User talk:Gabriel syme

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how to preserve the best parts

You asked on helpdesk, "how to preserve the best parts".

The best parts are the referenced facts. Anything else is useless; if the reader cannot verify it (by checking the refs), then it's meaningless.

If you want to grab an article by the horns to 'fix it', step 1 is removing everything that has no reference.

In many cases, that means there is not much left, but such is life.

Then you can find all information about that topic that is verifiable in appropriate reliable sources, and add it.

I guess this will sound a bit idealist, but it is policy. I guess you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Look at any featured article WP:FA, and every single fact should be verifiable. Sure, not everything needs to be a 'featured article', but it's a marker to head towards.

A short, well-referenced article is far better than a long unreferenced one. Anything not referenced can be removed by anyone at any time... it's all about the refs.

And welcome. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 06:31, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Two very fresh wildlife FAs are golden jackal and black honeyeater. Both have copious references and no further reading. The bibliography section in the former is to list sources which have multiple references to different pages Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In my chemistry class, a student reading the notes asked the lecturer for some 'copious water'. He nipped out the back, filled a bottle and labelled it appropriately; "Copious water: USE SPARINGLY" 86.20.193.222 (talk) 07:26, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Advice much appreciated, WP:FA will be a great guideline for really any editing I do on here. Gabriel syme (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comment, actually

I saw your comment at ANI and your retraction of it. Honestly, I don't think you needed to retract it at all; even the anecdote you told wasn't over the top. The only thing that you could have been called out on was that the anecdote gave the impression that you supported a sanction in order to punish them, and an old bit of Wikipedia policy is that sanctions aren't supposed to be punishments, but serve to protect the encyclopedia and editing community from disruption (see WP:NOTPUNISHMENT). That said, the term "protective" as applied to sanctions has almost become a term of art on Wikipedia, and you could argue for quite a long time about whether something is punitive, protective, neither, or both.

I know wandering into unfamiliar territory in some of Wikipedia's administrative apparatus is intimidating. I just want to say that you were pretty much dead on in your assessment, that their activities aren't benefiting the encyclopedia. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being inexperienced and commenting at ANI or other noticeboards, and I encourage you to continue participating if you find it interesting. As I said, I actually disagree with the other person's assessment that your comment was insulting or unhelpful, though now that you've struck it I'd leave it stricken rather than make a big deal out of it (it looks like the block proposal is going to fail anyway).

Seriously, though, you absolutely do belong at ANI if you are interested and willing to contribute analysis to a situation. Just know you absolutely aren't going to get blocked or in any other kind of trouble even if you do break some rule (provided it's not a thread you started or a thread targeting you, obviously). We all make mistakes, and though there are some hotheads that will come along and jump down your throat for saying the wrong thing, the actual regulars there are a lot nicer to newbies than you'd think. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 07:03, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mendaliv:Appreciate the response... Briefly, I'm going to take care of real life and bring a fresh set of eyes to the whole thing in the morning. I might have some questions, and you seem the type that wouldn't mind answering. Thanks. Gabriel syme (talk) 07:28, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good; real life is far more important than anything here anyway. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 07:50, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mendaliv:Thanks again for taking the time. Conflict resolution is an interest of mine, and I find the administrative process frankly fascinating. To be honest, I didn't find myself so much intimidated by some of those responses as much as it made me see that maintaining a reputation for helpfulness could be incredibly useful here. Perhaps I was a little close to that particular issue, I've been having problems with one of the involved editors for months and don't quite have the toolset I need here yet. I've shockingly managed to avoid online discussions and social media for most of my life, so even, uh, 'dealing with strangers online' has a bit of a learning curve. The administration noticeboards are definitely something I'm interested in at some point, and I plan to keep lurking them, but I was thinking of cutting my teeth in content disputes rather than conduct disputes... Would you mind pointing me towards whatever projects are geared toward that? Also... I've being doing random page edits recently, and I find myself on a lot of incredibly obscure pages with very low pageviews. Um, would many in the community view this as effort that could best be spent elsewhere? I'm of two minds myself, but part of the reason I'm doing it is also to see exactly what this thing is made of. Anyway, any thoughts much appreciated. Gabriel syme (talk) 18:18, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A place I spent a lot of time, but that is pretty low-traffic these days, is Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests, which is kind of a grab-bag of editing questions, requests for input in content disputes (which, crucially, aren't allowed at ANI), and often something of a "noticeboard switchboard" insofar as the response frequently can involve sending the requestor to a different page. It's something like Wikipedia:Help desk, but typically more focused on dispute resolution. I worked for a long time there before I really transitioned to ANI. There are other ancillary low-level dispute resolution forums that can be a good place to get started. Wikipedia:Third opinion is one. Finally, you can always lurk the more specific content dispute noticeboards, though some can be very slow-moving. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard, Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard, Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard are some of the more active ones. Participating at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion is something of a traditional pathway towards becoming more familiar with article content issues and the associated disputes, though I think a lot of participants can get kind of snappy. Finally, though I never got into it, Wikipedia:Teahouse is apparently something of a fixture for helping new and inexperienced editors kind of work their way into the community.

