User talk:Silverburn

Hi Ian/Silverburn. It's good to know now who you are for sure since we're familiar with each other from when you edited as I. Thomson. Sorry about misspelling your name by the way. Have been very busy today but I'll try to get back to you soon at more length. Mutt Lunker (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi again Silverburn, I can understand why you feel frustrated at having your edits at Kirkcaldy changed or removed. However, as you say yourself, you have difficulties expressing yourself and you must appreciate that contributions which are poorly expressed, confusing, have mistakes in them or (unintentionally I assume) misrepresent citations will be re-edited by other users. I’m afraid that almost all of your edits fall into one or all of these categories.

You say that I have been bullying, harassing and threatening you but this is simply not true and I hope you now think better of making these accusations. An editor with less patience could have just reverted all your edits but, if you look at my edit history, I have tried to sift through your contributions to retain and clarify anything worthwhile, trim anything that is not relevant or incorrect and give detailed and clear edit summaries to explain why I have done what I have done. This requires a lot of work and if I really did hate you or want to make life difficult for you, it would not make sense to go about it this way. It was because I guessed it was you that was making all these edits to Kirkcaldy that I went to some care when editing your contributions, because I know about the problems you discussed with me before.

Since you ask, I am from Kirkcaldy by the way.

I’d like to help out so will start off by going back to the suggestions I made last time. I suggested to you before that you could add {{user aspie}} to your talk page to join "[[Category:Aspergian Wikipedians]] for the over 200 Wikipedians who self-identify as having Asperger syndrome.". I think this will be helpful to you so that people will know why you edit in the way that you do and that it’s not because you are an “idiot”, as you fear. Hopefully people will be more likely to help you out and explain any changes they make to what you have written but it will not mean that you will be given allowance to edit in ways that don’t conform to policies and guidelines.

You talk about having “routines, obbessive interests e.g. knowing all of the UK's railway stations, mannerisins including the use of varied language in written text or speech and having a good memory amongst things”. There are a positive aspects to these qualities but, aside from expressing yourself clearly, the main difficulty you seem to have is focusing on what details are worth putting into an article and what are not. I can list a few things which I know you are very interested in but which are usually not relevant in an article. In text about notable buildings or institutions you often list details regarding streets, junctions, nearby shops and buildings and entrances to them. These sorts of details are rarely worth listing and doing so can make the more important details hard to pick out. I’ve seen that there are editors other than me who trim out such details which are not relevant and leave in those that are. Please have some trust in me and them when we clean out the irrelevant stuff.

Another suggestion was to request "adoption" by another user by adding {{Adoptme}} to your userpage. See Wikipedia:Adopt-a-User. When I suggested this to you before I did think about offering to adopt you myself but decided not to, largely because I didn’t think I could do it justice as I wouldn't have sufficient time to devote to this. My Wikipedia activities are usually more in the character of a WikiGnome, so not so similar to yours and thus maybe not so compatible for helping you out much. I’m quite happy to correspond with you to some extent but I’m often busy, you might get frustrated if I can’t respond for a while and it may well be possible to find someone who can devote greater energies in adopting you. If you like this idea I can offer to help you in finding an adopter and helping get them across the things you need help with.

You are very industrious, have some good ideas on what to include (the new linoleum section was a great idea but badly executed – maybe I can explain more another time), you also have some not so good ideas and, nearly always, when you express the ideas in the article your wording is confusing or has errors. One way that having an adopter may be of use is so that they could help you to sort what is a good idea for an edit and what isn’t so good, and to sort out the wording before you add it to an article. When you add text which is badly worded or has factual errors, it can be much more difficult and time consuming for another editor to rescue the contribution than to just scrap it altogether. If you get help in phrasing contributions well and making sure the details are relevant beforehand, your edits will be much more likely to be retained.

In regard to citations, I notice that what you have written does not always correspond accurately to the text you cite. Sometimes this takes the form of misunderstandings of the text, inaccuracies in paraphrasing it or attribution of facts or opinions which are not actually in the text. I'm sure this is unintentional but you must be careful not to do this. These were major problems with your linoleum section and your recent edits regarding plans for a new swimming pool.

Another idea of yours which I think is very good is to have more pictures. This can extend further than pictures for the Kirkcaldy article itself (there would be a limit to how many more could go there) as you could help build up a collection of Kirkcaldy related pictures on Wikimedia Commons.

I hope this is helpful to you. Please let me know.

