User:Cybermud/Adoption

This page shall serve as the Adoption Page for User:Cybermud and User:Dusti. Please do not make edits to this page.

Responses in purple--Cybermud (talk) 17:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Questions and Expectations

What do you want to gain from this Adoption?
I enjoy editing WP and, frankly, would like to continue to do so long term without being banned. I view this, primary goal, as facing two obstacles:

For a variety of reasons, I've taken an interest in a lot of gender related issues and have invested considerable time into studying them over the past couple years. In doing so I've come to much more fully appreciate how gender roles and sexual stereotypes have limited men and women (contrary to the generally accepted view that they have only limited women and have empowered and privileged men.) This has led, invariably, to my also reading the WP articles on them and wanting to correct, or balance, what I see as a feminist, and anti-male, bias in many of them. Granted that I view this bias as present in the broader society and culture, but societal and cultural views are shaped by many things and not subject to the verifiability of something like an encyclopedia. The problem with this, unsurprisingly, is that these articles tend to be polarizing as the editors of them, myself included, are often very passionate about the subjects involved.
I tend to be blunt. I don't like to dance around the issues and have little patience for passive aggressive barbs or what I view, correctly or incorrectly, as stupidity. Likewise, I suppose unsurprisingly, such can be taken, genuinely or disingenuously, as a personal attack.
If I avoided articles that I, and others, feel strongly about or could be more diplomatic in my disagreements, something I admit to struggling with, I think I can avoid being banned by ideological policing editors whom I believe are greedily waiting for me to cross the line and, at times even trying to bait me into doing so.
I want to write good articles, and by good I mean good in the sense of WP featured articles. In reading WP I've come across a few articles that are little better than POV polemics and think these are terrible. Even if I completely agree with the POV they present (which admittedly is rare but it does happen,) as a critical thinking reader, I know that other readers of the article will not take it seriously due to its lack of balance. A problem which defeats the very purpose of an encyclopedic article; that is, to inform and educate the reader.

One of the articles I've created that I'd like to bring to a featured article status is international child abduction.

So, to make a long story short, I'd to be able to work within WP policies and create good articles and hope to gain precisely those insights that will best facilitate that.
Okay, that sounds fine. I'm not a huge content editor, but in my 9,000+ contributions I've got some :).
What are the criterion for someone making a new Article about a living person?
I have read the BLP policy, or at least skimmed it, and my take on it is that it sets a higher standard of verifiability for such articles. In particular, content that the article's subject might object to, such as content that presents them in an unfavorable light, should have a particularly good source.
What is your take on No Personal Attacks and do you feel you have violated that policy?
I think the policy is not just necessary for the success of something like WP, but also good practice in any collaborative community. As far as whether or not I've violated it, I do believe that I have. In particular, I opened an SPI investigation for a user that I believed, and still do, to be a sockpuppet due to their joining WP and immediately following me around to various talk pages to attack me, with a deep understanding of WP syntax, policy and practices. When opening the SPI though it asked me to list the name of another user who was the owner of the sockpuppet and I made a cavalier and, in hindsight, completely wrong guess based on a very circumstantial connection between the two. Although I have apologized for it, I do recognize it as violation of the NPA policy. Beyond that though, I do not feel I've violated NPA though I have, perhaps, toed the line a bit with WP:Civil a policy that I view as problematically relative and subjective (though not unreasonable per se.)
I'll follow up this with another question.
What is your take on this policy
I think this policy is also important for the readers of WP. It's important for WP's credibility that readers can be confident that random, even anonymous, editors cannot simply add any content that they'd like to it (accurate or not.) The policy that I find more difficult to work with and apply is WP:Syn. In particular, in cases where there are sources that, for example, support argument A and argument B and conclusion C but don't necessarily, in a single source, state that C is true because of of A and B.
The reason that WP:Syn is critical is to be able to identify what information came from what source, primarily because of giving credit.

let's simply start with those and then we'll go on from there :) 07:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
What is the criteria for getting an article to Good Article status?
I actually had never heard of WP:GA before. Thank you for pointing it out. I'm glad there is a middle ground between a generic article and the, seemingly, high standard for a featured article. Having just now skimmed the requirements, the standard for a good article seems intuitive enough for me. Having also looked through a lot of the core WP policies a "good" article really just seems to be one that complies with those core policies (like WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, etc) and is relatively complete and well written.
What is the criteria for getting an article to Featured Article Status?
The actual criteria are here WP:Featured article criteria, but I think the first sentence of the page really exemplifies the point, "A featured article exemplifies our very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing." Reading through what makes a featured article one can see that there's a direct correlation between what is needed to create such an article and the vast majority of WP policies.--Cybermud (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
What is the criteria for getting an article to Did you know? status?
I have never heard of this either. Admittedly I don't go to the WP main page very often. It's a cool feature. I've created a number of articles and wish I had known about the option to promote them in the DYK section (they are all too old for it now.) The main requirement seems to be that the article is new, or newly expanded significantly, of decent quality and at least 1500 words.
What are the criteria for blocking a user?
You see someone who is being disruptive in International child abduction. They are inappropriate content like "fuck" and "poop". What do you do?