As to your question about articles to do work on, really people don't worry that much about whether you're working on something that gets lots of page views. Reputation on Wikipedia is more a matter of people seeing you around and participating in discussions, though being involved in one of the quality content reviewing processes is considered a good thing (like WP:GA/WP:FA), though I'll admit that for myself, I've always been confused about how those processes work in practice and what they consider quality work (that said, WP:DYK is very easy to get into and has pretty straightforward standards, so maybe that's something you can look at). If, more generally, you're wondering what sorts of articles to work on, that kind of depends on you, what interests you, and what sort of article work you want to do.

My personal advice, though, is at least until you get pretty quick at editing, it's best to keep away from those "current event" type articles, like ongoing natural disasters, civil disturbances or celebrity deaths... it can be really easy to get swept up in the moment and energy of editing and reverting those articles, and when you make a mistake there you can wind up with half a dozen people telling you off in all kinds frustrating ways. One common problem, for instance, is unconfirmed celebrity deaths; dozens of people will add the date of death, change present tense to past tense, etc., but until we have a reliable source for the celebrity's death and it's cited in the article, we're not supposed to change the article to reflect it. So a major aspect of editing celebrity articles becomes reverting those edits and warning the people not to add unsourced claims, and then you get them coming back later crowing on your user talk page that they were right that the celebrity had died. My point is that even when you're right, people can confidently act like you're wrong, so you've got to have your finger on the relevant policies. And when you're wrong, some people will act like you've committed a capital crime. So it helps to have experience applying the relevant policies on slow-moving, relatively low traffic pages before jumping into fast paced pages, because when you're wrong, it's helpful to quickly give your mea culpa and just get back to what you were doing.

At any rate, I hope this is all helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions! —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 21:01, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mendaliv: I hope you don't mind the stale response. Had a busy couple weeks and then got brought low by this pestilential flu that's going around. Can't really complain though, I guess it's actually killing people this year. As for you're suggestions, that is damn helpful, I appreciate you taking the time.

Sooooooo... WP:DYK really struck me as interesting. It's quite rare that I visit the front page, but I took a look at the stats and it's averaging 10 million hits a day. What a great project to be involved in, the actual front page! I went ahead and lurked it for a few days and, well, bluntly, got to observe this complete and utter madness, and followed it to this further insanity. Uhh... wow. Yeah. I absolutely think I could be a helpful voice, especially when discussions reach that point. It's funny, while I disagree with how the now-on-break editor handled almost every step of the process, I would've voted against the proposal in it's entirety on pragmatic grounds. ~~Many trump supporters are outright trolls~~ and I think any sort of poke at him on the front page would result in a net negative effect on the overall project. In other schizophrenia, I happened to notice this 'psa' at ANI, and that's quite a doozy as well.

