Meowmeowimacat

Your question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy

You asked why your edit at Ebony (given name) was reverted. Since you mentioned being new to Wikipedia, and my reply was getting rather lengthy, I decided to post it here on your talk page, which I've incidentally created, as nobody had gotten around to that yet. This may help you with editing disputes in the future.

The editor who reverted your edit didn't leave an explanation in the form of an edit summary, but presumably he or she felt that the original wording was just as good. When I looked at the page history (see the "view history" tab at the top of articles) to see whether there was an edit summary explaining the change, I also noticed that the same editor created the article and provided most of its contents. That might help explain why the editor was attached to a particular wording. However, editors do not "own" the content that they submit to Wikipedia, and are not entitled to revert all changes to their preferred version without having a reason. That means that you cannot be prevented from editing an article in order to improve it.

When two or more editors disagree about the contents of an article, such as the wording in question here, the usual procedure would be to discuss it on a talk page—usually either the article's talk page, or that of the editor with whose decision you disagree (linked at the beginning of my post here). Bookworm857158367 may not have this project page on his watchlist, and therefore be unaware that you would like him to explain his reversion of your edit. So I recommend asking him on his talk page. It might be a good idea to explain clearly why you thought your wording was better, and then see whether he responds indicating why he thinks his wording is better.

If neither one of you is able to convince the other, you can either choose to defer and move on to other issues and other articles, or post a discussion on the article's talk page setting forth (in brief) both opinions and requesting further input from other interested editors. Since the article is fairly new and hasn't had a lot of contributors, you could then link the discussion here or on other project talk pages that seem relevant and likely to generate a response. If a consensus develops that one wording is preferable, then you can safely go by that consensus.

But if there are different strongly-held opinions, or very few people weigh in or have clear opinions, you might need to refer to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for further steps to take (I've tried to outline the basic process here). Although I would suggest that if you haven't obtained a consensus by that point over a simple wording such as this, it might be better simply to leave things as they are on this particular article, and move on to other things that seem more urgent or less controversial.

Once you move beyond normal talk page discussions, things can get very complicated and time-consuming, and there's a good chance they won't produce a clear result either. If someone feels so strongly about something that they won't budge unless the whole community tells them to, it's probably more trouble than it's worth unless the disagreement is very important. You'll have to decide how much time and effort it's worth for yourself, but that's how I usually approach it—I'll usually move on than initiate a long dispute resolution process over someone's choice of wording. P Aculeius (talk) 16:59, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Meowmeowimacat (talk) 18:05, 24 June 2023 (UTC)