User talk:Barbabee

Hello, Barbabee, and welcome to Wikipedia! I'm glad to see a new editor editing about open-source phones. You edit to List of open-source mobile phones alerted me to the fact that Pinephones were now shipping with pre-installed OSs; I expanded your info, moved it a bit, and cited it. It is not necessary to cite everything, but if it isn't cited it can be challenged (with a citation-needed tag) and removed, as indeed you have done at Infrastructure as code.

You created an excellent new article at PineTab, which is very impressive for a new user. I've added some third-party news-coverage sources, establishing WP:notability (so that the article won't be deleted by someone who thinks no-one but the manufacturer cares about the subject; we get a lot of vanity articles, and sometimes the new-page patrollers are a bit hasty). 1st-party sources (sources writing about themselves, or anything for which they have a conflict of interest) are fine for some sorts of information, including the hardware specs of their products, but can't be used to establish notability.

You've also added some useful content to the Pinephone article. You weren't to know this, but Wikipedia has a specific impartial encyclopedic style that maintains a neutral point of view. So we don't use wording like "The community support has been very good" or "Linux Magazine explained about the different operating systems, and the great support from the community", no matter how true it is . You could say "Linux Magazine said it was possible that the Pinephone would later be available with a large selection of Linux distributions, due to a great deal of support from the Linux community[1]" That's neutrally reporting someone else's opinion. Wikipedia's own voice doesn't have its own opinions, though. A bit odd, but it has worked well; a just-the-facts style prevents editors from arguing or wandering off on long flights of the imagination (neither of which you have been doing, but some people tend to). Some examples.

This message has been a bit of an infodump. I hope you do not find the learning curve excessively steep; if you can manage not to fall off it, it will soon all become much easier. Sadly, we lose some new editors, mostly just as they are starting, often because they put a lot of effort into edits that are reverted for some obscure reason they don't understand. When some of your edits get reverted (it happens to everyone), if you let me know, I'll help you cite and re-write it so that it can be replaced. If I'm not around, the folk at the WP:Teahouse can also be helpful. I should admit that I restored a couple of sentences you took out of the Pinephone article, so that the article would have a balance of positive and negative statements. If you'd like, we can discuss removing them again at Talk:PinePhone; you clearly know more about the subject than I, and I may have been wrong.

I can see that you are editing the markup, and using Template:main correctly, and using talk pages, all things that new users rarely do, so I hope that the learning curve will not throw you.

Thank you very much for all the material you've been adding to Wikipedia. You have really improved the encyclopedia. HLHJ (talk) 04:58, 13 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello HLHJ: i just want to mention that i try to be as clear as i can on the pages, and try to help ppl out. for some reason info about the pinephone seems to be in comparison to the Librem5 a lot, but this is a completely different device, and there is not much need for the pine page to be all about librem, and the librem page barely about Pine. Pine is an actually shipping device, and its users are not comparing the devices a lot, till they are actually shipping. When I first came to this page, it was almost solely about the Librems superiority. Maybe I remove some details like replaceability of the modem, but they are only interesting if you do not take into account the price difference and the replacement costs. So adding this to the Librem5's page is interesting, but of no use to Pine users. Most users that I know that I tell about the Librem5 are even amazed that it is still planned, while playing with their PP. I love the idea of the Librem5, but it is not a comparison until they ship. Some ppl i know are waiting for years now, but as we all do, we try to be supportive, as we need as many open devices ass possible on the market. Barbabee (talk) 16:50, 13 August 2020 (UTC) Thanks for the thoughtful reply btw![reply]

Hello, Barbaree! I largely agree with you about the Pinephone article, and I've put my comments about it in the ongoing discussion there. The Librem page is rather scant; about a third of it is shipping schedules, and most of it is out-of-date, some comparisons to the Pinephone might actually improve it. Just before the two products started shipping there were a lot of spec-comparison articles, which I think slanted the early-version articles towards comparison. But now that both are shipping, there are more detailed separate accounts.

There's a lot of excitement around the open-source mobiles coming out right now (I find it fascinating too), and a lot of the sources are, quite legitimately, advocating them all, or favouring one in particular. While Wikipedia should report on this advocacy, Wikipedia can't itself contain WP:advocacy, which makes using these non-neutral sources hard. I could certainly do better here.

I'm glad you're a clarity-conscious editor, I wish the awareness was universal. There are far too many articles filled with opaque jargon, especially tech articles. There are far too many sentences that only start to become comprehensible 3/4 of the way in. There are far too many sentences that aren't parsable, because they are chimeras of several different sentences. I sometimes find it hard to be both clear and neutral. We need more editors who write good, plain prose. And you certainly are helping people out. Do WP:ping me if you want my attention, I will see it eventually. Best of luck with your editing!

HLHJ (talk) 03:51, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]