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Until recently I had been making fairly frequent contributions to the pages that list events, birthdays, deaths, etc for particular dates. A few weeks ago another user wrote to threaten me saying that he would simply delete items that he could not himself verify. I wrote to him to protest. However, he said that he has the perfect right to act as he has been and I notice that he is persisting in this behaviour, and I notice that he is treating items from people other than me in the same fashion. Since he does not warn others of his actions people other than me may be unaware of his deletions.
I willingly stipulate that some aspects of some of the items I submit are incorrect. However, this individual is deleting entire items when any part of them appear to be incorrect to him.
Obviously his actions are frustrating and discouraging. In my view, they also impede development of the 'pedia because they make it difficult to provide corrections.
What to do? I have looked in the FAQs, can't find an answer.
-- BillBell 12:39, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
How about giving us a clue as to who and or what pages you are talking about. Mintguy 12:46, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
if you feel that he did something he should not have done. I understand his line "I have every right to delete material that cannot be verified in order to preserve the accuracy of Wikipedia." that Everyone has this right, not only he. You as well. Just everyone can delete something, if it is not possible to verify. Did this help in some way? If you have more questions, just let me know! Fantasy 14:06, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hah! Me a vandal? That's a laugh. What I'm doing is systematically going through each day page and confirming every fact and adding a great deal more. Your entries Bill, have been less than accurate to outright wrong, so I have corrected what I could, moved what was misplaced and deleted what could not be confirmed. You have had every chance to defend your work by providing references. So who is the vandal - the person who is adding incorrect data or the person who is deleting it? -- mav 19:33, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Just to avoid a possible misunderstanding: Information on Wikipedia is usually not deleted permanently. Past versions of a page can be accessed using the "Page history" link and previous versions can be restored. Information is less likely to be removed if it is referenced (with an endnote, for example). —Eloquence 21:55, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes I discover my own mistakes upon re-reading days later. But other times, I don't, and I'm glad that other mistakes of mine were found by others before me (if I could ever realize those are mistakes! ;-)) But once an uncertainty is discovered, it's either moved to the Talk page or "deleted" (but easily recoverable, as Eloquence points out). We can't leave possible misinformation on our website. -- Menchi 22:07, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)
The situation for anniversary entries is very bad when it comes to verifiability so they are a special case; every single source I've used for day page updates (except for the History Channel website) has errors of fact or omission in about 1/3 - 1/2 of their entries. Therefore every entry has to be thoroughly checked. If the fact cannot be confirmed outside of other "this day in history" type pages, then I delete that entry. In fact most of the deleting I do before posting anything by just slugging through my information source. For any given day this usually only amounts to the deletion or moving of one or two entries along with updates to the other entries and the addition of a dozen or so more entries on top of everything else. It is especially important for me to be extra careful about just what to allow on a day page because I use those entries as a basis to update the corresponding year and subject pages for each event. The last thing I want is for Wikipedia's history articles to be infected by the rampant inaccuracies found in so many "this day in history" pages (including CNN's!).
Besides, everything is still in the page history; I exercise no special powers preventing anybody from resurrecting those entries if they can be confirmed by another person and I usually spend 5-10 minutes trying to verify an entry before giving up. For the sake of wikilove and my own sanity, however, I'll spend upto only 5 minutes trying to verify each entry for now on and then move the ones that could not be verified to the talk page. That way either the original submitter or somebody else might eventually be able to confirm or fix the fact. But I will not tolerate having unverified information in articles, especially when I'm spreading that information across many different Wikipedia articles. It would be irresponsible of me if I did not do this. -- mav
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Until recently I had been making fairly frequent contributions to the pages that list events, birthdays, deaths, etc for particular dates. A few weeks ago another user wrote to threaten me saying that he would simply delete items that he could not himself verify. I wrote to him to protest. However, he said that he has the perfect right to act as he has been and I notice that he is persisting in this behaviour, and I notice that he is treating items from people other than me in the same fashion. Since he does not warn others of his actions people other than me may be unaware of his deletions.
I willingly stipulate that some aspects of some of the items I submit are incorrect. However, this individual is deleting entire items when any part of them appear to be incorrect to him.
Obviously his actions are frustrating and discouraging. In my view, they also impede development of the 'pedia because they make it difficult to provide corrections.
What to do? I have looked in the FAQs, can't find an answer.
-- BillBell 12:39, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
How about giving us a clue as to who and or what pages you are talking about. Mintguy 12:46, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
if you feel that he did something he should not have done. I understand his line "I have every right to delete material that cannot be verified in order to preserve the accuracy of Wikipedia." that Everyone has this right, not only he. You as well. Just everyone can delete something, if it is not possible to verify. Did this help in some way? If you have more questions, just let me know! Fantasy 14:06, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hah! Me a vandal? That's a laugh. What I'm doing is systematically going through each day page and confirming every fact and adding a great deal more. Your entries Bill, have been less than accurate to outright wrong, so I have corrected what I could, moved what was misplaced and deleted what could not be confirmed. You have had every chance to defend your work by providing references. So who is the vandal - the person who is adding incorrect data or the person who is deleting it? -- mav 19:33, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Just to avoid a possible misunderstanding: Information on Wikipedia is usually not deleted permanently. Past versions of a page can be accessed using the "Page history" link and previous versions can be restored. Information is less likely to be removed if it is referenced (with an endnote, for example). —Eloquence 21:55, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes I discover my own mistakes upon re-reading days later. But other times, I don't, and I'm glad that other mistakes of mine were found by others before me (if I could ever realize those are mistakes! ;-)) But once an uncertainty is discovered, it's either moved to the Talk page or "deleted" (but easily recoverable, as Eloquence points out). We can't leave possible misinformation on our website. -- Menchi 22:07, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)
The situation for anniversary entries is very bad when it comes to verifiability so they are a special case; every single source I've used for day page updates (except for the History Channel website) has errors of fact or omission in about 1/3 - 1/2 of their entries. Therefore every entry has to be thoroughly checked. If the fact cannot be confirmed outside of other "this day in history" type pages, then I delete that entry. In fact most of the deleting I do before posting anything by just slugging through my information source. For any given day this usually only amounts to the deletion or moving of one or two entries along with updates to the other entries and the addition of a dozen or so more entries on top of everything else. It is especially important for me to be extra careful about just what to allow on a day page because I use those entries as a basis to update the corresponding year and subject pages for each event. The last thing I want is for Wikipedia's history articles to be infected by the rampant inaccuracies found in so many "this day in history" pages (including CNN's!).
Besides, everything is still in the page history; I exercise no special powers preventing anybody from resurrecting those entries if they can be confirmed by another person and I usually spend 5-10 minutes trying to verify an entry before giving up. For the sake of wikilove and my own sanity, however, I'll spend upto only 5 minutes trying to verify each entry for now on and then move the ones that could not be verified to the talk page. That way either the original submitter or somebody else might eventually be able to confirm or fix the fact. But I will not tolerate having unverified information in articles, especially when I'm spreading that information across many different Wikipedia articles. It would be irresponsible of me if I did not do this. -- mav