User talk:SuaveArt/mentoring

This talk subpage is for SuaveArt and Jclemens to discuss mentoring topics. Observers are welcome, but this is a conversation between two wikipedians; SuaveArt's talk page is the parent of this page. My talk page is here. Jclemens (talk) 01:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose

So, I'm here to help you work within Wikipedia. You've got some strong opinions, and those are grating on some other people, as evidenced by the ANI thread. You're obviously smart and well able to reason, so I hope that I can share some insights from my 4ish years of hanging around Wikipedia which will help you achieve your goals. I'm not your mom, your bodyguard, or anything of the sort. You make your own decisions on how you conduct yourself, and I will give you honest feedback on how your actions were perceived, or how they will likely be perceived if you ask me about things ahead of time. Jclemens (talk) 01:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your Goals

What do you want to achieve in Wikipedia? You've listed some userboxes on your talk page, but feel free to take a minute or two and write down some goals. Ideally, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound, ("SMART"). A sample goal might be "Nominate and successfully argue for the deletion of 10 articles involving promotion of fringe religious groups by February 28th"--but that also might be too formal, so feel free to be less verbose and specific. This assignment will help me help you, because different objectives are going to benefit from different approaches. Jclemens (talk) 01:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I may but in, perhaps you would like to be a vandal fighter? We could always use more people over at the Recent Changes Section.--Coldplay Expért ^{Let's talk} 02:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Hi and thanks. I'll get back to you on the goals once I've thought about what to say. In the meantime, here are some points I'd like to bring up:

I've given my say on the events over at WP:AN/I. Not sure if you've read the whole thing, but I'd love to hear your advice. I've provided links that show that the starting editor is clearly engaged in some degree of Christian POV-pushing and removing content he finds offensive, and I've summarized his accusations as best I can.

What advice would you give me on AFDs? As far as I know, there's no rule that starting AFDs is "inappropriate" to begin with just because the voters decide to keep the article after the AFD has ended (but that seems to be the complaints of several of the users' there, and is just ridiculous - the purpose of the AFD is to decide on a consensus - apparently some people think that it's only appropriate to AFD an article if you know it will be deleted before the AFD has even started).

As far as userspace content goes, the content on Seregain's page isn't blatantly soapboxing, so I agree that removing it was hasty. As for the content on Filmcom's page, he had a link to a religious site (needgod.com), which I consider prostelytizing, and a link to his personal website which contained an online store (which I believe is inappropriate for Wikipedia).

If there are any other topics you'd like to mention, I'd love to hear them. Thanks. --SuaveArt (talk) 01:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first bit of advice I would give is to understand that Wikipedia policies are descriptive, rather than prescriptive. That is, policy and guidelines are evolved from what is actually done, rather than outcomes being conformed to such policies or guidelines. This is a big deal, and many other people have essentially shot themselves in their respective feet by presuming that policies are prescriptive.

On AfD's... less is more. It's quite possible to nominate a ton of things at once, but the number of deletion outcomes you'll actually achieve is probably not going to be much higher than if you pick a few very weak articles and focus on them. You can then build a reputation as someone who succeeds at AfD by carefully choosing your battles, and that will help you in the long run.

On edit warring... WP:3RR is a hard-stop, do-not-pass-or-you-will-be-blocked, but WP:BRD is a better practice. If you make a change, and someone reverts you, immediately taking it to the talk page is optimally polite and collegial. You've re-reverted other people, which generally irritates them and vice versa. Very few things are so egregious that they can't be discussed in a more leisurely manner.

WP:VAND#NOT is another very good thing to read. Accusations of "Vandalism" are Wikipedia's fighting words; they serve to reliably turn any discussion into a fight. WP:DTTR is an essay that covers much the same ground, but also good reading... although I don't always agree with its sentiments, it's undeniable that many people will react negatively when they get a templated warning message.

At any rate, that's some initial thoughts... I'm going to be offline for several hours. Jclemens (talk) 01:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing?

Are you actually interested in being mentored? You haven't contributed to this page recently. Jclemens (talk) 07:28, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would, I'm just unsure of what my specific goals would be or how they'd work. If I had to pick, then I would focus on combatting spam and POV-pushing from minor Christian organizations (or religious organizations in general) and individuals in articles related to Christianity, atheism, or other hot topics. And also in confronting edits and site content that threatens the integrity of WP in general. As far as a specific plan, I'm still lost there.--SuaveArt (talk) 08:01, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So if you had a choice between...

1) being incivil to people with whom you disagree and not being able to get the contributions they favor deleted from Wikipedia, or

2) being way more civil than you feel like to people with whom you disagree and being successful at deleting the contributions they favor from Wikipedia

... which would you choose? Assume for the sake of argument that you can't be both incivil and effective at deleting things. Jclemens (talk) 19:49, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Along those lines, here's another reading assignment: WP:ENEMY. Jclemens (talk) 19:52, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. My honest assumption here is that Seregain's primary motivation is to promote evangelical Christianity via Wikipedia, in part by starting bad faith AFDs on subjects that he objects to, such as the Secular Student Alliance article (his first edit was an AFD for this article) and his latest at Skeptic's Annotated Bible. His edit summaries seem terse and insincere (in both the AFDs I mentioned, his AFD reason was simply "not notable enough" but he failed to explain why). I do assume good faith at first, but when I see a pattern of suspicious edits, then I lose it. Personally I believe the bulk of his edits are disruptive and have POV as their true intent (over improving the encyclopedia). If there is a way to draw the line between being directly confrontational on this, or just ignoring it, then I'm unsure of exactly how to proceed from here. In the original AN/I incident, I provided several of Seregain's edits and asked for them to be review (this seemed like a good option), however this wasn't followed up on. I could start another AN/I request about this, but I'm not sure I want to bring this editor back up again so soon. I don't want to be at this editor's throat, but at the same time, if he is clearly editing with a POV, I believe that someone needs to step in.--SuaveArt (talk) 02:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a saying that I saw on another admin's page (I forget whose): "Don't get mad, get sources." That is, arguments are won and lost in AfD or elsewhere based mostly on reliable sourcing. To be sure, there are POV pushers, but most of them balance out, leaving the folks without an agenda to just look at the sources proposed and decide which arguments prevail based on the evidence.

Why not take a break from "fighting POV pushers" for a while and go contribute to some other area of Wikipedia? There are plenty of areas that could use improving, and I find that if I'm zeroed in on one contentious area, I have trouble keeping perspective. Find something else to do you enjoy in Wikipedia, and when things get too annoying... go do that. Life won't end if you ignore someone's latest edit for a day or two before diving back in. Jclemens (talk) 03:24, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On Blocking

Gotta say, nominating Seregain's user page for deletion and edit-warring on ANI were neither particularly helpful. There are two aspects to success on Wikipedia: the strength of your argument and the irreproachability of your conduct. You're focusing too much on the former, while neglecting the latter's importance. Jclemens (talk) 20:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now that your block has expired, I think you can edit this page again. Please feel free to use me as a resource to understand what happened and why. Jclemens (talk) 01:14, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm going to avoid interacting with this user directly from now on. Some of the edits I made definitely were petty and unnecessary and just helped to inflame the situation. At this point I think the admins are aware of my concerns so I'll just let them take it from here and drop the issue.--SuaveArt (talk) 04:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]