Some of the other projects pique my interest, and once I get down to contributing more seriously I'll take a look at them and see what feels best. WP:AfD Certainly looks interesting, and might be good experience dealing with longtime editors who can be, yknow, kind of snappy. It's funny you mention WP:Teahouse, if I remember right I got a pretty snappy answer their to the first question I ever posted, so I just go to the helpdesk now and I've had no issues there.

Yknow, it's funny that you mention the 'current event' type articles... I got vividly caught up in working on this breaking article as it was coming out live, and yeah, I definately ran into some of the issues you mentioned. On the other hand, I learned alot of useful stuff in very short order. But yeah it might be a while before I involve myself again in something that current.

In other news, I was informed just this morning that a local acquaintance is working on some sort of feminism wiki-thon, and I've been asked to participate, especially helping people new to editing get a handle on the basics. Once I have more details I might come to you looking for advice, uh, not to blow smoke but you're one of the more helpful people I've run into here. Anyway, thanks again for your help, I should hopefully be finding more time to contribute here. Gabriel syme (talk) 20:07, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Funny you should mention the EEng case. I participated in that at AE and was frustrated with how it was handled, even if I agree with you that it was probably a poor idea of a DYK hook. The vast majority of DYK hooks are simple, inoffensive, and to be fair, intentionally a bit bland. Like any new activity, it's one that should be eased into. I think the DYK credits I have are examples of fairly simple inoffensive ones; coated urea fertilizers for instance, or Charles de Visscher. Only comment I would make is to watch out saying things like "Trump supporters are largely trolls", not because I think it's a bad opinion to have, but because there's a set of discretionary sanctions on American politics; basically the arbitration committee concluded that it's necessary to keep politicial divisiveness off the Wiki. Even if I don't think someone should be sanctioned for that sort of opinion (on either side), you saw in the EEng case what can happen when someone even misinterprets a statement about a politicial topic. Not trying to make you worried about that, just an issue to be careful about. As to that "PSA" thread, I don't really get it, but I'll say that WP:INVOLVED is a really thorny area right now, and I think there'll be a reckoning on that policy will be coming someday.

Strange your experience with the Teahouse but I am not terribly surprised things are a little less friendly than they could be. I am very glad you reached that conclusion on working current events articles—you can learn a lot very quickly, but mistakes get magnified and people can freak out. But the experience is invaluable if you can avoid discouragement.

Wikithons or whatever we're calling them now are awesome. I actually attended a talk a couple years ago on how to organize and manage them. It was based around WP:SBK: The Systemic bias kit, which aims at helping people from diverse backgrounds and diverse interests fill in the gaps in Wikipedia's coverage in their areas of interest, and in so doing attract new editors. Anyhow, I'm glad you found my comments helpful, and I'm glad you're sticking around! Feel free to bug me again if you have any more questions. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 02:02, 9 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mendaliv: As far as ~~Trump and trolls~~, and discretionary sanctions, I definitely get that I should take care, one question though... Would those sanctions apply to an informal discussion like this on a user talk page? Cause yeah, I would never make the mistake of saying something like that in a real content or conduct discussion outside of userspace. One other question... It's not actually disruptive, more of a nagging irritation, but I've got a user who I've had conflict with in the past, and it's really hard to say he's not stalking my contribs? He's backed off some lately so I'm hoping it will slowly taper off to nothing but damn. Anyway, as I said, it's not a real disruption just... really grosses me out. But perhaps it's just part of growing thicker skin here. Thanks again! Gabriel syme (talk) 18:58, 10 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm of the opinion that they shouldn't apply on user talk pages, but you never know what people will do. Like, I think the rule to follow should be WP:POLEMIC: Don't start posting polemical things anywhere. But, the American Politics discretionary sanctions could be applied to any conduct anywhere on Wikipedia (though there are, strangely enough, notice requirements before any sanctions can be levied). But even the standard rule of WP:POLEMIC, you never know what a passing admin is going to think, or what people at ANI will do. My personal rule is to stay out of political topics where possible (and that's in person and online), but I recognize that's an unfair rule for a lot of people, and that suggesting others to apply the same rule might have a chilling effect on legitimate discourse. I voiced essentially that same problem in the EEng case—that the purpose of discretionary sanctions isn't to stop discussion, but to stop disruption. In many ways, we have reached a point where it's presumed politically-charged discussion is disruptive. I think that's a mistake, but that's my own normative assessment; I really can't tell you much about what the actual administrative climate is other than "it could be risky."

