User talk:Whitebro

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Hello, Whitebro, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using 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 your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! ~Adjwilley (talk) 19:52, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Translations

Thank you for your edits, but please do not replace untranslated content with unedited machine translated content. They are too poor to be of any real benefit to the project, and tidying a bad translation is often harder than actually translating in the first place--Jac16888 ^Talk 21:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

But Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations. Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing.Whitebro (talk) 22:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly my point, because that's what you did. By all means use google translation to help yourself translate a non-english article, just don't add the bad translation then leave it and tag it for someone else to fix - that's just making things worse--Jac16888 ^Talk 23:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Perfection is not required: Wikipedia is a work in progress. Collaborative editing means that incomplete or poorly written first drafts can evolve over time into excellent articles.Whitebro (talk) 23:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration does not mean "I'll create something bad, someone else can fix it". Don't add machine translations to articles, it's a simple as that - if you're not able to translate things properly then you should find another area of Wikipedia to contribute to--Jac16888 ^Talk 23:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

This principle is fundamental to the idea of a Wiki and is enshrined in the Five Pillars where it is summarised as "do not worry about making mistakes". The Foundation has made it fairly clear that they oppose raising the bar to new editors and they're faltering first steps on the grounds that this would tend to restrict the flow of volunteers. Only 1% of our articles are of GA/FA quality and there are deletionists and grievers out there who would be very happy to delete all the rest. Weakening our protection of incomplete work risks destroying the project. Almost no one has the skill to produce high quality articles right from the start. Like most difficult things it needs practice. Encouragement not to worry about mistakes helps us retain exactly the type of conscientious newbies who are most likely to go onto to be valuable editors. We don't want people to excessively worry about making mistakes. I'm pretty sure it says somewhere that no one should be required to learn our policies and guidelines before editing. Obviously things go much smoother if they make an effort, especially if they are warned about breaking one, but we don't want people to be too intimidated before they even start.Whitebro (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Stop it. You are making Wikpedia worse, not better. Stop adding bad translations - if you can't fix it yourself then don't bother adding it. What you are doing is disruptive and unproductive, and doing it just to make a WP:POINT is even worse--Jac16888 ^Talk 21:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Just because someone is making a point does not mean that he is disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate it.Whitebro (talk) 21:57, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

You are deliberately adding extremely poor content to Wikipedia because I asked you not to do so - that is disruptive. --Jac16888 ^Talk 22:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I was reading over the policies and guidelines too quickly and made the mistake of entering "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing." when I thought it said "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is better than nothing." I did not mean for that to be part of my argument.Whitebro (talk) 18:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

WP:3O is for content dispute, not for behavioral questions. If you think his behavior is bad, bring it up in WP:AIV ReformedArsenal (talk) 14:16, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's a 3O for you, based upon reading just the above (and the page I found and linked to). Both of you should be talking about what makes the encyclopedia better. Jac16888:there's no policy to support your view, even though I think it's correct. You should be supporting your argument, as Whitebro has supported his, not accusing him of being disruptive or pointy. Review W:AGF and WP:BITE, Jac! You should know better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation supports Jac's view, but it's not a policy, rule or guideline. Most importantly it doesn't explain WHY. Someone should fix it, so it does. Why is Jac right, IMO (in my opinion)? Because anyone can always use an online real-time translator to get machine-translated content. It's a wasted effort to do so manually, and do no more, as it makes it a longer path to a decent quality version than if it isn't. OTOH (on the other hand), there's nothing wrong with starting with machine-translated content and improving it and saving the result. So there you go. You're both wrong. And both right. --Tishapocks (talk) 20:17, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Joining in a bit late - machine translation is useful when the original text is still available. It should never be posted as the whole article from the start. I've done a few tidy-ups from machine translations because I could get the sense right from the original better than from the machine. It should be remembered that the closer the foreign language is to English, the better the machine will do. It's a waste of time trying with Chinese and Japanese - I remember an article from Chinese which claimed (amongst other things) that most of the hotel was equipped with pirates. In Somalia, I might believe that... The machine version was good enough to get a speedy for spam, but useless as an article. Peridon (talk) 15:32, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Copyright problem on Ticket of leave and Parole Board of Canada

Material you included in the above article appears to have been copied from the copyright web page https://www.canada.ca/en/parole-board/corporate/history-of-parole-in-canada.html, which is not released under a compatible license. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, the content had to be removed. Please leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions or if you think I made a mistake. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 21:32, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I now asked for permission and this it the response I got:

You are free to use the content from our History of Parole in Canada page, at no cost, as long as the Parole Board of Canada is listed as the source.

Thank you.

Best regards, Iulia Pescarus Popa Correspondence Unit Parole Board of Canada

Is this good enough?Whitebro (talk) 19:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Whitebro. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the article Parole Board of Canada, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. Editing for the purpose of advertising or promotion is not permitted. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

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In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 20:40, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I am self employed. I do not work for the government and I never have. Whitebro (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

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March 2020

Hello, I'm Ferret. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to Wii U have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the help desk. Thanks. -- ferret (talk) 22:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

If you read the article that was referenced, you will see people were confused about the name and thought it was an accessory to the Wii. So that’s why the naming should be mentioned also. Whitebro (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

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