Kat,
Thank you for unblocking me. It's good to know that at least one admin has a sense of fairness here. It is very frustrating as a newbie to be told to jump right in and to "be bold!" with editing, but then to be blocked for not having known the rules. I wasn't even aware beforehand that there was a "neutral point of view" rule.
When I get a chance I'll try to read through the rules in order to understand how I can be allowed to make changes to the parts which I don't think are at all "neutral" in the entry as it was (even before I tried editing it).
-advert
-----Original Message----- From: Kat Walsh [mailto:mindspillage@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005, 4:41 PM To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blocked after making several edits - accused of "vandalism"?!
On 5/30/05, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
advert stated for the record:
I would like to be unblocked and be allowed to add a feminist perspective
to the entry which I edited. I don't think the entry as it stands is "neutral".
Your edits were not vandalism, but they were not acceptable. Stating as a fact that "[p]ornography ... is the representation of the human body or [[human sexual behaviour]] mainly from a male supremacist perspective" is highly opinionated. That statement represents an extreme point of view that most editors and readers will not agree with and will quickly edit away.
Something along the lines of "many feminists feel that pornography represents a male supremacist perspective" would be slightly better, but would require a definition of "male supremacist perspective."
Also, we are not interested in your personal definitions of "pornography" and "erotica." If those definitions were created elsewhere, please provide references.
You may want to suggest changes on the article's talk page and ask for help in wording them so as to conform to the (obligatory) neutral point of view.
Looking at the page history and the block log, I am going to unblock this user. I don't think s/he was adequately warned, and we can't expect all newbies to know about restrictions on edit warring without being informed. (However, advert, you've now been informed: discuss big changes to contentious articles on talk, always, and more than 3 reverts in one day will merit a 24-hour block; further advice will be left on user talk page.)
I'm all for blocking deliberate vandals, but this appears to be editing made in good faith, just without knowledge of policy.
-Kat [[User:Mindspillage]]
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On 5/31/05, advert advert@ziplip.com wrote:
Kat, Thank you for unblocking me. It's good to know that at least one admin has a sense of fairness here. It is very frustrating as a newbie to be told to jump right in and to "be bold!" with editing, but then to be blocked for not having known the rules. I wasn't even aware beforehand that there was a "neutral point of view" rule.
When I get a chance I'll try to read through the rules in order to understand how I can be allowed to make changes to the parts which I don't think are at all "neutral" in the entry as it was (even before I tried editing it).
Hi Advert,
Actually I suspect that there are very many people who would have unblocked you, were they aware of what happened. ... We can't be perfect, but we do try! Thanks for your patience.
As far as being bold goes, the *vast* majority of new users don't edit a potentially controversial subject, and if they do and their changes are reverted, then they usually don't notice or don't care.... So they never get into a revert war, and thus they don't get blocked. Because of this our 'be bold' advice is good in almost all cases.
For the most part on wikipedia you can be a perfectly happy editor even if you ignore all rules. There is only one rule beyond really basic common sense which is enforced in any material way, and that is the Three Revert Rule (3RR). Actually, a great many wikipedians would rather the 3RR not exist, but without it there are endless revert wars with no mechanism in place to get the disagreeing parties to calm down and talk out their changes. I hope you can understand why such a rule is needed.
If you avoid editing controversial subjects, it is very likely that you will not need to know much of our rules and policy. I would *highly* suggest that you avoid those articles until you are well familiarized with Wikipedia... sometimes it is very challenging to edit those articles, and it really can make editing unfun. There is an enormous number of articles in wikipedia which really could use your love and attention, so why not start there? Best of luck!