Frownupon

January 2022

Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. I am glad to see that you are discussing a topic. However, as a general rule, talk pages (including user talk pages) are for discussion related to improving (a) an encyclopedia article in specific ways based on reliable sources or (b) project policies and guidelines. They are not for general discussion about the article topic or unrelated topics, or statements based on your thoughts or feelings. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. Thank you. Acroterion (talk) 21:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Pre-history of my suggestion on the talk page of the article about feminism

Once I tried to add information about concurrent definitions of feminism to the article. I based my edit on definitions that were provided by such widely used and authoritative online dictionaries as Cambridge Dictionary, Lexico (formerly Oxford), Macmillan Dictionary, Collins Online Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. I tried to do that, because Wikipedia guidelines said “Be bold” and “Go for it”. My edit was cancelled without any explanation. I tried again and it was cancelled again, this time with the note that I should have discussed my contribution and reached consensus before editing the article. On the talk page, I said (and probably I was wrong) that I intended to restore my edit since it was based on authoritative sources, I was warned against doing so and was told to seek consensus. And I honestly tried: I stated the reasoning and provided the sources and invited the co-editors to discuss my suggestion… I would describe the response as perfunctory and hostile. Unsurprisingly, no consensus was achieved and the talk page section was buried in the archive. And then it occurred to me to study the archive and the revision history. What I've learned was that a lot of significant edits had been introduced to the main article without any discussion whatsoever, let alone reaching consensus. I considered them, I also studied archived talk pages and came to the belief that an edit was not likely to get into the article if it contradicted the opinion of core editorship, so to speak.

So, my suggestion is don't spend your time and effort trying to improve the article, because you're very likely to waste them. It should be emphasized though that I may be biased and inexperienced and that my judgements may be flawed, hence my suggestion that you study the article, the talk pages and the revision history carefully before you form an opinion or you decide what to do next. — Fobemipa (talk) 19:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)