User talk:Pekay2/Archive 1

Archive 1

A word of advice

Hi Pekay2 - again, welcome to Wikipedia. Some advice, for what it is worth.

You are new here and you don't understand the rules very well, much less the spirit that informs them - it is unwise to jump straight into a dispute as you have on the G. Edward Griffin talk page. It is great that you are participating, but I am not sure you even know what WP:Arbcom is... and while i hope to steer clear of them, we are not ~too far~ from getting involved with them. (they are kind of like the "supreme court" of Wikipedia and there are all kinds of arcane things that come into play. and it is a huge time suck). And the article is under Arbcom discretionary sanctions. I will give you formal notice of that in a moment, below. These are deep WP waters.

Some orientation for you...

If you really want to get involved, it turns out that Wikipedia is a pretty complex place. Being an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that over the years, Wikipedia has developed lots of policies and guidelines (PAG) to help provide a "body of law" as it were, that form a foundation for rational discussion. Without that foundation, this place would be both a garbage dump of random content and a wild west - a truly ugly place. But with the foundation, there is guidance for generating excellent content and there are ways to rationally work things out - if, and only if, all the parties involved accept that foundation and work within it. One of the hardest things for new people, is to understand not only that this foundation exists, but what its letter and spirit is. (I keep emphasizing the spirit, because too often people fall prey to what we call "wikilawyering") The more I have learned about how things are set up here - not just the letter of PAG and the various drama boards and administrative tools, but their spirit - the more impressed I have become at how, well ... beautiful this place is. It takes time to learn both the spirit and the letter of PAG, and to really get aligned with Wikipedia's mission to crowdsource a reliable, NPOV source of information for the public (as "reliable" and "NPOV" are defined in PAG!). People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something. That passion is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead to WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, which is really destructive. WP:ADVOCACY is one of our biggest bedevilments.

PAG are described and discussed in a whole forest of documents within Wikipedia that are "behind the scenes" in a different "namespace", in which the documents start with "Wikipedia:" or in shorthand, "WP:" (for example, our policy on edit warring is here: WP:EDITWAR not here EDITWAR). You won't find these documents by using the simple search box above, which searches only in "main space" where the actual articles are. However if you search with the prefix, (for example if you search for "WP:EDITWAR") you will find policies and guidelines. Likewise if you do an advanced search with "wikipedia" or "help" selected you can also find things in "Wikipedia space". The link in the welcome message above the "Five Pillars" points you to our most important policies and I recommend that you read them all, if you have not already and if you intend to stick around! They guide everything that happens here.

With all that in mind, here are some things that I suggest you read (I know, I know, things to read... but like I said, Wikipedia can be complicated!)

• WP:NPOV, WP:OR, and WP:VERIFY are our most important content policies. They don't mean what most people think they do, when folks first arrive here. Please do take your time and check them out. (WP:PSCI is a subsection of NPOV policy, and the guideline, WP:FRINGE, fleshes it out. There is a section in FRINGE called WP:FRINGEBLP that deals with the intersection of WP:BLP and WP:PSCI - I am pointing these out in particular due to the discretionary sanctions)
• WP:RS and WP:MEDRS - these are our guidelines for sourcing general content, and health-related content, respectively.
• WP:MOS - this our manual of style.
• WP:CONSENSUS - Wikipedia has plenty of policies and guidelines, as I mentioned, but really at the end of the day this place is ... a democracy? an anarchy? something hard to define. But we figure things out by talking to one another. CONSENSUS is the bedrock on which everything else rests. WP is not the internet where folks flame each other. We are a community.
• WP:SPA - you may want to read this.

Again your participation is very welcome but again I recommend that you take it slow, ask questions, listen, and read a lot, til you come to understand the heart and letter of WP's policies and guidelines. Anyway, good luck! Jytdog (talk) 18:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for much good advice, but it strikes me that you are at odds with your own information.--Pekay2 (talk) 14:12, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

you are welcome. i would ask about your criticism, but to be frank I don't think you have been here long enough to know what you are talking about, and i know that i fuck up from time to time. my goal here was to help you see the bigger picture and try to prevent you flaming out before you even figure things out -- so many people come here and start arguing fiercely before they understand things, and they just get frustrated and leave, and that is a shame. you will do as you will. but i will tell you that arguing with people when you don't really understand the basis for how we work is a bad way to start. Jytdog (talk) 14:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

LOL! I love your "i fuck up" line! A common problem shared by all us.--Pekay2 (talk) 15:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

:) self-awareness (and self-control) are so, so important here! a little humility goes a looong way to defusing tensions. Jytdog (talk) 15:14, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions notification - Pseudoscience

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding pseudoscience and fringe science, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

This message is informational only and does not imply misconduct regarding your contributions to date.

This is the discretionary sanctions notice I mentioned above. Jytdog (talk) 18:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

about this

comment - as I wrote on the Talk page, the way to judge if a given source is OK for a given piece of content, is a) judge if the content you want to support is general, or health-related. b) read the relevant guideline (WP:RS for general content and WP:MEDRS for health content) and see if the source meets the guideline c) if you are doubtful you can search the relevant boards: WP:RSN for past discussions about general reliable sources, and WT:MEDRS or Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine for discussions of health-related sources. d) Back in the article, if someone proposes some content and source in an article, and other people disagree about whether that source is reliable for the content, discussions first unfold on the article Talk page, and if there is lack of WP:CONSENSUS you go get feedback at the relevant board.

Your statement that you disagree, and demanding a reliable source for the reliability of a source, made no sense, with regard to how Wikipedia works. Again, you are being kind of combative before you know what you are doing. Which just leads to foolishness. I recommend you ask questions instead of arguing and making demands. But you will do, as you will do. Jytdog (talk) 00:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

and in general, we always think about the reliability of a source for a given piece of content. Even Natural News is reliable for a statement like, "according to Mike Adams writing in Natural News, vitamin C cures cancer". Right? (there are different policies and guidelines that would come into play if someone proposed content like that) So the content really matters. It is almost impossible to judge a source generally, in a vacuum. I am assuming that Atsme will want to source something like "Laetrile cures cancer", stated in Wikipedia's voice, to Natural News. there is no way in hell that this will fly. But maybe she means something else. That is why i asked her to propose specific content and a specific source. (Natural News has all kinds of different articles in it). Jytdog (talk) 00:25, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Please confine your comments re: Griffin to the Griffin talk page. Wall of text is filling up my talk page.--Pekay2 (talk) 00:55, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

hilarious! you are on your own. good luck. Jytdog (talk) 00:56, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

You are totally misinterpreting me. I was planning to ask you how you arrive at "demanding" and "combative" as a description of my request for RS on Natural News and RT. Your phrasing seems to be a projection of your feelings as it certainly is not mine. What do you mean by hilarious?--Pekay2 (talk) 01:17, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

really you are on your own. if you have any questions I will be happy to answer, but i won't actively reach out anymore. good luck! Jytdog (talk) 01:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC)