David Hawley

Your reversion to Road Racing

I refer to the above where you reverted my contribution in this edit with the spurious edit summary "it removed useful information and includes statements that are not wholly accurate"

All I added was to clarify the term road racing as it normally refers to hard tarmac, not public roads, by adding a small intro piece. What exactly are you objecting to - what is not wholly accurate and what information was removed? The existing content was merely shifted to a point below with small ce to suit. I don't propose to edit-war with you over this but you have to take responsibility for your edits and I can see that you have a very low edit count over 9 years. I have little time presently and I have stopped contributing prose (only doing simple edits not contributions) and have not even signed-in unitl now, but I am a specialist editor mainly regarding classic bikes and road racing roughly 1955 to 1985, so I do have some basic knowledge of post-war circuits and airfields and my work is seldom, almost never, reverted. Look forward to your explanation or perhaps your self-reversion if no reasons can be provided? You can reply here. Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 10:56, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I've now looked at the history to find the prose I shifted was added by yourself late last year.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 11:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I've now decided to go ahead with a WP:BRD sequence, as you have only made 4 edits in the last 14 months so I have no way of anticipating when you might be logging-on. I still maintain it is a spurious edit summary as no information was removed, but I have tried to anticipate (by a process of lateral-though) what the "not wholly accurate" comment was intended to refer to; accordingly, I have made small additions/clarifications separately in the hope I am guessing correctly, together with other improvements. Please take it to the article talk page and unequivocally state any further objections.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 11:27, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Apologies , I'm not used to the talk facility on Wikipedia and only an occasional contributor. My concerns were regarding your comments about most circuits being in parkland, which I don't belive to be true. Certainly in the UK, Oulton Park and Cadwell are of the type and possibly Brands Hatch and Donington, but Snetterton, Silverstone, Croft, Pembery, Crail, Thruxton and others are not. I would say that the majority are not, but it depends on your definition of parkland. I also objected to the removal of the information on why real-road racing had been banned in the UK though I do see that most of this has now been restored. By the way what relevance does the number of edits I make have? Surely the criterion is to be accurate? David Hawley (talk) 16:16, 27 April 2015 (UTC) DH

To address the latter comment firstly, one has to acquire wider knowledge of Wikipedia and this only comes through experience (although some go daft - one boasting an edit count of 40,000 when it turns out he's saving the page every two or three minutes with minor text additions); I removed no information, I only added to it, hence there is an issue with your accuracy. The prose relates to 'purpose-built' short circuits between 1 and 3 miles mostly akin to parkland, to give the reader an overview. There was no road racing (tarmac, circuit racing) in America until the 1960s, when they started using any open spaces improvised and coned-off - parking, airports, etc. and so we have to anticipate the reader does not have any historical background knowledge. Thruxton, Snetterton, Silverstone are not purpose-built but are re-purposed airfields, and were covered in the next paragraph, which I duly clarified somewhat. One article I amended I think used the word "mountainous" (can't remember what article) which was plain misleading - even Scarborough is perhaps only verging on mountainous. I have changed the word "mostly"(parkland) to 'often', it's a Wiki and easy to tweak, but it's still a compromise, an overview which cannot cover all eventualities, just the generality. Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 02:20, 29 April 2015 (UTC)