonable, which is not the same as saying that the community will eventually agree to them, but out of every 100 attempts to add negative information to a contemporary politician's article by a newcomer, yours might be the most intelligent. Editors in these areas will be hypersensitive to contentious changes by newcomers, and if you'd spent years reading the crap I see on a daily basis you might sympathise with why that is, but that is no excuse for the way you've been talked to by some editors.

Nonetheless, it is a source of frustration to me that so many beginner editors start with extremely complicated attempted changes, and end their experience there. If you accept that editing Wikipedia is as complex a skill as any other hobby, and fundamentally different from journalistic writing in the same way that journalistic writing is different from academic writing, then why not accept that you should start with something simple and uncontroversial? This does not mean that you cannot edit LGBT-related or political topics. But if beginners thought of themselves as beginners, they might ask questions like, "what is Wikipedia? What is within scope? What is not?" (The answer to the last question is "most things".) You could ask "what do Wikipedians think is the problem with this article?", before reaching the confidence to say "This article definitely has this problem with it". There's a misconception that Wikipedia is comprehensive or that editors spend most of their time obsessively watching new changes to articles. But I've spent thousands of hours writing new content, and not even got 0.1% through my little niche interest projects (the percentage decreases the more I write, as that gives me more I want to write about). IMO the English Wikipedia as a whole is less than 0.1% of the way to being "finished". Most of it is bad, but still a net positive to the world, and I spend my time trying to make it less bad.

We have thousands of articles tagged as containing statements that are unsourced or unreliably sourced, where it is not that hard to find a good source. Why not ask at the Teahouse, or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies, "what's a good beginner task to do on the topic of X?" I guess the reason is that now is the first time you're learning that these fora exist. But if you are interested in becoming a Wikipedia editor, tell me on my talk page what topic area you want some good beginner tasks within, and I'll give you a few things from my thousands-of-entries-long mental backlog of what I want to write about, or do 10 minutes of research and come up with some good ideas. — Bilorv (talk) 20:40, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Bilorv: Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for the suggestions, Bilorv. I agree with you that Wikipedia is a net positive to the world and I am deeply appreciative of the mind-blowing amounts of time and effort you and other veteran editors have dedicated to the project. For what it's worth, I edited three other Wikipedia articles following the Winsome Sears mess. Small, unimportant edits to mundane topics -- no controversy! It's a start. DavidMWalter (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

No edit is unimportant if it improves the encyclopedia. In fact, I tend to avoid heavily edit articles on purpose. If there are 100 editors sparing for edits, I don't think my additions are really all that needed. I personally love working on core articles: animals, places, minerals, or more obscure articles. These (imo) are the most important articles we have and fewer people edit them, and in some cases, none. Or I start new articles and let others flesh them out. I started the Swedish Food Act 2006 simply because I got tired of seeing a red link in the snus article. (snus is one of my guilty pleasures). It's only a stub, but you have to start somewhere. I added some images to Checker Motors Corporation because they were at Commons, but not in the article, and I think the history, and design, of the cars is cool. Acme, Texas is a ghost town, which interests me, and the whole article was just two sentences, so I went and dug up a little info and added it, just enough so now if you read it, you have a better understanding WHY it's a ghost town. No one else might have done these edits for years, so while they aren't high profile articles, if a high schooler looks them up tomorrow, he will have a better understanding of the topic. That's the key: The reader. They are the most important person of all, so every positive edit matters. None are unimportant. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 02:55, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: Thanks for sharing your additional thoughts on this, Dennis. The high schooler or middle schooler doing research for a civics assignment was my primary motivation for pursuing the Winsome Sears edits with such passion. But I'm basically a dilettante with a voracious appetite for interesting tidbits of information -- such as mastodon fossils found in Texas or the fact that snus even exists. I'm grateful that you and others (including Quora contributors) are taking the time to share your knowledge and expertise. DavidMWalter (talk) 19:27, 18 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

