August 2017 edit

 

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a message letting you know that one or more of your recent edits to Zero-based budgeting has been undone by an automated computer program called ClueBot NG.

Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 11:16, 23 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

January 2018 edit

Hi. I deleted your comment from the talk page for cisgender. Talk pages are for discussing how the article can be improved. If you don't suggest an improvement to an article or point out a problem with the article (not the subject of the article), your comments may end up being deleted. --ChiveFungi (talk) 20:17, 5 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

If you can't say anything on topic, don't say anything at all.

  Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, you may be blocked from editing. --ChiveFungi (talk) 17:58, 6 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

  You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you disrupt Wikipedia. --ChiveFungi (talk) 00:09, 7 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

First, welcome to Wikipedia. It does take a while to learn the ropes around here, and there are various guidelines and policies about proper use of Talk pages, that you should learn about, to be a more effective user, and also to avoid the kind of warnings you've been getting above.
ChiveFungi was correct to warn you about your misstep(s) at Talk:Cisgender, here, here, and here, although as you are a relatively new user, I would hope that warnings would be gentle in this stage of your Wikipedia newbiehood. In any case, do you understand what was wrong with your additions at Talk:Cisgender? It's because of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#FORUM, where Point 4 says (among other things) that: Please try to stay on the task of creating an encyclopedia. and, ...bear in mind that article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article... [emphasis added].
Note that your edit of 13:18, 6 Jan was not deleted. Do you see why not, and what the difference is between that comment, and your others that were deleted/shrunk? Because in that post you wrote, "This article needs to be clearer about the contexts in which the terms <cis> or <cis-gender> can be 'legitimately' used.". That is a legitimate statement about how to improve the article. People might agree with you, or disagree, but the point is, your comment there was read as an attempt to improve the article. That's good—stick to that kind of comment, and you'll be welcome at the talk page, and not provoke any warnings. Bear in mind, though, that now that this has been explained to you, if you continue to post irrelevant comments at Talk pages, the warnings will become more urgent, and could result in removal of your editing privileges; so let's not let that happen.
I hope this is clear, and helps you stick to the Talk page guidelines. As long as your comments at Talk:Cisgender are about how to improve the article, you'll be fine. Here on your own user talk page, you can expound all you want on any kind of topic. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask below, and either {{ping}} me by adding {{ping|Mathglot}} to your reply, or {{HelpMe}} to get a response from a volunteer Helper. Happy editing, Mathglot (talk) 01:23, 8 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
Hello Mathglot,
Thankyou for your words, and advice about ropes. It seems to me that what constitutes a constructive comment about an article will always be, to some degree at least, a matter of opinion. I have no objection to the term cisgender when used in an academic context. I have read a lot of academic papers on subjects ranging from metallurgy, salmo salar behaviour, autism and economic history, to name a few. I appreciate that academic writers vary in their ability to communicate with non-academic readers, and I imagine many would consider that it is not their job to make their research widely accessible, as opposed to narrowly accessible. Yet wiki articles MUST be based on published sources.
The weakness in this article is an absence of scepticism about the ASSUMPTIONS that the quoted sources have made. This is not so big a problem if the <cisgender> term is recognised as having its main currency as part of an ongoing academic and political debate. When writers are not open about the assumptions that have made, each reader must come to their own decisions about the significance of any implicit assumptions. If this article is intended to be about a construct <cisgender>, it is always going to be borderline meaningless unless it clarifies whether cisgender is a subordinate construct to a <non-binary gender> construct, or one of a pair of poles that frame the <binary gender construct>. If the truth of the matter is that the jury is still out regarding the true nature of gender, then it is not unreasonable to point out that the subordinate construct <cisgender> is still just a matter of opinion. My point of view, that cisgender is often used in a name-calling way, is amply evidenced in published print. I am not a creative person, so when I called it 'my' point of view, I am being innaccurate. I have borrowed it, and I have not attributed it, because I don't remember the various places where I read it, or heard it. (I get most of my newsfeed from the radio) If wiki editors wish to censor contributions because they are challenging precious assumptions that are seen as axiomatic, perhaps Wikipedia might decide to publish the assumptions which it is comfortable labelling as 'axioms'? When Lavoisier published his 'discovery' of Oxygen, he was seen as a 'scientific' vandal by the older scientists whose body of work into combustion and related matters had failed to realise the fact that <air> was a mixture of several gases, some flammable and some inflammable. The sociology of 'hard' science is a very interesting subject area, but perhaps it is time we had a sociology of sociology? Kind regards, redalasdair@gmail.com 82.32.112.174 (talk) 13:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
Where you say, Yes wiki articles MUST be based on published sources, you are exactly right. That comes from one of Wikipedia's core principles, namely: Verifiability. And not just "published" sources, but published, reliable sources, preferably secondary sources. If you keep in mind that one principle, you'll be ahead of the game.
However, I can't agree that there is any censorship going on at the cisgender article. First of all, another core principle of Wikipedia is to assume good faith on the part of other editors. You may disagree with another editor, but that doesn't mean that they have some unscrupulous end; assume they are trying to improve the article, just like you are, even if you don't like their approach. Secondly: if you believe that cisgender is a term that is being used in a pejorative way and can back that up with published, reliable sources, then I encourage you to go find some of those sources and go take it up at the article talk page. Unfortunately, what you heard on the radio doesn't count, because it's not verifiable.
If you want to talk about axioms, Wikipedia doesn't really have any axioms (although you do have to obey the law concerning copyrights, libel, personal threats and a few other things, but that's not really Wikipedia having axioms, that's a question of national or international law), but the closest thing to axioms is Wikipedia's Five Pillars, so you might want to have a look at that. You'll see that the second one covers verifiability and reliable sources, as mentioned above, so those really are very important quasi-axioms.
I think you perhaps meant combustible and noncombustible, as flammable and inflammable are synonyms.
Finally, in order to keep the conversation thread comprehensible, I've taken the liberty of interpolating above the comments you made on my talk page, so that this reply to you can be read in context. Please indent your comments by adding colons to the beginning of each new paragraph, you can read about that at Help:Talk pages#Indentation. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 10:58, 21 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
I am impressed by your non-combustible sincerity, Mathglot, but I remain sceptical of the combustible perceptions of <chive fungi>. I appreciate that there is a difference between discussing a subject in general, and discussing the shape, style, tone, accuracy etc of a wiki article. But as a user of wikipedia (as opposed to an editor) I had assumed that the talk pages were a place where a user could raise, describe, broach, suggest and even comment on the challengeable assumptions upon which an article appears to rest. In doing this, it is an even bet that the contribution could be seen as off-topic, by anyone who is even slightly partisan about the topic itself. As a user, I am always looking for good sources, and good insights. But as a user, I don't depend on wikipedia's five criteria for working out what I should believe. That process leans more on patience and stamina, than it does on any rule-based algorithm. If you believe that all wikipedia articles ought to pass some threshold in regard to the key wiki-criteria, then the article on cisgender needs some work. The most important fact about the cisgender construct, I would suggest, is that it is a <work-in-progress>. For me, the article should make clear that the various references are together engaged in the process of creating a construct, as opposed to <describing> a construct whose existence/usefulness can be assumed. When academics believe that other academics are engaging in flights of fancy, they sometimes expend effort in rebutting propositions - others times they may create nothing in print, through lack of time, or with the positive belief that it is better not to lend credence through rebuttal. If I find I have the time, I might seek written sources, but at the moment I think the <binary / non-binary> gender debate is more interesting. The usefulness of the cisgender label seems (to me) to remain unproven. 82.32.112.174 (talk) 22:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

Original research edit

Sorry to be be back so soon, but this is to notify you that your recent edit at Causes of transsexuality was not constructive, and I had to revert it. The problem is that you are using your own perceptions of what you think gender identity is, and inserting that into the article. That's what is called "Original research" at Wikipedia, and it's not allowed. Given that edit, and the discussions above, I see a pattern, namely relying on your own opinions, and not on the sources, and to be successful here, you'll need to turn that around.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that strives for a neutral point of view and is not a research journal; we don't write about our own opinions or knowledge about a topic, we find that knowledge elsewhere, in reliable sources, and we write up what they say.

There's another problem, not of your creation, but which could nevertheless impact you: some topic areas of the encyclopedia are fraught with a higher level of disagreement and tension than others, and the whole area of gender is one of them. Because of this, the Arbitration Committee has issued something called "Discretionary Sanctions" in this area, which means other editors are much more aware of transgressions of the rules, even unintentional ones in this topic area, than in other areas, and so it's much easier for an editor, even a well-meaning one, to get into trouble here. So, since you are still relatively new, you might want to consider editing in a topic area that is not under sanctions, and you'll get more slack there. But it's your choice; if you decide to continue to edit in this area, please be sure to read and understand the description of discretionary sanctions, so you don't run into trouble with it. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 06:45, 8 January 2018 (UTC)Reply