CuthbertBurble

May 2019

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Hamlet; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Points to note:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made;
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Xover (talk) 13:08, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Defending myself against the poster of that red triangle

I consider this warning to be improper and unwarranted. This warning was posted after I had edited the Hamlet article to add an image of a statue (an image which was suggested by another user on the talk page), and after I had moved a photo of Edwin Booth down to where Booth is mentioned in the article. I believe there is a consensus to move Booth down based on various comments made on the talk page of that article by a number of other editors. When, I mentioned that consensus —no one disagreed. On the Hamlet article I have made only six edits (!), and they represent a variety of edits — minor rewordings, unlinkings, switching images around, and introducing a new image. There’s hardly any room in those six edits to include any kind of edit war. The editor that posted the red triangle, quickly “undid” without discussion three of my six edits. Which is fine — I’m not objecting to his repeated reversions at the moment. Consider the definition of “Edit War” found on WP:EW: “An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions.” So it apparently takes at least two to “editor war”, and apparently one would have to include the editor that posted the red-triangle warning. That would seem to be a conflict of interest if the warning were posted in any official way, but apparently any user is allowed to post these things. If you read the definition carefully, I suggest that it doesn’t apply to the edits I made. I suspect, in good faith, that this red-triangle posting may be an attempt by the user to promote his ideas in this discussion, and to intimidate someone who disagrees with him. Of the editors that disagree with him — he has posted official-looking postings on the talk pages of two of them. If I try to consider the users motives in the best light — with “good faith” — it’s not easy, but perhaps he just cares so much about his own ideas, and wants things to be the way he wants them. I still don’t approve of such attempted bullying tactics. I believe that if an editor has something to say that pertains to a particular discussion — a complaint, or whatever — it should be said where the discussion is occurring. CuthbertBurble (talk) 14:57, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

More from Xover

Hi CuthbertBurble. First a few points on your "defence" above…

There is no need to assert that you write something in good faith: to assume good faith is a well-stablished guideline on Wikipedia so you may simply presume that what you write will be taken as being intended in good faith (until you exhaust the community's ability to assume good faith, of course). However, your message here and at the article's talk page are actually textbook examples of failing to assume good faith. You impute ulterior motives to my warning message above, and accuse me of various other negative behaviours (bullying and so forth). To make such accusations without evidence is considered a personal attack and is prohibited by policy.

Now as to the actual warning… You should indeed be bold: if you see something that can be improved you should just go ahead and change it without stopping to have a debate about it first (unless the change is likely to be controversial). However, as the guideline for bold—revert—discuss explains, once someone objects to the change, typically by reverting it, the matter should be discussed on the article's talk page until a consensus is established. Until a new consensus is established the status quo prevails (it is presumed to have consensus until a new consensus is established). When you make the same change to an article repeatedly you are probably edit-warring; when you do so while discussions are ongoing you are definitely edit-warring. In this case, to the degree we can say there is consensus yet, it is against changing the Booth image you dislike, and there is definitely no consensus on anything to replace it with. Thus, your edits to remove it—1, 2, 3—constitute edit-warring against consensus.

Any user may indeed place warning templates like the one above, but I think you misunderstand their purpose. They are not intended to be some kind of badge of shame, but rather a warning that you are or are close to violating a policy or guideline, and to point you at the relevant policy pages so that you may familiarise yourself with them. I have explained above why I placed the above warning template, and what I presume to be the other such template you refer to above, isn't actually any kind of warning at all: it is a standard welcome template, a variant of which we try to place on the talk page of every new user. Its intent is to make new contributors feel welcome, to help them orient themselves on the project, and let them know where they can get assistance if needed. I would have placed the same welcome template on your talk page, except that you have expressed great confidence in your familiarity with Wikipedia and disdain for my previous attempts to explain our policies, so I assumed such a welcome template would be unwelcome. Regards, --Xover (talk) 07:22, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

It is hypocritical to make false accusations and then try to scold others with more longwinded false accusations. Who has the kind of time that you apparently do to spew endless verbiage on so many pages? Why don't you go to the beach? Or read a book?CuthbertBurble (talk) 11:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)