Talk:Nighthawks edit

Welcome to Wikipedia, please look over Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome to Wikipedia for more information on contributing to this encyclopedia. I regret that I had to remove the commentary that you placed at Talk:Nighthawks. Wikipedia is not an internet forum for the free and open discussion of personal opinions and insights into artwork, books, music etc. Talk pages are for improving the encyclopedia, not for expressing personal opinions on a subject or an editor. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)Reply

Yea I'm not exactly new to wiki. And we have a disagreement upon what qualifies as "commentary" and the basis for removing my edit on Talk:Nighthawks. The opening to my section had "my interpretation" but the actual content is the iconographic analysis of the painting using well documented artistic conventions dating back centuries. As I added when I reinserted it, I feel there should be information regarding the compositional elements of paintings (not just this one, but generally across the site) through comparison to existing and acknowledged conventions (not opinions). I apologize that I had to start with what was basically my wording of it, as I don't know of a better way to convey the point, but that's why I didn't just go ahead and try to put something in the article. Though I did look at your note, and reviewed the Wikipedia is not an internet forum points, and I still disagree with your edit, because after looking at each point of the not a forum rules:
  1. This is not original research, these are established artistic conventions (which I tried to provide sufficient examples of), applied to this painting for the purposes of understanding it as a object of art and visual communication.
  2. This is not a personal invention. I will agree that the initial "my interpretation" is my own, but as I said this is just the method I know of writing these things, and never had any intention of that making it to an actual article. I needed to establish the process of drawing meaning from analysis and comparison of artistic conventions, as I'm unclear how many of the editors on here have done this before. I should have clarified this point more, for that I apologize.
  3. This is not a personal essay, long winded as it may be. Again, comparison of conventions provides lenses for everyone to look at a painting through, not a speaker for me to deliver some message. Honestly I'd say it has about as much merit as the sections 1-5, and 7, of the Talk Page. And I have no intention of writing a final section to be added to the page.
  4. I was not looking for debate, agreement, or discussion. When I asked for thoughts at the end of my post, I was asking if notes on composition as viewed through known artistic conventions might be worthy of a section on the article page. And if people could point out others that I missed or clarify the ones I was uncertain about.
I tried my best to leave my opinion out of my post, as in all honesty I don't even like this painting very much. But it's simplified use of composition and the elements of art makes it easy to illustrate the impact of certain features that could be looked at to deduce a meaning. Assuming Edward Hopper ever took an art history class (I would assume he had), he would be aware of these conventions and their symbolic value as a means to convey meaning. Again, I apologize if I was unclear about my point, I tend to do that. I would ask though that you edit next time, ask for clarification if need be, before you delete. I would also ask you to undo the edit removing my section, as I'm fairly confident that if I did it, you would just remove it again. Mrdeadhead (talk) 04:56, 10 September 2014 (UTC)Reply