Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or or by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement.
Hey, Marello Papirio. Re Talk:Hunter Biden: When working on a device that makes it difficult for you to format text into something easily-read by other editors, a key issue is to make it short. You don't need to make ten points. You need to make your best points. And blathering will just infuriate people, especially in a wall of text. Every word needs to count, and especially when you can't format properly. There's an essay at User:Cullen328/Smartphone editing about editing via mobile. —valereee (talk) 10:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Valeree. TL;DR: The only reason I feigned issues with my mobile was to dodge the troll. Read between the lines.
Full story:I understand your bona fide... But let me be frank. I had friends read my message and it is plain English accessible to anyone. 500 words is a standard abstract. Between me and you, the real reason I said I am having difficulty with my device is because the other user was trying to start a fight with me. So I wrote to a more experienced user and asked what the best strategy would be. So, since I was being insulted, I lamented some device issues and asked the user to rephrase. This user then changed attitude. At first he was insulting. I checked his page: he joined Wikipedia 4 days ago and has already started fights. Later on, after my polite response, he completely changed his story and said that he had eyesight difficulties and dyslexia. He claimed he could not read my text since the bold numbers confused him. That is very convenient, since of course I cannot write assuming everyone's special needs. Right? Was my text so difficult for you too? Do we have to spend more words on this? I made a proposal and people are writing on my board to tell me how to make breaks with a mobile. One of the reason I stopped with Wikipedia is this overwhelming interest in policing other people's boards and actions instead of discussing the real stuff. Was my text truly unreadable? Really really? Or are we wasting our times because of a contentious user that insulted another user (me) and then backpedalled? I can make the list if you like, if my text makes you uncomfortable... I do not really know what to say. I believe we are all fully literate and there is a point to which I have to stop dumbing down things in an encyclopedia. MarcelloPapirio (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, your text was difficult for me, too. My advice: fewer words are more likely to be read. Writing concisely is not "dumbing down". You can find more info at WP:TPG#YES. —valereee (talk) 14:49, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The entire page is full of WoTs worse than mine. But mine was singled out. And yet I see I am one of the few in that page who made policy points instead of squabbling because of this or that conspiracy theory. The entire talk page of Hunter Biden is mostly a shame caused by people who are clearly American electors (unlike me) who got carried away by some recent news... too recent, actually, to be dealt with objectively. The thing I see is that as soon as I made some rational points, my entire thread was derailed by nitpicking cosmetic issues instead of actually replying to my point. I do not think this was fair Wikipedia practice. Now I have edited everything and I can clearly see 9 points of 1-2 statements each. Still too difficult? I doubt. I would only like people addressed my points instead of addressing the way I dressed them. It all looks like people are pointing at my clothing instead of looking at the actual value of my contribution. This is deeply... deeply frutstrating. MarcelloPapirio (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't actually see any walls of text that are as long as yours and aren't at least broken into paragraphs, which makes them (slightly) easier to read, though all of those posters ought to try to write shorter, too. It's just counterproductive to write long. No one reads it. If you want your arguments read, learn to write short. But yes, the reformatting is better. —valereee (talk) 21:11, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am deeply saddened we live in a society that values brevity and lack of complexity as the key elements of progress. This skewed view is pushed by the media and there is this widespread belief the Internet has to be immediate and always Tweet-like. I thoroughly disagree. I have seen academics behave like you: "duh, who is gonna read this stuff?". I have learned to pause and go throughly through texts to make a living. I expect others to do the same. Sometimes, suggestions like yours sound paternalistic. You seem to imply we are surrounded by people with communicative issues we have to cater to. I always try to raise the bar and I find you are stretching a bit too far by insisting my comment is less understandable than the flights of fancy I saw in that talk page, which is, allow me to say it, a true and utter mess that should be deleted at once. MarcelloPapirio (talk) 21:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It has nothing to do with valuing lack of complexity. I has to do with valuing volunteer time. We are all volunteers here, every last one of us, and our time is our most precious resource. When someone says in 500 words what they could have said in 50, it wastes volunteer time. It's as simple as that. I could easily expand this to ten times the words, and probably get at some nuances I'm not hitting on in this brief statement. The 80 for the 20. —valereee (talk) 22:40, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