Yours aye, Mutt Lunker (talk) 01:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

i feel really very bad about myself when you were only trying to help. you see, i get very paranoid at times and don't exactly trust people if i'm frightened by their behaviour uncustomed to my surroundings. i can appreciate that my grammar and sentence sturcturing is poor and that using to express info. didn't always come off so well as i would like it.

the thing is you are straight to point saying that i do come up with good ideas and that i cannot except when i come up with bad ones. i really do put too much pressure on myself, which i'll admit.

the whole reason i started contributing to the article was because of the poor shape of the article and i didn't want neighbouring Glenrothes to overshadow this article (i'm not much of a fan of Glenrothes).

now the article may be viewed as too big with too much detailed information and little balance. i have noticed that there is now too much information in the Kirkcaldy Town Centre sub-section with no picture. that's why i started a while back, a seperate article on The Mercat, but again, some ponder it's worthiness. i feel the time is right now to cut the info. on the Kirkcaldy Town Centre but in a way that is managable.

where do you think the cuts are needed? Kilnburn (talk) 16:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Don’t feel bad about it, we’re both clear now that we’ve got the same aim in improving the article.

Can I take it that Kilnburn and Silverburn are both you, and thus the same as I. Thomson and 80.192.80.184? If so, I’m not sure why you are editing under these different user accounts but it’s making things rather confusing. I’m not saying this to tell you off and I’m sure there’s no dishonest intent but there are a few reasons why this is probably not a good idea.

Other users will be confused when they see your edits under different names, although as you have a distinctive style of writing they may realise it is the same person. Worse than confusing them, there is the danger that they will think you are using the different names for bad purposes, intentionally pretending to be different people. I think it would be a good idea if you read Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry as this explains the issues. It so happens that I was once accused of being a sock puppet of another user and it wasn’t a nice experience! There is a section on legitimate uses of alternative accounts but I’m guessing that these uses aren’t the reasons that you are doing this.

If it’s simply that you’ve changed your mind about which name to use, my advice is to decide on one of them now, stick to it, always log on when you edit (rather than just being listed with your ISP number), stop all use of the other accounts and indicate on them that you don’t use them any more with a direction to the one that you do use.

As I said, I don’t believe there’s dishonest intent to you doing this but even so, I’m a bit confused. You’re writing here on your Silverburn talk page but as Kilnburn so I’m not sure whether I should be replying here to Silverburn or on Kilnburn’s talk page. On the Kirkcaldy talk page you have comments under three guises, making it difficult for people to follow who is saying what.

I read your comments of today, written as Kilnburn, and as it’s late don’t have the time to say much but they were interesting, as are Duncancumming’s replies. In regard to your comments on pictures though, I’m interested to know what you meant when you said “since i live in the town, i would love to do, only i could”. Do you feel you’re not experienced enough as a photographer, lack the equipment, aren’t sure how to go about adding photos to Wikipedia? I’m wondering if this might be your chance to direct your energies to making a big contribution to an aspect of the article that has scope for expansion and where you won’t feel frustrated by your difficulties with verbal expression. How are you as a photographer?

It was interesting to know about your inspiration being comparison with the Glenrothes article. The first thing that strikes me (I wasn’t really familiar with the article) is that it certainly has a greater use of photography. It’s good to have this rivalry to spur you on, just as long as it doesn’t affect your NPOV (from your edits I don’t think this is a problem) or tempt you to add lots of stuff to Kirkcaldy that’s maybe not so important (maybe more of a problem some of the time). In the case of the latter, it’s better to have good concise writing than a big mix of notable material and more trivial material all together.

Regarding Kirkcaldy Town Centre, you are right, the lack of a picture is a shame. In regard to looking at whether some of the detail needs cutting, I’ll see if I can have a look but it may not be for a few days. As I mentioned, I’m often busy and sometimes am away from internet access for a while. You could always make a start yourself, maybe cutting out some of the excess details about locations and entrances (e.g. "with a separate entrance on Hunter Street near Army barracks") or less notable info (I'd say the 15 flags at the Town House are not really a unique or noteworthy feature of such a building). Good luck. Mutt Lunker (talk) 00:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi again. I thought you'd be interested to know that I've heard from Duncancumming that he (understandably) had thought Kilnburn was a new and different user. It just illustrates the point that editing under several user names is confusing and not a good idea. As I said, best to decide which one you are going to use, stick to it, always log on to it when you edit and make a note on the old ones redirecting them to the correct one. Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

right just to keep you up to date, i will become known as kilburn from now on. i know, writing and making adjustments under all these other user names is just no good. i didn't actually want to be in that situation

anyway, try to keep this short. i have started a new Victoria Hospital article whereby much of the info. in the Victoria Hospital sub-section in the Kirkcaldy article has been moved into. thus only a brief mention of the hospital on the Kirkcaldy article remains.

other changes have included finding (again) the vital reference that states that the original waterfront development was denied; John Smith Business Park extension and the rebuilding/mention of Kirkcaldy's mosque.

i have noticed that the new paragraph that was added by someone and my paragraph on Kirkcaldy's High Street in the Kirkcaldy Town Centre article are both very similar. although, i don't want to shred what the good person wrote, but maybe it might be a good idea to merge both of them together where neccessary. i'm not sure, but thought i'd bring it to your attention

thanks again Kilnburn (talk) 20:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)