heh.. that's easy. I just click the "rollback vandal" button that I got by adding some JavaScript tools to my user profile.
ou recently made a large edit to International child abduction adding what you feel is very important information. You have yet been able to source the information, and another editor removes the information citing WP:V in the edit summary. What do you do?
Add some sources and re-add the content. I have added content with a plan to source it later. I've ussually done this because adding detailed references takes time (ie authors, page numbers, dates, etc), but in a pinch I can ussually add a basic reference that only lists a URL if someone is challenging the edit.
What is needed in order to bring a case to WP:SPI?
Evidence of sockpuppetry for BOTH users. Creating an SPI requires pointing out that someone is acting like a sockpuppet and being able to ALSO point out another user who is likely the same person. In some cases, in particular the one I was involved in, it may be easy to see that someone is probably a sockpuppet, such as when they create a brand new account and start wikilawyering, referring to WP best practices, following other users to various pages by tracking through contribs pages and using templates, but if you are not sure of another user that is related to the clear sock you can't open an SPI (or at least such has been my experience.) Confronted with such a case again, I believe that RFC or ANI would be a better place to start.
What is the difference between WP:SPI and WP:ANI and WP:AIV.
SPI is for users that are abusing WP by pretending they are more than one person, typically to give the appearance that other editors agree with them or to be generally disruptive with one account while not tarnishing the image of their main account. #:Unlike SPI, which is specific to one precise type of disruptive behavior, ANI is for notifying administrators of any kind of disruption and soliciting feedback and/or assistance from Admins and other editors. I had never heard of WP:AIV before, but looking at it now, it's a place for reporting clear cases of vandalism. Would have been nice to know about this before. I've come across some IP vandalism (a lot actually) that I've reverted but, in some cases, the vandals' just re-add what I reverted.Good to know there's a place for specifically dealing with that sort of situation.
From the three areas above, where should you have taken your concerns from number 2?
By number 2 do you mean, coming across some very badly written articles? Out of the three above I would have to say ANI, though my first inclination would be to add a comment expressing concerns on talk and give it a few days. I've never taken anything to ANI and am, perhaps incorrectly, concerned that I may annoy people by taking all my disagreements to ANI (although the flip-side of taking none of them there and arguing on talk probably isn't good either.)

I have given you a large workload :) Feel free to message me for any questions you have. Dusti^*poke* 18:26, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
State to me what this policy means in a nutshell.
Formally it means that you cannot revert 3 edits within a 24 hour period, but I think, having read the policy, the spirit of the rule is to encourage discussion and consensus building. I think the number of edits and time period somewhat arbitrary as, if I only log on once every 48 hours I can very much be edit warring although I'm technically not in violation of the policy.--Cybermud (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
You come across an IP that is adding unreferenced and unsourced information, and you revert them. A few minutes later, they re-add it. Is this enough to report a vandal to AIV?
No, unsourced or unveriable information does not meet the definition of WP:Vandalism so WP:AIV:AIV is not the right board to report it to. The preferred route is to warn them personally and then report them to WP:3RR or WP:Administrators noticeboard--Cybermud (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Let's say the above happens, and you revert them again. A couple minutes later, they do the same thing, only this time they put in the edit summary PLEASE do not revert me. This article is about me and I don't want this information on here. What do you do?
Well, they have disclosed their conflict of interest and that's important. This is complicated because it involved WP:BLP issues in which the subject very clearly objects to some content. If they are seeking to remove something that's already there the source for that content must be especially good to meet BLP guidelines. If they seek to add content that's unsourced about themselves, particularly if it smacks of self-promotion, it should be immediately removed. In both cases I think I would engage a more experienced editor and go to the article or user's talk page as the best route to handling such a situation is not clear to me.--Cybermud (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
You add information to an article, and an IP comes along and reverts your edits three times, with no reason listed in the edit summary. You re-add the information again, and leave a note on their talk page. Have you violated WP:3RR?
Probably. It normally takes two editors to edit war (though one user can edit-war multiple editors.) If they've reverted me three times in 24 hours and then I revert them, I have quite probably also violated WP:3RR--Cybermud (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)