User talk:97.117.115.247

January 2023

Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently added commentary to an article, Dan Flores. While Wikipedia welcomes editors' opinions on an article and how it could be changed, these comments are more appropriate for the article's accompanying talk page. If you post your comments there, other editors working on the same article will notice and respond to them, and your comments will not disrupt the flow of the article. However, keep in mind that even on the talk page of an article, you should limit your discussion to improving the article. Article talk pages are not the place to discuss opinions of the subject of articles, nor are such pages a forum. Thank you. lavender|^{(formerly HMSSolent)}|lambast 03:38, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for reaching out. I've spent years carefully adding material to this site (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Flores) and someone is going through this evening and deleting the vast majority of the things I've uploaded (and cited). Help. Flores is a significant American writer and this site gets used by a lot of people looking for his writing/work and also as the source for introduction details. At the very least, I need the details that were on the old version just a couple of hours ago because that's a list of accomplishments and specifics that is simply not duplicatable. Please help, thanks. Sara 97.117.115.247 (talk) 03:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

You can see the previous version of the article here. I'm not taking a side in this content dispute—just passing through while working on something else—but I will note that the thrust of Drmies' comments in the page history is "show that this is relevant through secondary sources". So it would be uncontroversial for you to restore individual entries if accompanied by secondary sources showing their significance. (For an example of an article where I've done that myself, see Sarah Ashton-Cirillo § Journalism and activism: I mention three articles by the subject as examples of her work, and in each case cite a secondary source that wrote about the article.) Or if you disagree with Drmies' premise overall, and think it all should be restored, you can start a discussion on the article's talkpage—but I'll tell you, I think his point is reasonable, and the article would be improved, to the satisfaction of all involved, if you follow this framework of only mentioning content with secondary coverage. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 04:38, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply and also for giving me access to the extensive content that was on there just a few hours ago. It seems a little odd that these massive changes had to happen this evening when the bulk of this material has been on the site for quite some time (I realize this is not your issue, just making a note of it). I'm assuming that the secondary sources need to have web-linked citations? That's not always easy with academic books and journals. Again, I very much appreciate your time and consideration. Sara 97.117.115.247 (talk) 05:32, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

If things get removed right after they're added, it feels like too soon. And if they get removed much later, it feels like too late. I don't think there's really a "right" time to remove content that an editor felt was constructive; it will always feel wrong from their perspective.

So, you can learn all about citing sources at Wikipedia:Citing sources (for policy considerations) and Help:Referencing for beginners (for how-to). While online sources are always preferred, they are by no means required. We assume that users are being honest about offline sources unless they give us a reason to think otherwise. Plus you'd be surprised how often, when you add an offline source, someone comes along later and links to some database it's available through. (There, too: Non-paywalled sources are preferred, but paywalled is better than nothing.) The only limit worth mentioning is if you wanted to cite an offline source that there's no conceivable way someone could get a copy of, like an unpublished draft or an unarchived leaflet. That would fail our policy Wikipedia:Verifiability. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 06:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

User:Tamzin, thank you--yes, your explanation about when one is justified in including articles makes perfect sense: that's good practice. Secondary sourcing is where it's at. IP editor, esp. in physical sciences scholars churn out tons of articles (often written collaboratively) and such lists are really nothing more than resumes. Books, one can assume are more noteworthy, but even there it's a good idea to have secondary sourcing lest that list also becomes a resume list--particularly, of course, given the advent of self-publishing. In addition, there was a huge list of media appearances, but for an encyclopedia it's hardly worth noting that someone was on Joe Rogan's podcast.

We do encyclopedic articles, not tenure and promotion documents or resumes. If you want to improve this article, add secondary sourcing and improve what's there. For instance, not a single one of his books have any kind of reference/review listed for them. Adding such reviews (as I just did here) is, in my opinion, article improvement, and points readers evaluation of the subject's work. Finally, that this material was in there for a long time, well, I never saw the article before. We have over six million of them, and this was not an article with a lot of edits or a lot of traffic. And looking at this article again I see even more problems, particularly given the WP:BLP: there really isn't a single reliable secondary source to verify ANY of the information about this living person, and the "Critical reception" section has no critical reception--all it has is blurbs like "Horizontal Yellow, back cover". Improving this article and bringing it more in line with our guidelines, that's actually doing a service to the article and the subject, because really this should be tagged for insufficient sourcing and (likely) conflict of interest editing. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

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