David Every
Welcome David Every!
I'm Thryduulf, one of the other editors here, and I hope you decide to stay and help contribute to this amazing repository of knowledge.
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A belated welcome
editHi David Every. A belated welcome to you. I hope you don't mind if I share some of my thoughts on starting out as a new editor on Wikipedia: If I could get editors in your situation to follow just one piece of advice, it would be this: Learn Wikipedia by working only on non-contentious topics until you have a feel for the normal editing process and the policies that usually come up when editing casually. You'll find editing to be fun, easy, and rewarding. The rare disputes are resolved quickly and easily in collaboration.
Working on biographical information about living persons is far more difficult. Wikipedia's Biographies of living persons policy requires strict adherence to multiple content policies, and applies to all information about living persons including talk pages.
If you have a relationship with the topics you want to edit, then you will need to review Wikipedia's Conflict of interest policy, which may require you to disclose your relationship and restrict your editing depending upon how you are affiliated with the subject matter. Regardless, editing in a manner that promotes an entity or viewpoint over others can appear to be detrimental to the purpose of Wikipedia and the neutrality required in articles.
Some topic areas within Wikipedia have special editing restrictions that apply to all editors. It's best to avoid these topics until you are extremely familiar with all relevant policies and guidelines.
If you work from reliable, independent sources, you shouldn't go far wrong. WP:RSP and WP:RSN are helpful in determining if a source is reliable.
If you find yourself in a disagreement with another editor, it's best to discuss the matter on the relevant talk page.
I hope you find some useful information in all this, and welcome again. --Hipal (talk) 00:34, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
- I greatly appreciate the guidance. But the problem virtually all topics, I've had interest in editing were ones that were "out of balance", and offering lies of omission/commission or bias of some sort. (Everything can be contentious, if you want it to be). That doesn't mean I feel the need to provoke, or antagonize, and I can write facts in a pretty neutral tone. But I've never been able to write a fact so neutral that someone who wanted to suppress it, couldn't find some rationalization to do so.
- I used to write on tech, and many views there caused slash-dotting and death threats over the high crime of saying that a Kernel, Command Line and Memory Management system might have been an OS in the 60s and 70s, but today the bulk of an OS resides in layers far above that. You can't even discuss spaces versus tabs, or VI vs. EMACS without a religious war. ;-)
- My efforts in the past on Wiki (long ago), or reading the many talk pages over the decades has always been that Wikipedia has good information... but the best information is suppressed, or in the talk pages under suppressed additions, or buried in the nuances between the lines. And that virtually anything that the left cares about, will be biased left. I don't care that they get to express their take, but there's a certain frustration that no counter-balance or opposing view/bias, or admission of bias, can get past the editors.
- One of the problem about demanding neutrality is that you suppress the reality of where the contention is (and history is inherently contentious/conflicting perceptions). This is getting off-topic, but one of the few things California does really well is their voter pamphlets. They allow side A to write the pro on an issue, and side B to write their rebuttal to it. And Side B to write their opposition to an issue, and side A to write their rebuttal. It offers a brilliant expansion of insights on the topic, even if one side is lying/propagandizing, as you get what they believe or are at least selling and the counter-factuals. But you can't get those insights as easily with the arbiters of neutrality -- especially when they have an inherent bias, and deep understanding of arcane administrative rules they can use to suppress the other side, or send them on goose chases. And that's where much of the bias on wikipedia comes in. Of course that's a bigger philosophical battle that I feel has been long lost, and I'm not even ready/willing to fight. (Wikipedia failed to normalize a pro/con area for many contentious topics in favor of neutral position -- as defined by career academics or people that have a natural bias left... and thus most of those areas reflect that bias).
- So you look at topics like John Stossel felt there's an inherent bias in Wikipedia, and that he felt that while it was once based on Libertarian thought, it's been circumvented by leftist editors that suppress all sources that counter-balance their leftism. That seems highly relevant to an article in Wikipedia on Stossel and his political views, and what he things about this very article on him. But there will be many that will do whatever they can to obstruct it getting in, instead of facilitating it.
- There's an article on Newsguard... which is a website that generalizes all content on a site, based on whether the site is left/right wing enough (based on the biases of who they rank green or red). But let's not make that subjective conclusion based on objective data... and just take them at their word, it's just based on the "quality" of the site. Even so, fundamental to understanding the value of a Newsgard ranking is understanding that their ranking is more granular than an article. Good articles are flagged as bad, because they came from a site they don't approve of. Bad/erroneous articles are flagged as good, because they came from a site they do approve of. And the same article can be aggregated in both places, and ranked differently based on the site level bigotry. (Not content level quality). That's FUNDAMENTAL to understanding how much you might value Newsguard. If you like appeal to authority/popularity fallacies and the consensus, there's nothing wrong with valuing Newguards ranking. But if you are looking for article level objectivity, you're not getting it -- and adding anything that points that out will be blocked by editors that lean left and don't want that truth in there. But if you want to throw barbs at right leaning sites that are blocked by Newsgard, they will facilitate getting the edits included using some administrative/rule based gymnastics. Thus they get their way. The pain level for defending a reality that might not reflect well on a pro-leftist position is much higher than propagating a misconception that reflects poorly on a pro-right position.
- Thus you are correct... I could go off and find a spelling mistake or something far more mundane in some other corner of the site, and might get it passed the editors (especially if it was spun left). But the contribution would be far less valuable, than the lie of omission facilitated by not being able to link Stossels views on wikipedia, to a page on wikipedia about Stoseel's views -- or not being able to add a simple and obvious addition that Newsgaurd does site level generalizations instead of article level qualitative analysis.
- And that's not even getting into REAL contentious stuff... like whether National Socialism is a right or left wing political alignment -- or that right and left wing often mean different things in Europe versus the U.S. so the same definitions might not apply across cultures/geos. (I wasn't going near that topic, but have enjoyed watching the truth/nuances about that get suppressed for 20 years).
- There are a few places where someone figured out how to get a dissension section in, that disagrees with the consensus. And then that gives a place to add things and is half the battle. But the ones that need it the most, are the ones where that's omitted. David Every (talk) 17:15, 24 May 2022 (UTC)