Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:09, 17 October 2008

Welcome!

Hello, Mervyn Emrys, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! 10:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Law

Don't you see your damn book you are so fond of is already cited in "References"! Stop re-adding it in "Further Reading"! Some common sense at last!--Yannismarou (talk) 06:55, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Advice

Hi Mervyn, sorry about the hassle. BTW, as a tip, please consider creating a userpage, at User:Mervyn Emrys. Even if it's just a couple lines that say what your interests are, it's helpful. Userpages are sort of like the "business cards" on Misplaced Pages, they're a quick way that users learn about each other. Also, having a user page which is a "blue link" instead of a "red link" can help strengthen your voice in discussions. --Elonka 00:08, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Userpage looks perfect, thanks! --Elonka 21:05, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Analysis

Mervyn Emrys, hi, I've been looking into the situation with Yannismarou to try and figure out where things went wrong. I'd like to start with an apology to you, since it appears you got the short end of the stick on this one. I hope you'll allow me to try and explain what happened, and that you'll be willing to give Misplaced Pages another chance!

I'm going to be making a few assumptions here, so if I get anything wrong, please don't hesitate to let me know... Basically, as regards the Law article, what appears to have happened is that since mid-September, you have been attempting to add some information, and a relevant source. Then you'd check the article a few hours or days later, see that the information and/or source had inexplicably disappeared, and so you helpfully added them back. This continued for quite awhile, as you kept trying to add the source, or the paragraph.

Things were quiet for a couple weeks, then you tried to add the source again a couple days ago, and Yannismarou blew up at you. You replied to him in a similar tone, and then started a thread at ANI, the admin noticeboard, Misplaced Pages:ANI#Uncivil comments discourage participation.

What you may have been unaware of, is that each time you were adding the information, Yannismarou was removing it shortly afterwards. He was probably unaware that you were a professional, as he was also clearing out a lot of vandalism from anonymous editors at the same time. Also, since you didn't have a userpage, your name showed up as a "redlink" in his watchlist, which may have also led to some perception on his part that you were just another one of the vandals targeting the article.

Another probably-unknown-to-you point of stress, is that the Law article, previously identified as one of Misplaced Pages's best articles since early 2007, and one that has even been featured on the Misplaced Pages mainpage, was currently under review as to whether or not it should be allowed to maintain its coveted "Featured" status. So a full out review has been going on, at Misplaced Pages:Featured article review/Law, since mid-August. These reviews can be very stressful to the key editors on an article (such as Yannismarou), as their work can be mercilessly shredded and critiqued by other editors. This also probably had something to do with his impatience. From his point of view (this is my guess), he was fighting a multi-front war, trying both to keep the vandals and POV pushers out of the article, and also trying to satisfy the FA reviewers. In the case of your own edits, he kept seeing some redlinked editor he didn't know, add a book to "Further reading", when the book didn't need to be listed there, as it was already in "References". So he'd remove it. Then you, unaware as to why the information had been removed, kept re-adding it. He kept removing it, you kept re-adding it, and round the cycle went. He was also probably nervous that one of the FA reviewers would see the unneeded listing there, and that they'd add it to their critiques: "Unneeded book listed in Further Reading", so he was trying to avoid that, and it was stressful to him that he had to keep a close eye on the article and keep removing something that in his view didn't need to be there. What Yannismarou should have done somewhere along the line was to recognize that you were acting in good faith, notice that you were a new user, and he should have posted a brief note on your talkpage explaining the problem, which would have saved both your time and his. He could have also invited you to participate in a discussion at Talk:Law (which you can get to on any article by clicking on the "discussion" tab). However, he chose not to do those things. As for why, I can't really say, except that he may have just been overwhelmed with everything else going on.

In case you're wondering how I figured all this out, here were my sources of information:

• At your talkpage, in the lefthand "toolbox" menu, I clicked on "User contributions". This shows me every single thing you've ever done on Misplaced Pages. This "contrib list" can be checked at any time, for any user. Since I am an administrator, I do this routinely, multiple times per day, so can quickly spot patterns that tell me how experienced a particular user is, where they spend their time, and what kind of edits that they are making. Your list, though still fairly short, looks extremely good! It's a refreshing change from the lists of vandalistic edits that I often have to wade through.  :)
• At the Law article, I clicked on the "History" tab at the top of the page, which showed me every edit that's ever been performed on the article. Using my browser's "Search" function (in Firefox that's Ctrl-F), I searched on the name "Mervyn", and also clicked the "Highlight all" button at the bottom of the browser to make each occurrence easy to find.
• Also at your talkpage, I clicked on the "history" tab, to see all the posts that had ever been placed at your page, to see who has been talking to you (if anyone).

Anyway, I hope that this helps explain things a bit. I still can't say for sure why Yannismarou acted as he did, though I can assure you that he's not always like this, and that he's done a lot of wonderful work on Misplaced Pages in the past. He just seems to be more stressed than usual right now.

Based on what I've seen in your contribution history, you're definitely the kind of editor we want to have on Misplaced Pages, and again, I am very sorry that we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Please, I hope that you'll give us another chance, as we'd really like you to stay.  :)

If I can answer any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask, --Elonka 23:03, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Getting started with Misplaced Pages

In addition to the links in the welcome message, you may find this helpful: User:WLU/Generic_sandbox --Ronz (talk) 21:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Ronz (talk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Dispute Resolution Process

Hi, just a quick note. The first real step in dispute resolution regarding civility is to try and iron things out directly between editors on their talk pages. As we cannot see "body language" in the typed word, there are often possibilities of misinterpreting what has been typed. If you cannot resolve your differences, it is then best to go to Wikiquette Alerts, where non-involved editors can look at both sides and hopefully say either "this looks like a problem", "this seems to be an misinterpretation", or even "I wouldn't go anywhere further with this" and either make suggestions, or at least help mediate. If WQA cannot assist, your next step might be WP:ANI, which is asking for direct intervention. Unfortunately, you seem to have missed the first 2 steps, and went directly to ANI - you can see that the results of the ANI that you filed have been rather negative on the Misplaced Pages project as a whole. Please try to assume good faith and work together to solve issues, rather than going right to "the police". BMW(drive) 11:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that Mervyn Emrys's actions were "negative on the Misplaced Pages project as a whole". And, he did go to Yannismarou's talkpage. Personally, I think Mervyn's choice to go to ANI so quickly was perhaps a bit hasty, but also fairly effective. He presented his concerns concisely and understandably, and garnered the attention of other uninvolved individuals who have been helping to look at the dispute. Granted, it might have been better to spend more time first trying to communicate directly with Yannismarou, as well as going to the article talkpage to try and ask, "Hey, what's going on here, why do my edits keep being deleted?" But considering that Mervyn is a fairly new editor, I think his actions were reasonable. --Elonka 13:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Did you see the message he left on Yannis' talk page? It was anything but civil. Instead of "who the hell do you think you are," try leaving something civil like "Why do you keep reverting my edits?" 207.80.142.5 (talk) 18:17, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Coal mining

Hello. There has been a small discussion on the AN/I thread you started about material you added to this article in September. The copyright status of the material might need clarifying. You yourself are probably the best placed person to discuss this in private with an administrator. Even if the material was self-written or has been released into the public domain, it is still probably better to paraphrase it/shorten it when adding it to wikipedia rather than copy-pasting 7 pages as you did. As this was probably your first and largest contribution to wikipedia, and the material was a valuable and scholarly addition by one of the world experts on the subject, I think that this issue should be easy to clarify. I could recommend User:Quadell for copyright issues; he has been very helpful to me in the past. Happy editing, Mathsci (talk) 15:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

