User talk:DDB9000

Welcome!

Hello, DDB9000, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! 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) @ 00:23, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

June 2019

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a message letting you know that one or more of your recent edits to The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys has been undone by an automated computer program called ClueBot NG.

ClueBot NG makes very few mistakes, but it does happen. If you believe the change you made was constructive, please read about it, report it here, remove this message from your talk page, and then make the edit again.
For help, take a look at the introduction.
The following is the log entry regarding this message: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys was changed by DDB9000 (u) (t) ANN scored at 1 on 2019-06-23T02:09:32+00:00

Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 02:09, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Your edits continue to appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. 122.108.183.105 (talk) 02:13, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory, you may be blocked from editing. Butter72 (talk) 02:17, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at When the Eagle Flies. Butter72 (talk) 02:17, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A belated welcome!

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, DDB9000. I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page, consult Wikipedia:Questions, or place {{help me}} on your talk page and ask your question there.

Again, welcome! Orville1974^talk 04:36, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not a vandal (from the Teahouse)

The following response was copied from the Teahouse. This editor has failed to cite sources, but is not vandalizing Wikipedia:

I read very carefully the page on vandalism and I have done nothing of the sort whatsoever.
All I've ever done here, whether signed in or not has always had to do with improving pages and providing good and helpful info .Now, suddenly that I'm I'm being accused of vandalism(!) for just not knowing exactly the way to do it right. I just want people to have the best facts at hand and use my knowledge to help. Isn't that the idea of Wikipedia?

Is there a human who can understand what is going on and help me?

David DDB9000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by DDB9000 (talk|C|TB| • contribs) 12:02 am, Today (UTC−4)

Hi @DDB9000: Welcome to the teahouse! There are a lot of humans here (of which I am one). Give me a minute to see what's happened. Orville1974talk|C|TB| 12:23 am, Today (UTC−4)

Hi again @DDB9000: We're all human (well, there are a couple bots, too), and we all make mistakes (in this case thinking your edits constituted vandalism). We really appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, but the reason your edits keep getting reverted (and sometimes tagged as vandalism) is because you have not cited reliable sources to support the changes you've made. Everything on Wikipedia should be verifiable to third-party sources. This guide will help explain how to include sources with your changes: Help:Referencing for beginners. Thank you! Orville1974talk|C|TB|12:34 am, Today (UTC−4)

From the Teahouse, copied by: Orville1974^talk 04:41, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Issues

DDB9000, I saw your request for help on another user's Talk page, and was curious what the problem was so I took a look. Your edits were not vandalism, but there are several reasons people may have thought they were. First, you are putting complex text in infoboxes. Infoboxes are not intended to convey long explanations, we rely on the text of the article for that. Infoboxes are not intended to have information not in the body of the article. One thing some vandals do is they dink with infoboxes, because people reading the pages often ignore the infobox, so vandalism there can pass unnoticed for longer. What you want to do is first make sure the information is in the body of the article, then add a succinct explanation to the infobox. In this cse, rather than trying to put a detailed explanation of who released an album in what parts of the world in the info box, it is sufficient there to just list the publishers, while in the text you give more precise information about who did what in which countries.

Second, and more importantly, you are misusing the 'minor' edit checkbox. What you are doing may seem 'minor' to you, but the way Wikipedia uses the term, it is not - minor edits are those that do not change the substantive content of an article - such things as fixing a typo, removing a triple space or a double carriage return, adding a missing quotation mark, that kind of thing is a minor edit. Any rewriting of the text, changing the phrasing or adding new information is not minor as Wikipedia defines it. Why this is important is because a lot of people who edit pages use watchlists to alert them when a change is made so they can confirm that the edits improve the page (or at least don't make it worse), and so they can rapidly detect vandalism. Most editors don't want to see typo corrections, so they activate the setting whereby their watchlist ignores edits marked as 'minor'. Because of this vandals will mark their substantive edits as minor edits to slip them in under the radar. As a consequence, someone who marks substantive edits as minor edits is sometimes assumed to be a vandal.

The third thing you are doing is the one that led to a significant escalation - there is a policy WP:BRD, which beats around the bush a little bit, but what is is usually interpreted as meaning is that if you make a change, and another editor reverts that change, you should not attempt to do the same thing again. Instead, you should go to the article's Talk page and explain why you think your edit needs to be done, and discuss it to come to a consensus that is acceptable to everyone who cares to participate. Only then should you again try to make the edit (or whatever you have agreed to). This not only gives others a fuller context for your edits, it demonstrates your good faith. Once you have been accused of vandalism, it becomes all the more important to demonstrate your good faith by taking it to the Talk page rather than repeating the same edits.

And last, you are adding information without a source. Yes I know, the pages you are editing already have a lot of information that is unsourced, but theoretically everything on Wikipedia should be sourced. Another thing that vandals do is add made-up content to pages. Any unsourced content could be made up, so anyone adding unsourced content could be a vandal.

This all snowballs. While editors are supposed to assume good faith, once an accusation of vandalism has been made, all of the things you have been doing wrong start to look more sinister, and it becomes more likely each will also be interpreted as vandalism. That seems to be what has happened here.

What do you do about it? First, stop using the 'minor edit' checkbox altogether. Nobody complains when a minor edit is not marked as one, but when a major edit is marked as minor, that looks like you are trying to hide something. Second, explain the edits you want to make on the Talk page: either do so before you make the edit, or at the same time - this is usually not necessary unless you expect it to be controversial, but once the 'potential vandal' tag gets dropped on you, you need go the extra step to demonstrate your good faith. Third, try to find some sources for what you are adding, and include that in your edit. Finally, it wouldn't hurt to drop a quick note on the Talk pages of the editors who have accused you of vandalism and explain that you didn't realize your edits were a problem, and that you would appreciate help on how best to incorporate the information you want to add to the pages. They may point out something else you did that raised a red flag for them. This will probably not get your information back on the pages, at least not without discussion on the article Talk pages, but it may convince them to again assume good faith. Agricolae (talk) 04:54, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The correct usage of the "minor edit" checkbox can be found at WP:ME. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let me give you two more hints, this time about Talk pages. First, do not preface lines of text with spaces (this applies to articles as well). This causes them to format incorrectly in off-set boxes, which a lot of people find really annoying. Just start typing. If you want to indent, use a colon - : - at the start of the line, or if you want a bullet point, begin with an asterix - * - but not just a space.

This is what it looks like with a colon. Do this to set off your response from the comment you are responding to.

This is two colons, used to respond to someone whose contribution was at the one-colon indent level. There is no limit to the number of indents that can be used, but eventually there is more space than text, so at some point you want to start flush again.

This is what it looks like with an asterix. Use this for a list of items, or in certain other formats (in page deletion discussions individual votes or comments are usually starred).

You can indent this one farther as well, either by typing multiple consecutive asterices, or by using one or more colons before the star.

This is what it looks like with a space at the start.  Don't do this.

The second thing is that you need to be sure and sign your Talk page contributions with four tildes ~ in a row. You can type them individually, or just underneath the edit window there is a button that will automatically add four at once. This will add the formal 'signature' and timestamp that is used for Talk pages on Wikipedia, and should be added to every Talk page contribution.

Now, regarding what you said on my Talk page . . . .by this way, this is atypical as well, it is usually more straghtforward to carry out a conversation in one place. If someone starts a discussion on your Talk page, respond on Your page. If you start it on their page, then you should watch for a response there rather than pingponging back and forth between the two Talk pages. If several days have passed before you type a response on your page, then use the ping command to send them a notification - @DDB9000: (look at the code I typed to see how to do this), but don't overdo pinging - if they are obviously monitoring your Talk page, there is no need to ping them every time you respond.

That all being said . . . re the infobox, on The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, you added "Island (worldwide except as noted)/Polydor (Canada)". That is the kind of thing that a) needs to be in the body of the article if it is going to be in the infobox, and b) is just too many words for an infobox. I would suggest just putting "Island/Polydor" in the infobox, and explain in the body that Island did it worldwide while it was Polydor in Canada. It may even be decided (once it gets hashed out on Talk) that since the infoboxes are intended to give the 'big picture', one country being different is not noteworthy there. Adding it just to the infobox is a red flag - I am not saying it is vandalism, but adding material just to the infobox is the kind of thing vandals do. Same with the minor edit tag - what you did, making a substantive edit to an infobox that was tagged as minor, wasn't vandalism but it was flagged as potential vandalism by the ClueBot, which as the name implies is a bot not a human, and once it identified your text as the kind of thing that is often vandalism, that started the process of human editors who might otherwise give you the benefit of the doubt deciding that you were probably a vandal. Again, the same thing with the restoring of reverted content - you may have done it because you thought you had made some mistake the first time, but it was perceived as belligerent flouting of WP:BRD and this fed into the growing erroneous narrative that you were a vandal.

Regarding the fact that you were adding unreferenced material to pages that were almost entirely unreferenced, yeah, I know. Stinks, doesn't it. Life isn't fair, but any contribution can theoretically be reverted if it isn't referenced, even if the entire remainder of the page also isn't referenced. Most editors take a different approach, allowing unreferenced material, with the expectation that the referencing will be added at some point in the future, but this technically violates policy and can result in pages drowning in unreferenced content.

I am not sure what is happening with the reCaptchas you mention. I opened up a few of the relevant User Talk pages, and none of them were requiring reCaptchas to edit - I only see this when I have accidentally logged out. Maybe it is something newly registered users see, but I won't be able to comment on that. The overall takehome here is that nothing you did was particularly bad, it is just that the cumulative effect of the different things you were doing led to a false conclusion that you might be a vandal, and once you got called a vandal the first time, it caused other editors to treat you like a vandal as well. New editors can sometimes have a Sisyphean experience trying to climb Wikipedia's steep learning curve. Agricolae (talk) 11:17, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I hope I am getting this right this time...

Firstly, to Maproom,

My making everything a 'minor' edit was my not knowing what else to say, thinking that a major 'overhaul' would be something that would be not minor. But you are correct that the example you provided might be considered not minor. I believe that only one other place did I add an entire paragraph. Thank you for your response.

Related, to AlamMI,

Thank you for providing the links so I can better understand the meaning of 'minor' edits

To Agricolae,

I had wondered why those boxes had appeared after I had written something and I did not realise that it was indenting that was doing it. I did know to not indent in articles, but in communication I just do what I always have - write as if I was writing a letter - which I still do sometimes if I write a long e-mail to friends. And as I am trying to respond in a friendly way, I just did what I was used to. Now that I know that won't happen again.

I kept forgetting about the tildes, but hopefully will get that right.

Also I did not know that I should respond on my talk page, as to me it's natural to respond to people where they are, like when I respond to an e-mail. I wasn't even totally aware at first that I even HAD a talk page.

Regarding the info box, as you mention the Island/Polydor thing, I did not know that adding extra info there was not normal. In would regularly see something with one label on one line, and another on the next line, and add the country info, which to me, IS part of the 'big picture' - of course this is coming from the mind of a life-long collector. To me, this would be especially important if only one label is mentioned. I know that I had run into pages about Traffic albums where only United Artists (their onetime US label) was listed. This was clearly written by an American. While I am also an American, this is ENGLISH Wikipedia, and the people not of the US need to be considered, especially when you are talking about a British or other non-American artists. So my rule of thumb would be to list the UK label first, and any other variations afterwards. If on pages about American artists, the the US label would be first, and then any others. I will admit that the '(worldwide except as noted)' is quite long, but i couldn't think of a better way to describe it. And of course I did not know that placing that in the infobox would make it look suspicious. Having said that, I note that under genres of music, sometimes many numerous things are listed, and those things are way longer that me just adding a '(US)' after a label name.

On one the Traffic albums, someone claims that the music is 'jazz fusion' which is most certainly is NOT, but I did not delete that, as I know that is something that might get the writer of that's panties in a bunch. People take their opinions seriously, but I don't see how my added absolute facts makes me the bad guy. In addition, I note that many of the reviews of these albums use American sources. As a British band, it would be nice if their were some UK reviews, which often are at odds with US ones. But as my main goal is to only deal with facts, not opinions, I let those things be.

As for adding unreferenced material, as I said before, much of that comes directly from my own knowledge, and this knowledge existed well before the internet even existed. For example, I already pointed out... "I added info, like the fact that original UK and some European versions of "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" << have a hyphen in the name of the album and song on the labels, while the actual names do not. Again, nowhere does Discogs say that, and other than checking each version's pics, you wouldn't know that. Am I expected to post links to each of those labels as proof?" Now maybe this is something that Wikipedia does not care about, but I don't see any harm in adding these kinds of facts. Hyphens and other things in spelling can make a difference. Some years ago a legal agreement in Canada was declared invalid because the French translation of a document originally written in English had a slight error in it. Granted, this is not the same thing. But I still believe in accuracy and correct info being paramount.

