User talk:Mjvande

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Impacts of mountain biking on wildlife and people, but we regretfully cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. This article appears to be a direct copy from http://www.culturechange.org/mountain_biking_impacts.htm or http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/scb7. As a copyright violation, Impacts of mountain biking on wildlife and people appears to qualify for speedy deletion under the speedy deletion criteria. Impacts of mountain biking on wildlife and people has been tagged for deletion, and may have been deleted by the time you see this message. If the source is a credible one, please consider rewriting the content and citing the source.

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I realise you are probably the author of this and the two other articles you posted. Please note:

we do not put Capitals in Article Titles in the Way that You do
copy and paste is an insult to Wikipedia - we want articles written for the encyclopedia
your articles violate the NPOV and NOR policies.

I suggest you spend some time reading what is already on wikipedia in this area of ecology and make contributions to existing articles. -- RHaworth 20:06, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most encouraging, you seem to reading my mind! Although simply posting external links is almost as much vanity as posting the articles. But you are at least moving in the right direction. -- RHaworth 20:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome

The topic "The Environmental Impacts of Mountain Biking" in the "mountain biking" article is pure partisan BS. Every time I try to correct it, my edits get reverted, without any discussion. I don't know who wrote it & reverted my edits, but I am the world expert on this topic. It shouldn't be written by someone who is actively engaged in promoting mountain biking. The link to IMBA's website is the clue that the article is pure propaganda. How can I get this fixed?

Mike Vandeman

Welcome

Hello, Mjvande, 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 Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. 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! -Will Beback 19:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POV edits and spam linking

Hi Mjvande,

Whilst I might sympathise with your point of view, most of your edits appear to the pushing a particular point of view with respect to the human impact on the natural habitat. In general Wikipedia strives to present a Neutral Point of View - see WP:NPOV. Also linking to your own web site, or linking to any particular web site indescriminately is considered spam linking - see Wikipedia:spam. In order to get these sorts of views accepted, you probably need to do it in terms of cited quotations. -- Solipsist 22:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You really shouldn`t touch material that you don`t understand!!!!! It is absurd to assume that the existing articles are unbiased, and my information is biased. In fact, I am correcting existing errors and biases. I am linking to my website because the information exists NOWHERE ELSE. If it were published, I could cite it, but because I am on the cutting edge of certain areas of study, there is nothing to cite. Your assumption that published sources are superior to unpublished sources is itself an enormous bias. Please restore what you removed, and in the future, stick to editing material that you know something about I am really disappointed in the quality of Wikipedia, which has great potential! But it is dominated by people pushing their own agendas, while claiming to be unbiased. A good example is the mountain biking article, which is pure pro-mountain biking propaganda. Whenever I try to correct it, my edits are erased without any comment. Why is this BS allowed, but efforts to correct it are not? -- Mike Vandeman

Hi Mike,

Thanks for replying and proving a link back to the earlier discussion - otherwise I might have been confused by your comments. As I say, I'm sympathetic to your point of view, and infact we often encourage a countering point of view in articles - it is just necessary to go about it the right way, as described in Wikipedia:Describing points of view.

There are many articles on Wikipedia that are far more controversial than mountain biking so we are well used to editors pushing a particular point of view which is why we have established procedures and policies to handle it.

The problem of errosion due to off-road biking, along with conflicts with hill walkers etc., is reasonably well known in the UK. Most particularly in Snowdonia and some other National parks. So much so that I believe there are now regualations and fines controlling the use of mountain bikes in some areas. Similarly AFIK, mountain bikes are banned from national parks in New Zealand and the USA.

So it should be possible to construct a more reasoned and researched section discussing the damage and problems caused by mountain biking - ideally including say a quotation (with cited source) showing what the official position on use the mountain bikes in various countries. This page doesn't look good enough to be a credible, citable source, but it probably contains enough clues to find a citable quotation on say the UK National Parks policy on mountain bikes.

Note however, we don't publish any new ideas. If, as you assert, the information you wish to include is only available on your own web site, that would be a problem. That comes under Wikipedia:No original research, which is an official policy. Similarly we don't really want any links to external websites - we would much rather have all material contained within Wikipedia and published under GFDL. Editors linking to their own website is also a common problem and will frequently be reverted - as discussed under Wikipedia:spam.

I hope that helps. I don't know whether you have spent much time reading through Wikipedia's Help pages. There is plenty of good advice there on the best way to edit articles. Drop me a note again if you need any more advice. -- Solipsist 14:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]