User talk:Oliver mcrae

Welcome!

Hello, Oliver mcrae, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of your recent edits have not conformed to Wikipedia's verifiability policy, and has been or will be removed. Wikipedia articles should refer only to facts and interpretations that have been stated in print or on reputable websites or in other media. Always remember to provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. Wikipedia also has a related policy against including original research in articles. Additionally, all new biographies of living people must contain at least one reliable source.

If you are stuck and looking for help, please see the guide for citing sources or come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask a question on your talk page. Again, welcome. BilCat (talk) 03:54, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

June 2017

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, please note that there is a Manual of Style that should be followed to maintain a consistent, encyclopedic appearance. Deviating from this style, as you did in Gap creationism, disturbs uniformity among articles and may cause readability or accessibility problems. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Lower case lettering is Wikipedia style. Please cite a reference for any article expansion. Binksternet (talk) 16:06, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions at Old Earth creationism. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing Wikipedia. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you. Binksternet (talk) 17:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your recent editing history at Gap creationism shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Binksternet (talk) 22:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you attacking my attempts to contribute?

You have twice deleted my considerable rewrites of what were initially poorly written, weak pages. I find this extremely aggressive and violent on your part and wonder why you are doing it? Its clear you have little or no knowledge of the content, certainly no scholarship; why are you being so viciously tyrannical? Do you privately hate the topic and wish to see it remain shallow and inaccurate? You presumptively attack someone you don't know, someone who is trying to do good, make the world a little brighter place; I feel the victim of some cruddy little internet terrorist, one more cowardly anonymous agent of mean regression and darkness.

Really, why do you seek to destroy the honest work of someone you don't know?

This is my first time to participate in Wikipedia. Its foreign territory for me, fat full with strange coding. I'm figuring things out as I go, naively thinking I'm traveling in friendly country, and BAM! I get violently ambushed. You have made my first Wikipedia attempt a miserable experience. Are Wikipedia and its editors really just a mendacious, false presumption that serves political bias and puerile power games rather than substance and truth. Shame on you.

If this is the base, respectless way Wikipedia works - dominated by petty editors who counter quality content, then I will walk away and leave Wikipedia to its trite and cliched coverage of complex topics.

What vindictive nature drives you to destroy hours of scholarly work?!

signed with my real name Oliver McRae, Ph.D. retired professor 1999 recipient of a federal (Clinton Administration) teaching excellence award

Oliver mcrae (talk) 00:03, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As BilCat wrote above, your changes have run afoul of Wikipedia's requirement for verifiability. Additions that you make to any page must be based on a published work from a reliable source, the source explicitly cited. I removed your work primarily because of that reason. A different but minor problem is that you are capitalizing concepts that Wikipedia would generally display in lower case – there's a manual of style for the online encyclopedia.

I'm sure that the text you composed is based on one or more sources, so all you need to do is dig them out of your bookcase and cite them, with page numbers.

Future discussions of your proposed text ought to be made at Talk:Gap creationism and Talk:Old Earth creationism. When you begin a discussion there, it's likely that more people interested in the topic will participate. Binksternet (talk) 04:04, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Some advice

It can indeed be a strange environment here for new editors depending upon what they are editing. One thing we do ask is that editors be civil and assume that other editors are acting in good faith and not attack other editors. I've got over 160,000 edits and Binkersternet has 50,000 more than I do, so although we won't always be right, we almost certainly have a better grasp of how this encyclopedia works. Particularly for those from an academic background (and I have one myself) it can be a strange environment, as our articles are not built on editors' own knowledge but upon what reliable sources say about the subject. See WP:VERIFY, WP:RS and no original research. I notice that you made a number of changes in sourced text. Did you actually read the sources and decide that your changes represented the sources better than the original text? Doug Weller talk 18:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 2023

Hello, I'm CodeTalker. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Zodiac, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at referencing for beginners. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. CodeTalker (talk) 16:38, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]