And as for finding these references, sometimes they just don't exist on the internet. The eponymous 1974 album of the British band Ducks Deluxe was originally released in the UK with the wrong versions of two of the songs on the LP. This was reported in the British music papers. It gave the matrix number of the sides, and my to my surprise (as I had gotten the album by mail order) from the UK, I actually had a copy. If you look this up online, you can't find this, nor is it on Discogs, nor Wikipedia, yet this is a fact. I'd be perfectly happy if Jimmy Wales wants to fly me out to his home, and I can bring my copy, along with the US copy of the album which has the correct versions. But short of my rummaging through all the physical papers from the UK music media in 1974, how do I prove this? As such, I would not add this info to the Wikipedia page. Last year a box set of the band's complete recordings was released, with some previously unreleased material, but even it did not have those two songs. Even the compilers apparently were not aware!

As for the reCaptchas, I only found this on the pages responding to the editors who had accused me of vandalism, trying to state my case to them. Everywhere else, I've had no problem.

I've written a lot here. Hopefully not too much. My sincere thanks to you and all the others. I will do my best to try to understand better how things work around here. I'm here only to make things better, and cause any problems. DDB9000 (talk) 21:30, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DDB9000: I moved your response to be indented correctly. The posting you were responding to had no indent (i.e., no colon in front), so your response should have one colon in front of each paragraph. This response to your response has two colons in front, and your response to it should have three colons in front, etc. (Note that you should generally not edit another user's contributions on a user or talk page – this is an exceptional situation where I felt it would help all concerned. I hope you don't mind.

But short of my rummaging through all the physical papers from the UK music media in 1974, how do I prove this? As such, I would not add this info to the Wikipedia page. Right, unfortunately. Unless it can be verified by someone else, it cannot be included. Believe it or not, every day, people attempt to add things that are wrong to Wikipedia, sometimes even intentionally. This necessitates the policy of verifiability, and bots like ClueBot (the shear volume of edits requires some automated assistance to review). Otherwise, this just becomes another useless collection of gibberish. If you can find the physical newspaper article, great – add the fact and cite it – citations to offline sources are necessary when no online source can be found. Otherwise, the article will just have to be without this particular bit of information. "Quality, not quantity".

Lastly, nothing that's been said or done here should be interpreted to suggest you're "a bad guy", especially not an automated response by a bot, or even a mis-characterization by a reviewing editor. It's all about content, not personal. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 09:01, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DDB9000: Let me reinforce what AlanM1 said. Nothing that you did makes you bad, just unaware, and some bots and editors jumped to incorrect conclusions. Likewise, you adding unsourced material was no worse than the actions of others who added unsourced material to the same pages.

If you think uncited information given on a page is in error but its removal will be controversial, then go to the article's Talk page and raise the issue there. If a source cannot be provided, then policy is on the side of removal but it is a good idea to give whoever added it a chance to provide documentation. If you want to change the description rather than just deleting it, you had best have your own source.

Because of the necessity of verifiability, personal observation, even that gained by decades of experience, is not to be included because there is no way to distinguish this from hoaxing or simple mistaken belief. Wikipedia articles are limited by policy to what can be documented from reliable published sources - in effect, we rely on the fact-checking responsibilities of publishers, rather than the expertise of Wikipedia editors, to determine content. Experts just have to live with the indignity of knowing that Wikipedia articles will contain incomplete and imprecise information - that is the cost of avoiding hoaxes and factually inaccurate personal beliefs. Agricolae (talk) 22:04, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In terms of how best to list the information on music albums, unless a specific policy or guideline has been developed by WikiProject Albums, then the manner of listing each album is entirely subject to the consensus of those who edit that particular page. Again, raise the issue on the Talk page. If you think there should be a general guideline or policy and there isn't, then you can always suggest one be developed on the Wikiproject Albums Talk page, but you might want to familiarize yourself with whatever they do there (and Wikipedia more generally) first. Agricolae (talk) 22:04, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your thread has been archived

Hi DDB9000! You created a thread called False accusation of vandalism at Wikipedia:Teahouse, but it has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please create a new thread.

Archival by Lowercase sigmabot III, notification delivery by Muninnbot, both automated accounts. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=Muninnbot}} (ban this bot) or {{nobots}} (ban all bots) on your user talk page. Muninnbot (talk) 19:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]