User talk:Joebobby1985

Welcome

Hello, Joebobby1985, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -- PBS (talk) 18:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This and that and the cat

I am replying to you comment "I'm only guessing this is a flaw of Wikipedia where one is forced to convince someone who already has a point of view on the issue, through discussions; I've had a similar experience when presenting a correct map of Portuguese colonialisation in the Americas but was faced with the same views that defend the status quo, contrary to the approach that should be of a researcher especially when dealing with issues like these. Nevertheless, I bid you a good day sir." that you posted on the Talk:Genocides in history on your talk page because I think we are moving from the realms of the specific to the more general.

The more theoretical issues you have alluded to in you postings are ones that have been thrashed out time and again on Wikipedia. There are three major content Wikipedia policies, which form the bases of how most most content inside Wikipedia pages should be derived. They are interrelated and should be read as a whole. They are WP:NPOV, WP:OR and WP:V. Linked to these are a host of guidelines, the most relevant for the type of article we have been talking about are the MOS and probably WP:WTA.

To decide on the name of an article there is a different policy WP:NC which basically uses WP:V, but ignores WP:NPOV in one important area, which is even if a name of an event is a biased name we use it if it is the usual name for that event.

The other immediately relevant policy is WP:CONSENSUS, which is how we arrive at decisions on what to do.

One think to consider is that all these policies and guidelines can be edited just like any other page on Wikipedia but they form an interlocking grid and as time passes they are becoming more enmeshed and difficult to change significantly.

In the case of our discussion. What is a reliable source why look at WP:SOURCE which is part of WP:V and for more detail look at the guideline WP:RS (you will note that I use the initials not the full names. As a new editor you will probably be more comfortable with the full names rather than acronyms, but I have used them here as most editors use them as it is less to type and become names in themselves).

The biggest cultural shock for someone from an academic background -- even at school level -- is that like an academic paper WP:V encourages studious use of the best sources, but then Wikipedia diverges from academia, there are no points for original thought, and therefor one can not draw original conclusions (the complete opposite of a good academic paper). Further where in a debate one wins points in a debating society, a law court and in an academic paper for presenting a point of view that trumps other points of views, in Wikipedia a complement would be paid to someone who writes for the enemy and presents both points of view.

At first this can be very frustrating, particularly when working on controversial topics, but it has rewards in the long run. For example see my current debate on Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid# Claim, I am groping towards a definition which will help eliminate one of the ways in which information can be presented in a biased way, but we have not yet got there. Personally one of the things I like about Wikipedia is the ability to create new articles from following a thread. I worked on the article Battle of Waterloo which lead me to write a number of support articles for example one of the first articles I ever created (while still using IP addresses) was Belle Alliance that lead to creating Belle Alliance Platz which later turned up in the (Battle in Berlin another subsidiary article I created -- the French SS defended the platz against the Russian an ironic twist I did not know existed when I wrote the first two articles ) and only this week I have been expanding the article Duchess of Richmond's ball (another one I created) and created an article on James John Fraser because he was in the list and the father of one of the sources I used for the article. This allowed me to tie in Sir William Fraser, and Sir Charles Craufurd Fraser as brothers (a link not made on Wikipedia until I discovered it). Over the years I have created dozens and dozens of articles, usually as subsidiary articles of larger articles, some grow very large some remain little more than stubs, but in my small way this has helped Wikipedia become the encyclopedia it is today. I also patrol some controversial areas, to try to keep the articles within Wikipedia policies, because I think it important that all articles on Wikipedia are balanced, it is a lot of work and I don't enjoy it as much as working on articles like the Simla Accord (1914) (one I started after reading an Economist article last November), where there has been a very cooperative group of editors working on it. But I think I have given you enough insight on how you can contribute to the betterment of the project and therefor humanity without having to spend too much time on controversial subjects which rapidly become a chore rather than a pleasure to edit. --PBS (talk) 20:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good faith edits are not vandalism

The comment with this edit was needlessly provocative. See WP:CIVIL "As well, lack of care when applying other policies can lead to conflict and stress. For instance, referring to a user's good-faith edits as vandalism may lead to them feeling unfairly attacked." and WP:VANDALISM "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not vandalism."

Also if you make such comment you are inviting retaliation, which will weaken your position if the situation escalates and you need help with a person who is persistently uncivil. See here for an example. Also note that this particular editor is under an arbcom restriction--PBS (talk) 20:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah thank you for the information. Kind regards. Joebobby1985 (talk) 01:27, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See User talk:Meowy#genocides in history --PBS (talk) 20:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:dispute resolution and consider Wikipedia:third opinion for a first step--PBS (talk) 20:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for that. I'm sure another editor with a neutral standpoint from outside will be able to help out.Joebobby1985 (talk) 23:38, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Meowy/Archive --PBS (talk) 18:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, to be honest I didn't even suspect they may have been the same person. (I must note that the term sockpuppet sounds funny. Certainly put a smile to my face when I saw that) Nevertheless, the whole discussion session was actually beneficial in overall as I learned a lot more on the subject while fishing for more sources. Thank you again for your guidance on the procedures and all the updating on the situation. As you mentioned previously trying to convince others in controversial topics (how much hope there is for that varies; depends very much on the user you're discussing with) can get tedious, and it's convenient to have a break once in a while and edit/improve less controversial articles, so I think I'll do that for a bit. But it certainly felt like it had a benefit on me in the long run just due to the fact that it incited the need to research a little. Who knows, this experience may even lead to future outcomes. Kind regards. Joebobby1985 (talk) 01:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]