User talk:DouglasBear

December 2007

Your recent edit to Quail Mountain (California) (diff) was reverted by an automated bot. The edit was identified as adding either test edits, vandalism, or link spam to the page or having an inappropriate edit summary. If you want to experiment, please use the preview button while editing or consider using the sandbox. If this revert was in error, please contact the bot operator. If you made an edit that removed a large amount of content, try doing smaller edits instead. Thanks! // VoABot II (talk) 01:05, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to add some first hand information to this page (Quail Mountain), this is not vandalism or spam! I have personally climbed this mountain more times than anyone in the world, and am only trying to add good info! I even uploaded a photo I took, and could not get it to show on the page. I am new to this, and am only trying to make the page better.

Hey! I left you a note. Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: ^help! 01:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Our strange notion of "verifiability."

Hi, DouglasBear.

I saw your note on the help page, so I thought I'd come on over here and explain our initially-confusing notion of "verifiability" before you get burned by it. But first, Thanks for helping.

As you know, anybody can edit Wikipedia. We are a random collection of unpaid volunteers who are trying to build an encyclopedia. This means that do not have a a set of paid fact-checkers like a normal encyclopedia or newspaper. As a direct result of this, we cannot accept original research, and we require that contributors (whom we call "editors") cite their sources. We also require that these sources be reliable. We do this under the (debatable) assumption that these reliable sources do in fact check their facts, or at least that they have actual names and addresses and can be held accountable for what they write, while our editors cannot.

This can be extremely irritating when you are a real expert on a subject, as you are in the case of your mountain. In practice, it means that you are free to remove un-sourced statements. Also in practice, you can replace un-sourced statements with your own unsourced material. You are technically not supposed to do this, but I feel that you are perfectly justified in this. However, if another editor asks you to cite your source or removes your material, you cannot simply assert that you are correct based on personal knowledge, because we have no way to know that you are not some ten-year-old in Australia who is playing a prank.

Interestingly, we do not require citable sources for pictures. The idea here is that a picture is essentially self-verifying. This is a quaint notion in this era of photoshopping, but it's still our current policy. The other reason is that we cannot require citable sources for pictures because a picture cannot be paraphrased, and we therefore have no way to use a recent "citable" picture without violating its copyright. So, Thanks for the picture in any event, and I hope that your edits to the article will remain in place this time. -Arch dude (talk) 02:38, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Arch dude,

Thanks for letting me work on the Quail mountain page. I am honestly just trying to make the page a little better, I will not really add much more. I happened across the page on a Google search a couple days ago, and it called out to me! I have personally hiked to the top 75 times, and am shooting for 100. I know the peak very well. I am a 44 year old from Joshua Tree, CA who lives next to Joshua Tree National Park, and I take my family hiking there a lot since we live so close. Anyhow, the photos I uploaded are just a few from many I have taken, and all the info I added came off the top of my head from personal experience of having walked about 750 miles on the mountain. If someone changes the page, that's okay, I understand, it's the way things are. But I have tried to add good information that is unbiased and true. My hat's off to Wikipedia and all the volunteers, what a gigantic project. I visit Wikipedia often. Thanks again.

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