There are no copyright issues here. The material used was always in the public domain and is cited to its source, a government document.Mervyn Emrys (talk) 16:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello. You should still go through the procedures suggested by Hans Adler on WP:AN/I to confirm that this is a government document. Please read WP:V, WP:RS. The book you cite is not evidently published by the US government. Aside from that, you cannot simply copy-and-paste seven pages of an article of yours (or anybody else) onto wikipedia. You can surely make a summary of these seven pages. Please be aware that there are many academics editing wikipedia. Unfortunately they cannot use authority to justify their contributions, even if they are world experts in the subject. They are obliged to cite sources. This might seem strange, but it is how wikipedia works. It can make writing wikipedia articles very time consuming. If you do not provide this verification, the material will probably be removed. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 18:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Mathsci, apparently neither you nor Hans Adler understands that there can be no copyright infringements of any kind on U.S. government documents that are and always have been in the public domain. They are literally public property (common property) and there is no legal requirement that text quoted from them even be referenced. Everybody owns them. Yet I did cite the source four times in the material I placed in the coal mining article, which I think improved the article considerably. Would you have me add a reference to every single paragraph? That seems a bit cumbersome and repetitive.

If I thought it could be summarized without losing something valuable, I would have done that. There is no repetition. Every sentence is new info. Perhaps you think the material is too long because you are associated with the coal industry and don't like it when someone tells the truth about the environmental effects of coal mining? Or maybe you are just not interested in this topic at all?

For what its worth, my repeated efforts to include the reference and two sentences (not the measely one that remains) in the Law article were due to my apparently mistaken impression that somebodies server backed up the previous version after it crashed, thereby inadvertently deleting my additions. So I merely added them back. After a couple iterations it became evident somebody anonymous was intentionally deleting the changes. But NOBODY ever posted a message on that discussion board or on my talk page explaining why, until I received the nasty message in my complaint.

Please forgive my naivete, but I could not believe this was the way Misplaced Pages was intended to work.

Mathsci, you seem more interested in "outing" the identity of an anonymous person than in furthering the advancement of knowledge on this topic. Yet you preserve your own anonymity. Even after making outrageous accusations on a thread that is now archived, preventing me from responding to them.

In my brief experience with Misplaced Pages, I've found it to be a truly hostile work environment, where much of the talk flatters one's friends and slams the new kid on the block--kinda like junior high school.

Frankly, I expected more from you folks. Perhaps I was too idealistic. I see now that Misplaced Pages is not about knowledge, but more about social status and interactions with those with whom you agree. You have created your own culture, and your own arcane language (the sociologists among you must find it fascinating). But it just looks a lot like mobbing to me.

I am completely willing to remove ALL of my contributions to Misplaced Pages, and to refrain from posting any future contributions.

I stand behind my previous statements about overly proprietary editors. If this behavior is tolerated or condoned, Misplaced Pages will gradually become a smaller community, not a larger one.Mervyn Emrys (talk) 21:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't wish to out you, simply to help you. I found the copyright on amazon . It is not public domain: the copyright belongs to Michael S. Anderson, not the US government. So in that case the author can release it into the public domain. Hans Adler described the way of doing this (ORTS tickets, etc, which an administrator like User:Quadell can help with). However, copying and pasting seven pages from a book, arguing that it cannot be summarised, seems unreasonable and disingenuous, whether you are the author of the material or not. Mathsci (talk) 05:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

A few extra remarks. I have kept my anonymity because I occasionally edit articles on fringe science, where off-wiki attacks can happen, sometimes rather nasty. If you enable your wikipedia "e-mail this user" on your preferences page, I'm quite willing to disclose who I am. I completely understand your frustration, but editing wikipedia can be fun, most often when creating new articles or fleshing out stubs. It's probably best to stay off WP:AN/I in a minor dispute with another editor about a duplicated reference, particularly in a featured article like Law where the wikipedia style guidelines are applied fairly scrupulously. Certainly one important policy that applies in particular to you is here - WP:Expert retention: Misplaced Pages needs you! Mathsci (talk) 09:09, 17 October 2008 (UTC)