User talk:Chrestomathy37

Welcome...

Hello, Chrestomathy37, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like this place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or click here to ask a question on your talk page. Again, welcome! CWC 02:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

CWC 02:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oshwah's edits

The recent edits to Tim Blair by Oshwah (talk · contribs) are, in fact, basically required by Wikipedia's rules (so many rules ...), especially the ones about ‘Reliable Sources’ and ‘Biographies of Living Persons’.

Since you're fairly new here, we don’t expect you to fully understand those rules. (Actually, I suspect that only a small fraction of Wikipedia editors really understand them. The rest of us do our best and rely on someone else fixing our mistakes.) The central problem with Tim Blair is that the old timblair.net is gone, and none of the archive sites I've tried (archive.org, webcitation.org, archive.is) have copies. So all the citations to timblair.net are technically invalid in any article, especially in a BLP.

(The new timblair.net seems to have the same content, but messed up and with different permalinks. I've taken a look at it, and I might be able to rescue some (or even all) of the posts and put it on the internet, but (1) it would be hard to get the rescued posts accepted at ‘Reliable Sources’ and (2) I probably won’t get around to this for many, many months.)

Hope this helps — CWC 04:11, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discretionary sanctions alert: Tim Blair

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have recently shown interest in living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect: any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or any page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 20:15, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Chrestomathy37. You are required to comply with WP:BLP; see specifically WP:BLPPRIMARY. Please see the notes and edit summaries from Tornado chaser, Oshwah, and Chris Chittleborough. You also must not edit-war, and particularly not to reinstate poorly-sourced BLP material. If you have disagreements with other editors, please follow the process listed at WP:DR; if you have questions about the reliability of any given source, the reliable sources noticeboard may be helpful. If you reinstate poorly-sourced BLP material again, I may have to take administrative action to enforce our policies. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 20:20, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For your information, new rules now apply to this article and are described here: Talk:Tim_Blair#Imposition_of_discretionary_sanctions. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 06:18, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help me!

Hello Chrestomathy37. You used the {{Help me}} template, but you wanted an answer from a specific editor. If you still need help, please add your question to that editor's talk page instead. Alternatively, you can ask your question at the Teahouse, the help desk, or join Wikipedia's Live Help IRC channel to get real-time assistance.

Thanks so much for the nice welcome CWC. Happy to comply with wikipedia rules but it looks to me like some of the material with valid links from Tim Blair's entry have been inadvertently deleted e.g Blair works at the Daily Telegraph as a blogger and columnist - that could go back in, couldn't it? Anyway I'd do the edits if I could just undo but since I have to start from scratch I am going to step away. Bit too much effort for me. Thanks again. This recent dip into wikipedia world has been really interesting. Lot of unusual personalities at work! ✌️

Chrestomathy37 (talk) 21:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, CWC. Chrestomathy37 addressed this to you, and I think you have more context, anyways.

-- I dream of horses If you reply here, please ping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @ 05:15, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, um, like I said above ... so many rules. But it's not that hard to work within them, and working within the rules does tend to produce better articles in the long run. For instance, I see that https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/grabbing-devil-by-the-throat/news-story/ff80451b0e81ab6496640b72815c00cb is a live, non-paywalled link, so we can use it as a cite for some of the details about Mr Blair's cancer. But we cannot use those dead links to timblair.net for anything. It's OK to use his blog as cites for uncontroversial claims about himself, so it should be tedious-but-easy to find good cites for details of his current position, his support for Collingwood etc. I don't really have time to do this myself. Perhaps you do? If not, at least the shorter article is not doing any harm.

(Aside: If you stick around here long enough, and read the rules enough times, they start to make sense. The core insight is that Wikipedia is not here to Tell The Truth™, but to report statements made by what we call ‘WP:Reliable Sources’ (using the word 'reliable' with a peculiar Wikipedia-specific meaning). The thing about statements about living people is that lots of people want to use Wikipedia to discredit people they hate — you've probably noticed that — and quite a few other people want Wikipedia to make themselves look good.)

I hope this helps. Cheers, CWC 12:07, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]