Hi,
I am concerned. I don't often do this, but I had a look at the change logs earlier this evening, just to get an idea of the kind of activity that was going on. I noticed that a user, RickK, had reverted an article without giving a reason. When I looked at the diff, it was not obvious vandalism, and from what I could tell, it didn't look like something that should have been reverted, especially as it was by a registered user.
As I wanted to understand better the policy being user, I asked the user on their talk page if they would be willing to explain.
As I was waiting for a reply, I continued through the change log, and noticed many other reverts by the same person, all with no reasons given. A lot of these reverts were things such as reverting formatting improvements, and I started to get quite shocked how out of control it appeared to be.
When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165...
I am quite concerned about this, as putting myself in the shoes of the people who are having their work reverted, I can imagine it is enough to put anyone off wanting to revisit Wikipedia, or continue providing any useful input.
Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
Many thanks, Ed Broadley
R E Broadley wrote:
When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165...
The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
* Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of Constantine the Great", rolled back * Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back * Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad characterised these edits as follows:
"I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you, but I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some effort into adding the additional information. And if you felt it was biased, couldn't you have let them know this also?"
RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to remove this complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
-- Tim Starling
Tim,
One of us is interpreting the diff displays backwards. I thought it was RickK doing the deleting, (including the deletion of the asterisk).
I shall double-check.
Apologies in advance if it was me reading it wrong, although from one of the comments RickK said to me, he did actually confirm that he was removing stuff, which reinforced my belief that I was interpreting the diff logs correctly.
Regards, Edmund
Tim Starling wrote:
R E Broadley wrote:
When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165...
The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
- Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of Constantine the Great", rolled back
- Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
- Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad characterised these edits as follows:
"I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you, but I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some effort into adding the additional information. And if you felt it was biased, couldn't you have let them know this also?"
RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to remove this complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
-- Tim Starling
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
And the fact that he deleted the contents of his talk page as soon as I'd started this discussion with him also seemed suspicious to me. Why would he delete our discussion unless he had something to hide?
R E Broadley wrote:
Tim,
One of us is interpreting the diff displays backwards. I thought it was RickK doing the deleting, (including the deletion of the asterisk).
I shall double-check.
Apologies in advance if it was me reading it wrong, although from one of the comments RickK said to me, he did actually confirm that he was removing stuff, which reinforced my belief that I was interpreting the diff logs correctly.
Regards, Edmund
Tim Starling wrote:
R E Broadley wrote:
When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165...
The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
- Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of Constantine the Great", rolled back
- Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
- Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad characterised these edits as follows:
"I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you, but I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some effort into adding the additional information. And if you felt it was biased, couldn't you have let them know this also?"
RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to remove this complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
-- Tim Starling
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Tim,
I have double checked (you had me wondering!), and I stand by what I said in the email yesterday. I've included my replies below.
R E Broadley wrote:
When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165...
The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
- Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of Constantine the Great", rolled back
^ Why was this rolled back? Was it factually incorrect? If so, why doesn't RickK say this and how he knows it to be incorrect? It looked like a good-faith edit to me.
- Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
^ Someone else added the asterisk, fixing a bullet list. RickK rolled back the fix!
- Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
^ Again, the other way around. RickK's revert causes the unexplained deletion.
RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to remove this complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
^ I hope you'll permit other people to validate which of us in correct first.
-- Tim Starling
Thanks, Edmund