I got to learn a new word, "dilettante", lol. We are all rookies in the fields we edit in, with a few exceptions. I'm expert in a couple of fields, practical application of ultraviolet, for example. But I seldom edit UV articles. One, it doesn't interest me since I do it during the day, and two, I find it hard to not include original research and fight over entry of information I KNOW is true. "Dammit, UVB at 285nm WILL trigger the UVR8 protein, professors in major universities that I work with tell me so!" but that isn't a "reliable source", so I'm better sticking to topics I know little of, which is way more fun. It also means Wikipedia may eventually be more complete than say Britannica, but most of the articles will never be as verified, nor as professional. Wikipedia is more dynamic, and does tend to have better lists of sources, however. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:27, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: Practical application of ultraviolet isn't something that's caught my attention. At least not yet.... DavidMWalter (talk) 16:16, 19 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

I sell the Flower Power to boost THC levels in indoor cannabis by 15-25%. I sell the Universal UV lamp to pig farmers who show their pigs, so they can tan them, to look their best. There are many other uses and bulbs for them, but those two are usually the one's that catch people's attention ;) Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: I had never thought much about light bulbs until I discovered that my birds needed a specific kind of light. I learned a lot about the UVA, UVB and such. Got the right bulbs, but promptly forgot all the science. 01:36, 21 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

Buy from a reputable dealer, and don't have to know the science. I don't sell those types of common UV bulbs (bird, reptiles, etc), I design my own and sell for the more obscure uses, highly specialized, and much higher power ie: hundreds of watts. I've got 30 years in it, still learning every day. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 02:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown:I imagine that "Can you shed light on this?" and "I can shed light on that!" have come up more than a few times in 30 years. DavidMWalter (talk) 22:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

DavidMWalter, : I'm sorry you caught some flak here on some of your initial forays at Wikipedia. Perhaps if you stuck around long enough to realize that there are a lot of pranksters and other malevolent elements who act here for their own reasons and attempt to damage the encyclopedia, you might forgive some of the more WP:BITEY responses you got, possibly from editors who are on edge or burnt out from having to deal with too much dross.

I think you've gotten a lot of good feedback here, not least the in-depth account from Bilorv. You might get more feedback if you want it, but from your "Wrapping up" comment above, it isn't quite clear to me if that's a sign-off to your Wikipedia career, or just an alternative expression to, "In sum...". If you don't plan to be around anymore and want to let people know that, there are "templates" (bits of mostly pre-fabricated boilerplate) that you can add at the top of your page, such as {{Retired}}, or for something more temporary, {{Wikibreak}}. If you want something more drastic and permanent, there's also {{Vanish}}.

That said, I hope you stick around, and perhaps when you've had more experience here, you'll find that things are a bit more subtle and positive than you had first thought. There is a pretty large volunteer community here striving to create something of value mostly for the benefit of others, and doing the best they can, while suffering plenty of gratuitous slings and arrows.

One housekeeping note: as opposed to the notices you get automatically when someone writes on your page, if you write back to them here, they won't hear about it unless you notify them. The way to do that is described at Help:Notifications, and the simplest way is to use the {{Reply}} template; that will notify the user in the same way that you are notified, when this message first appears on your page. Mathglot (talk) 01:37, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Thanks, Mathglot. And thanks for all your contributions to Wikipedia. Truly admirable what you and others are doing here.

In saying I was wrapping up, I meant with regard to the Sears article. I'll likely made occasional contributions to Wikipedia in the future. DavidMWalter (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter

I just want to say, I appreciate you taking the time to write up your experience. I've read a fair number of scathing Wikipedia writeups that misrepresent or misunderstand the way the site works, but I thought your account of your experience was clear and even-handed. I especially appreciate that you linked to diffs and to relevant policy pages. I'm sorry that you were treated so dismissively; I think the editors you interacted with probably should have made more effort to assume good faith and work towards a consensus. I think Bilorv makes a good point that you might have triggered a sort of "immune response" by ticking a few high-risk boxes: new editor, editing a BLP article at the intersection of two contentious topic areas (LGBT and American politics). But that's just an explanation, not an excuse. I hope you will stick around. I promise, it gets better! Colin M (talk) 19:06, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@Colin M: Thanks, Colin. And thanks for your dedication to Wikipedia. I think that you and the other veteran editors (supportive, hostile and in-between) who have put in HUGE amounts of work on this site are incredible people. DavidMWalter (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2022 (UTC)DavidMWalter