I haven't had that happen much, but I know it's annoying at the very least. Some editors find it so disturbing that they feel they can't edit any longer. My general opinion is that, for the most part, it's appropriate and in the spirit of collaboration for someone, after encountering your edits (and finding those edits meriting reverting), to go back through your other recent edits to see if you're doing the same thing elsewhere. There absolutely is a fine line there between proactive editing and Wikistalking. My general opinion is that most times "Wikistalking" gets invoked, it's too soon, and my experience is that most accusations of Wikistalking don't result in any serious outcome. There are, of course, many exceptions to that observation. There are also a lot of different "degrees" of this conduct as well. There's the relatively innocent checking for other errors or other misconduct; I actually do this almost as a matter of course after reverting an editor or encountering him or her at one of the "dramaboards". Where things get troublesome is where the "stalker" begins to engage the other editor in a variety of Wikipedia discussions (whether on talk, user talk, or noticeboard pages). But even without that, it's troublesome if the "stalker" is just automatically reverting many or all of the "stalkee's" edits shortly after they're made. So... I wouldn't say that people following your edits is something you have to learn to live with, or to grow thicker skin, but it's also something generally not to worry about. If the person is bugging you, you could always just directly ask if there's something wrong with your edits, and if so, how you might address that problem. Sometimes that can be disarming, and much more effective than "Go away" or "Stop stalking me". —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:23, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's been a strange day and I'm in a strange mood but now I'm of the mind that anyone stalking my contribs would see this entire thread and probably learn something to our mutual benefit, so....... What a strangle life. Gabriel syme (talk) 06:07, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there!

Thanks for all of your Wiki help! So excited to edit and use all of these fantastic features. Dawn.bittner17 (talk) 16:00, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Dawn.bittner17: Glad to have you. You can see I used the 'reply to' code, it sends a notification to the user that they have a msg. Good luck! Gabriel syme (talk) 17:45, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest self-reversion

Donald Trump is under consensus required before restoration, meaning you should self-revert [1]. Also this was discussed before with I believe generally against having the archives. Also, As such, these principles mainly cover site-wide performance, where the purpose of the servers is to support the wiki contents, not the other way around. The purpose of the wiki content is to serve the reader; and performance considerations can certainly play a part in that process. Using thumbnails with a large size in bytes instead of a smaller size in bytes (e.g., using a high-fidelity 50 kB PNG instead of an uglier 20 kB JPEG) can definitely slow down the loading of pages; but whether that's acceptable is an editorial choice, not something the developers or sysadmins will either prevent or encourage. and Worry about performance if you can tell the difference yourself.Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:34, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Galobtter: That makes alot of sense but ugh am I a freak in wanting things archived? Gabriel syme (talk) 07:00, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your revert at Donald Trump

Violates the consensus clause which states: "You must not reinstate any challenged (via reversion) edits without obtaining consensus on the talk page of this article." It's right at the edit-notice. Dr. K. 06:38, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Power has reverted it; here's the fancy pancy alert (heed it, but don't worry too much) Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:44, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr.K.:That is absolutely my bad for not reading the big fat notice, respectfully stepping off. Gabriel syme (talk) 06:53, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Editing just lead section

Hi. Re this question: try Preferences - Gadgets - Appearance - Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page. -- Begoon 00:29, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Begoon:That. Is. Awesome. Wow that makes editing the lead in a large article so much easier, thanks alot! Gabriel syme (talk) 18:14, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello, Gabriel syme. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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