User talk:Hottertoddy

Your recent edits

Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. If you can't type the tilde character, you should click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 00:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, SineBot, now I understand that!Hottertoddy (talk) 01:31, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

August 2008

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added to the page Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Mfield (talk) 02:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC) @Matt Field: Why do you list your own website, which is advertising? My blog is non-profit and for the benefit of the community. If you had spent more than 30 seconds - and you didn't- you would have seen this. Thank you, I did add my blog to the Talk Page there. But if you are the only person reading that page, than this is indeed a corrupt community.Hottertoddy (talk) 03:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Continued from Editor assistance page

Looks like you're starting to understand how things work - even to signing your comments :)

You have misunderstood my comment about the cooperative spirit: I was referring to your use of the word 'spurious' about another editor. That wasn't exactly an example of good faith.

I mentioned ScienceBlogs as an example of blogs which might be acceptable references; just one example with which I am familiar - there may be many more.

You write: "If just anyone can go in and edit anyone than this is far worse than a blog,..." Worse? Well, yes and no. It is true that anyone can edit anyone, but there are a few tens of thousands of editors here who keep watch, as you've experienced. Mistakes, misunderstandings and vandalism are usually caught within minutes. I have some 100 articles on my watchlist. I check changes on them daily. That's what getting involved here can lead to. (I'll add your talk page to my watchlist for a while, so if you should answer here, I'll see it.)

Your "experience and credentials" outside of Wikipedia are an unknown. Adding relevant material and citing sources is what's accepted and valued here. I've only been here a year and there's lots I haven't learned yet. --Hordaland (talk) 02:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hordaland: I did understand what you meant. I absolutely did mean he is spurious, and I will stand by that. I didn't know people watched pages, but now I do. How o/c. I'm not interested in getting "involved" in Wiki, although I quote from it a lot, as do most of us. I do VERY much object to Matt Field's ridiculous editing: pls read my latest on the Ed Assistance page. He is selling himself, and his work, and using the SL page to emphasize bands, which he makes a living taking photos of. I think he is making a little more money from Wiki than your volunteer editors do.

Please tell me who is the real editor here. Is this owned by Google? I just found Wikimedia. So it looks like Michael Snow is Chair. Do you know his email or phone or how to get hold of him? Thanks.Hottertoddy (talk) 03:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I resent the unfounded allegations you are making against me. My editing according to policy is in no way 'ridicolous' or 'spurious' and you would do well to read up on the project with the links that have been offered to you before jumping in, making errors and then accusing everyone else of being at fault. As I explained on the talk page, adding external links to your own blog is considered a conflict of interest. I also pointed out that providing citations to prove the notability and relevance of your blog will go a long way to solving this problem, if notability is established, a neutral editor can re-add them without fear of accusations of COI. This is a community edited project and you cannot 'call the chair' to complain, you just need to read up on how things are done so that you don't edit in a way that the community has decided is unnacceptable.

Furthermore, and here you are really stretching matters - I have in no way edited the Silver Lake page to emphasize bands, I am only one of a large number of people who have edited that article and it is in no way my work. It needs more work and there is plenty more that needs to be done to improve it for sure. As for the website links on my images, I have explained that is an acceptable part of the Creative Commons attribution process. I donate a large amount of photography for free to wikimedia (along with an extensive amount of editing of numerous and diverse articles which reange far from anything that i make money to live off} and the only thing I get in return is attribution. Mfield (talk) 03:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

You have to understand that all these pages are edited by multiple people, I am not responsible for the content of the Silver Lake article any more than you, all we have is guidelines to ensure veracity and notability. I did not 'approve' anything on that page, we are all constantly removing information that is irrelevant/unsourced. I edit a fair number of articles and have not spent huge amounts of time on that one article yet, I will however revert clear policy violations when they appear on my watchlist as everyone is encouraged to do per WP:BEBOLD Mfield (talk) 03:33, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

The "real" editor here is all of us. Policies and consensus are our guidelines. We have elected administrators who have more power than the most of us, but they, too, are closely watched. Administrators may block contributors for a shorter or longer period, and I suspect that if you keep on saying unkind/unreasonable things about Mfield, you may be asking for a block. See: Wikipedia:Civility

You may provide a link to your blog on your user page; many people do. Just click on the redlink of your name and start writing. Though if you're "not interested in getting "involved" in Wiki[pedia]", there may not be much point in that.

On regular articles, it is not acceptable to add links to one's own site; that's called conflict-of-interest. If you have a blog entry which speaks to some specific issue in an article, you may suggest on the article's talk page that a link to it might be appropriate. --Hordaland (talk) 04:11, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Hordaland. I read the page on Civility. "This policy is not meant to be used as a weapon against other contributors." So I know you didn't mean it that way on my first day of posting here.

My entire blog has over 100 articles that speak about the community of Silver Lake. Matt's actions before he deleted my blog again were to look at it for 30 seconds. I feel very happy for the hours of VOLUNTEER work I've put into this blog. If the editors here all prefer to take Matt Field's side - no one has disagreed with him, or suggested that my blog would be a great contribution for people hungry for info about this community - I really don't think I have any more to say. I will take this up with Wikimedia, or whatever it's called.

@Matt, I believe I followed up every reference to your work here on wiki with a reference to your own User page here. Every artist in the world knows that attribution is publicity, too! But thank you for telling me that other people are editing that page, too. Very reassuring.Hottertoddy (talk) 04:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Why are you now removing all the links on Silver Lake?

Is this some kind of WP:POINT thing? These are external links that are referenced in the text of the article/and or are directly pertinent to the topic of the article. The ones you refer to as blogs are also websites representing bodies/organizations not blogs that represent one person's self published opinion. As a number of us have pointed out, Wikipedia doesn't 'hate blogs', it just sensibly requires that they only be referenced when the writer is independently recognized as someone who is an authority on the subject that they are blogging. Some of them probably predate the coining of the term blog. Please use your time to come up with promised citations rather than removing other links to disrupt wikipedia and attempt to make a point. Consider this a warning for inappropriate content deletion and removal of references without good explanation. Mfield (talk) 23:41, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Don't threaten me, Matt.Hottertoddy (talk) 00:03, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not threatening you, I am officially warning you to point out the likely consequences of your actions. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt as a newbie yet again by doing it unofficially but as you've decided to continue with yet another deletion.... Mfield (talk) 00:15, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing, such as the edit you made to Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California. If your vandalism continues, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Mfield (talk) 00:05, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Do what you need to, Matt. Meanwhile, I'm reporting you to Wikimedia for threatening and harassing me.Hottertoddy (talk) 00:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I have already given you a link to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Complaining to Wikimedia board members is not part of the process and I hope they have better things to do with their time than dealing with an external link in one of many millions of Wikimedia pages. Removing external links to blogs is frequent in Wikipedia. See [1] for an example by another editor in the same article. But the links you removed would not normally be considered blogs by Wikipedia and it strongly looked like you only removed them because you were upset about your blog being removed. You are right that one of the removed links didn't work but it only required removal of a trailing '/' to fix it. Giving users a warning (for example a standardized at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace) for breaking Wikipedia rules is common and is not considered a threat or harassment. I have not seen Mfield do anything deserving a warning. Note that only administrators are able to block users and Mfield is not himself an administrator but merely indicates what somebody else might do. I understand it can be annoying to feel your work on your blog is not being appreciated, but Mfield and other established editors are just working to follow Wikipedia guidelines like Wikipedia:External links. Other sites like Open Directory Project at http://dmoz.org have other guidelines and might list your blog if you suggest it (I haven't examined whether it's already there and dmoz can take very long to review suggested sites). PrimeHunter (talk) 04:10, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Enough

I am not having further contact with you, please do not contact me either. I have spent 24 hours patiently explaining the way that WP works, only to face personal attacks for my efforts. I have been editing wikipedia a number of years and I have never yet given someone an inappropriate warning. I will leave it to others from this point onwards as I am worn out with trying to explain the same things again and again. Mfield (talk) 00:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC)