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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jeh (talk | contribs) at 20:10, 14 March 2015 (→March 2015 warning: rps). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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March 2015 warning

This is the last warning before a block. You have just performed this edit which reverted correct but unsourced information. You are an experienced editor, and you should know that good-faith edits should not be reverted like this; instead, if you are concerned, {{cn}} must be added. You are perfectly aware that currently an ANI topic is open about you, which may or may not result in community placed restrictions, and that this is by far not the first problem about your editing. You have chosen not to participate in the discussion and demonstrated no understanding of problems which lead to the discussion. Therefore, next such edit will result in a block. Thank you for understanding.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:01, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The final warning is unwarranted.Unsourced information may be removed by any editor .I do not see that it is so obviously "correct." Keller's admirers may be exaggerating her role. The article on the development of Basic says it was designed by the two originally named persons and implemented by students.The "Encyclopedia Dubuque" ref says "Sister Keller had assisted in the development of BASIC computer language while at Dartmouth College." The ACM GCSE Bulletin article by Denise Gurer says "At Dartmouth, the university broke the “men only” rule and allowed her to work in the computer science center, where she participated in the development of BASIC." (Update: I changed my cite to the actual ACM paper, not the close paraphrase in a student term paper which is presented as a ref in the Keller article.) "Assisting" and "participating in the development" do not always warrant equal billing. No reliable source has been presented to say she deserves equal billing.A Google search provides no aditional reliable sourcing that she is a co-inventor of Basic This should have been discussed on the talk page of the article. The bare statement that she was a co-equal developed seems unverified. The reference provided so far is inadequate. Edison (talk) 18:55, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

What you describe is a content dispute. There are many ways to resolve content disputes, including posting template and talk page messages. Reverting is not one of them. Not every unsourced information should be deleted, and certainly not minutes after it has been introduced.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:59, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

So WP:BRD is no longer valid? Granted that's not a way to resolve content disputes, but W's. revert here was only the first "R". Jeh (talk) 23:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The problem is no so much a single revert (I would not even care), but the disturbing pattern of consistently reverting IP edits, which is currently being discussed at ANI.--Ymblanter (talk) 00:12, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Questionable and unsourced material may be removed by any editor. Numerous reliable sources credit only Kemeny and Kurtz and do not name any of the students as co-developers. Removing the incorrect statement is proper. Edison (talk) 19:04, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with your interpretation of the policy.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:11, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Verifiability is a policy, not "my interpretation." Some dubious and unreferenced claim that a person is the co-inventor of something may be removed until a reliable source is provided. Edison (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The previous statement was unsourced as well. And, you know, I might even agree with you on this particular issue, this is not my field of research. May be Wtshymanski is versed in all fields of human knowledge and knows perfectly what is correct and what is not, and all his reverts are justified per WP:N - but I doubt it. They were taken to ANI for these mindless reverts a double digit number of times, and right now it looks like smth finally will be done about them. I am actually disappointed that you decided to argue with me here, rather than co come to ANI to contribute to the thread about Wtshymanski. And once we are talking about WP:N, I once have seen around a user who interpreted WP:N in such a way that they were removing large pieces of text where there was no source template (and they even redirected unsourced articles). Mostly they had no idea about content, just removed everything which had {{cn}} or just had no {{cite}} saying that unsourced material has no room on Misplaced Pages. It cost me a lot of efforts to get them indeffed, but now they are.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:19, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

"The previous statement was unsourced as well." Was not. It was sourced in the article body. Jeh (talk) 00:49, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Another reference supporting the article as it is at present. However this is not the venue to discuss the merits and demerits of references. That discussion belongs thataway. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 19:19, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

References

1. http://www.clarke.edu/media/files/Academics/Departments/Computer_Science/First%20PhD%20Additional%20Info.pdf

Your ref just says she "contributed to" the development of Basic and does not say she was the co-developed with Kemeny and Kurtz. Thus no reliable source has been presented to show that the added text was correct. To the contrary, it flies in the face of all the published histories of Basic. Thus its removal is appropriate. I have already opened a discussion on this issue on the article talk page. Edison (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone here seriously doubt that if I had made the change instead of an IP Wtshymanski would have tagged it with instead of reverting it? This isn't about whether Wtshymanski is correct concerning the content dispute (he often is and might very well be in this instance) but rather his behavior towards IP editors, who he considers to be "anonymous cowards". --Guy Macon (talk) 21:26, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Justified reverts of edits, whether of IP edits or not, whether by W. or not, should not be considered as part of any pattern of misbehavior unless there is something else wrong with them. It is not yet decided whether this revert of W's was justified; I feel it was (see talk:BASIC). So, was there something else wrong? I agree completely that disparaging remarks about IPs don't belong in edit summaries, but there was no such here. Nor was there a false claim of vandalism. In short this revert of W.'s seems to have exactly nothing to do with any of the specifics of the current complaint against W. at AN/I, unless you're claiming that any revert of an IP edit by W. has, ipso facto, something wrong with it. Jeh (talk) 00:49, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

What the policy says is “All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution.” (emphasis in original). So according to this, Wtshymanski or another other editor may remove an unsourced statement. In the usual Misplaced Pages practice of placing recommendations alongside policy, WP:V also says “consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step.” (emphasis added) but note the word “consider”, so this part is not policy. Mario Castelán Castro (talk) 15:23, 14 March 2015 (UTC).

