I Edit Wikipedia

In My Humble Opinion
41

The thing that’s weird about these volunteer bureaucrats is that they are oblivious to their own rulebreaking. There is essentially a “don’t be a jerk” policy there, but few actually follow it. And why should they, when there are usually no consequences for doing so?

The proper way to handle an unsourced addition is to tag it first, and allow time for a citation to be found. The sole exception are biographies of living persons, and that’s due to legal reasons. If you do delete it, it’s because you think it’s false, and that means you are supposed to leave a comment on the talk page explaining yourself.

Oddly enough, I encountered someone doing this on freaking Wikimedia Commons. Someone deleted some maintenance tags I added without explanation.

42

I’ve created/contributed to quite a few. And I got the reference. Love that song! :smiley:

43

Seems I’ve discovered a particularly persistant vandal using a series of IPv6 addresses to bypass a year-long block of their IPv4 address.

44

If you haven’t already done so, please report them on the Administrator intervention against vandalism page.

45

I had a slow learning curve, but now know how to contribute and not get deleted. I have to do some major original research, but that’s good in a way.

Among my contributions are “dead man’s hand” “cheesburger” “kemosabe” and more.

I’ve posted my research on kemosabe and dead man’s hand on the SDMB first.

46

They’ve been changing addresses pretty much daily. I mentioned the suspected IP sock when requesting that the page with the most vandalism be protected from IP editing.

47

I gently edited Heather Mizeur’s article. Changed “partner” to “wife”, added wife’s maiden name.

48

Same thing with me. Some pages can’t be edited; they will have a padlock at the top of the page.

49

Although there are a few which can only be edited by Wikipedia staff, the padlock typically means the page can’t be edited anonymously. In other words, it’s most likley protected from IP editing.

50

Just yesterday I made my first substantive edit in years to Wikipedia, adding an entirely new section to a certain movie celebrity’s page.

51

Question:

I’m thinking of revamping the article on land surveying and it has some dumb citation requests that anyone with experience in the industry was taught in their first year.
e.g:

I mean, in layman’s terms that’s like questioning whether the sky is blue. What’s the best way to remove them without provoking an edit war?

52

I googled the sentence in question. I found it here. Now, I have no doubt that the web site copied the sentence from the wikipedia article, but who will ever check? Use this as your citation. If you don’t want to do that, there are hundreds of other hits with similar sentences that probably weren’t copied from you, choose one and use it as your citation.

53

Fair enough, but would it be legitimate to just remove the citation needed tag? I can’t imagine anyone with surveying knowledge disputing what is written. Wouldn’t that be better than having a circular citation?

54

I usually update articles related to Tokyo Disney Resort.

55

I used to but haven’t for over a year now.

56

I took a look at the article in question. To me it appears that the [citation needed] tag refers to the entire paragraph, rather than just the sentence you quoted. It’s saying there should be a reference backing up the fact that the specific equipment and techniques were used as late as the 1990s. This isn’t terribly unreasonable, and such a source shouldn’t be hard to find. Do you have any old trade publications lying around which mention the common practices of the time?