Absolutely. I am sure in the material you add to the articles every word is sourced (as opposed to can be sourced, per WP:V) to reliable sources, in an unambigous way, so that any revert of any part of this material is obvious vandalism. However, not every IP still edits at this level, and when they get their edits reverted by Wtshymanski, they not always come back with reliable sourced to fulfil their burden of providing citations. Which apparently Wtshymanski is proud of.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

The IPs' edits were not only unsourced, they were contradicted not just by an existing source (later in the article), but by decades of "everybody knows that". To those (like me) who have been around since BASIC on time sharing systems was popular, and who took their "Survey of Programming Languages" course in the early Seventies, "BASIC was invented by Kemeney and Kurtz" is a "the sky is blue" claim. There is no obligation to go spelunking for sources to support a very-apparently-wrong edit before reverting (not that the sources support this one anyway). Jeh (talk) 17:53, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I already replied to this earlier at this page. Whereas this particular revert may be correct (though it was not obvious to me - and I have a PhD in science, I guess there are many users to whom it was not obvious), I do not believe that Wtshymanski has such a profound knowledge of all fields that they are always correct in reverting IP edits.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:09, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

You also already failed to consider the part about "contradicted by existing source" (the cite later in the BASIC article).

I guess you also were not in the field in the 80s (early microcomputer period). Someone who started with an Altair might be forgiven for thinking that Bill Gates invented BASIC (he wrote the first BASIC interpreter for the Altair). But a few years after that, Kemeny and Kurtz enjoyed a second period of fame when they spoke out against the many incompatible "extended BASIC" dialects that had appeared and came up with a product and a company called "True BASIC". The phrase "the original inventors of BASIC" was included in just about every article on that subject. Keller was never mentioned. ::::: So to "know" that Kemeny and Kurtz invented BASIC does not take "profound" knowledge of the field, only reasonably-frequent reading of Byte magazine or similar during that period.

And if W. didn't have that, then it only takes checking the existing reference in the BASIC article. Which you have yet to acknowledge.

So: Even if later research into sources had backed up the IPs' edit (it has not), this would still have been be a completely reasonable revert. Again: there is no obligation to go to extreme lengths to justify someone else's edit before reverting it under such circumstances. Not even if it's Wtshymanski reverting an IP. Jeh (talk) 18:30, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Right. This is exactly the editing philosophy which led to the decline in a number of contributors. I assure you that I can make your Misplaced Pages existence miserable while staying strictly within policies and not using my admin tools. And, well, for the record, I have written my first BASIC code in 1983.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:37, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

(Not, I think, without violating WP:HOUND, which is part of a policy page. And I wrote my first BASIC code in 1968, so nyah.)

So your position is that there is such an obligation? Even when the subject article contains a reference that shows the IPs' edits to be wrong? That would be an extraordinary claim. Just like the claim that decades of common knowledge about who invented BASIC was wrong. Jeh (talk) 19:00, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

"Decades of common knowledge" is sometimes wrong or at least arguable, which is why we discourage original research.

Who invented the telescope? Galileo Galilei or Hans Lippershey?

Who discovered penicillin? Alexander Flemingor Ernest Duchesne?

Who invented the lightbulb? Thomas Edison or Joseph Wilson Swan?

Who first came up with the theory of relativity? Albert Einstein or Henri Poincaré?

Who first developed the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin or Alfred Russel Wallace?

And then there is Charles Lindbergh. He didn't make the first nostop transatlantic flight. That was Alcock and Brown. In fact, Major George Herbert Scott of the Royal Air Force flew the airship R34 nonstop across the Atlantic with his crew and paying passengers eight years before Lindbergh's famous flight. Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle, and had the best public relations team. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:03, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

All true, but what I said previously was not only relying on "common knowledge". And now it's "original research" to revert a claim that's backed up by an existing reference in the article? Jeh (talk) 20:10, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

(ec) My position it is not an obligation, but it is best practice. And best practices are about statistics. It is ok to revert an edit with an edit summary if you are absolutely sure it is wrong. This might have been the case here (which assumes knowledge of the field considerably above the average). I do revert obviously wrong edits myself. (They are often in the articles I have written, so that I am familiar with the material). But if someone consistently reverts IP edits which are related to very different fields, ingored warnings and gets dragged to ANI on a regular basis - most likely it means that they do not follow best practice, and some of the reverts are not really good.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:09, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Your position that it is "best practice" to assume that an unsourced edit is correct until references are found to the contrary, even when existing references already show that it is incorrect, seems to me to be unreconcilable with WP:V.

But anyway, this thread is about this particular edit. You opened with these words: "This is the last warning before a block. You have reverted correct but unsourced information." By your own statements above you are not a SME, and we all agreed there was no reference for the IPs' edit, and there was (still is) an existing reference that contradicts the IPs'. And there are hundreds more a Google search away.

I don't agree that one should have to do more research than that before reverting an unsourced edit. But even assuming that you're right about that, you quite apparently did not do that much. Had you done so, you would have found those hundreds of refs, and a handful noting only that Keller was one of several students on the implementation team; there is no support for "co-inventor" status.

Instead, you supported your action here with "statistics": "most likely"... "some"... "not really good." Those look more to me like vague impressions than statistics. But whatever you call them, that was your basis for jumping to the conclusion that the IPs' edit was correct and for saying "next instance will result in a block." An admin of all people should not be so eager.

By the way, of the 13 past cases GM linked in the current AN/I thread, none of them have anything to do with a pattern of erroneously reverting IPs. Nor is that charge supported by the five diffs in the current thread: Two of the reverted IP's edits were factually incorrect and the best that can say about a third is that it was an ungrammatic mess that could have been salvaged by copy-editing it and completely changing its meaning. I've seen no good statistical evidence that W. erroneously reverts IPs any more often than other editors. There is certainly a belief that he does, but perhaps that is one of those "common knowledge" things that wouldn't stand scrutiny if it was ever actually examined. Like Guy Macon's list above. Jeh (talk) 20:10, 14 March 2015 (UTC)