DellAnderson

Welcome!

Hi, DellAnderson. Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page contains a lot of helpful material for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or . K.e.coffman (talk) 21:03, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Alert

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have recently shown interest in post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect: any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or any page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

--K.e.coffman (talk) 21:03, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

October 2018

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Gab (social network). Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Tsumikiria (T/C) 00:57, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Please advise how editing a wikipedia page is vandalism? You are the one that (inexplicably) reverted my contribution which had a citation.

The original phrasing "created as an alternative to Twitter which promotes itself as supporting free speech." is objectively correct, as Gab is fuctionally similar to Twitter, and at the same time claiming itself as "free speech" platform. Your edit, "however it was created as a free speech alternative to Twitter" implies that the previous descriptions that it is a far right website are biased or false. This implification is not supported in your BBC citation. Twitter's corporate policy on curbing hate speech does not infringe your free speech rights, as free speech is a governmental matter. Please refrain from adding unsourced material and invalid blog sources (such as medium) to Wikipedia. See WP:RS. Thank you. Tsumikiria (T/C) 01:23, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed reply. I have to disagree that your phrasing is more clear however. "created as an alternative to Twitter which promotes itself a supporting free speech" is an awful mess of a sentence and needs help. Would you go for something like "Gab was created as an alternative to Twitter due to perceived infringement on the free speech of conservative voices on Twitter"? If not, why not?

I also disagree with your statement that the description of Gab as a 'far right website' is not biased or false. The fact that there are alt-right members of Gab (or so I am told) does not mean that Gab is 'alt right' any more than that Twitter is a Farrakhan (or Left) or Trump (Right) organization. The BBC citation I gave clearly states Andrew Torba's original intention was to relieve perceived censorship of conservatives on Twitter (shadow-banning) and his distancing himself (at that time at least) from the alt-right.

As for use of Medium as a 'source', this was a thought to be better than simply referring to an abstract of the email and calling it "personal communication' or quoting the entire email in Wikipedia. Actually being able to read the email online (Medium) appeared far superior than my summarizing it. No less reputable a news organization as NPR quoted the same Medium source ( https://www.npr.org/2018/10/28/661532688/a-look-at-gab-the-free-speech-social-site-where-synagogue-shooting-suspect-poste ), so I don't think the Medium citation is an unreasonable citation at all ( https://medium.com/@getongab/gab-com-statement-on-the-tree-of-life-synagogue-shooting-a6c1de715b39 ).

However, you have reversed my edits twice. Before I reverse yours again, I would like to have a clearer idea of how you can address the topic more clearly than you have so far because it is possible that I have missed something.

3RR

Your recent editing history at Gab (social network) shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

October 2018

Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions did not appear constructive and has been reverted. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Hi. Take a look at some of Wikipedia's guidelines on editing. Good luck to you. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:18, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

What do Wikipedia editors expect new users to do? Generic messages suh as the one above that say 'one or more of your edits has been reverted' are not helpful. I already knew that and am taking a day or two to reflect as to why something that seems so obvious to several editors (such as myself) does not seem obvious to whoever is reversing their edits. Furthermore, a recent invitation to the Tea House by "hostbot" was accepted but the result was a banner apologizing that new editors are not welcome and to use the 'help me' markup to get help. I plan to continue to engage in discussion on the Gab talk page regarding the omission of the open email official statement regarding Gab's strong opposition to violence or inciting violence of any kind (in the immediate context and followup to the Synagogue shooting). If this is improper way of engaging in discussion, I hope that someone will take the time to explain a better way rather than just label edits that they disagree with as 'vandalism' or 'unhelpful'. By the way, I am gratified to see that the initial paragraph has been edited more objectively, and trust that after review of the Synagogue section and further reflection there may be further constructive edits. I'm new here but I respect the process, imperfect and messy as it may seem at times. Hopefully I will come to a better understanding of the complicated protocols eventually. DellAnderson (talk) 14:49, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree, best practice should be to include at least a page ref – or, better, a diff ref – in the notice. But you are likely to have received a notification if the revert was done as an undo or restore, so some people may assume that the extra details are not needed.

The situation with vandalism at the Teahouse is indeed troublesome. Some of the Teahouse regulars make a point of responding to the suggested alternative – using the {{help me}} template, as you have done. Unfortunately, we don't have an automated way to sort earnest new users from unwelcome vandals at the moment.

Engaging with other editors on the talk page is a good plan. There is some recognition that Wikipedia suffers from certain systemic biases, and it is only through discussion with other editors that these can be addressed. Meanwhile, you may find it helpful to your process of learning how things work around here to make some edits in articles not quite so controversial. This will also remove some of the possible drawbacks of being seen as a single-purpose editor who is pushing a particular point of view on a particular article. And thank you for being willing to hang in there through the admittedly messy process of finding consensus. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 15:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, I have seen the history tab for the Wikipage and will continue to engage in discussion there. I would hope that having some interest and experience with a subject (such as Gab) does not disqualify an editor from editing! As for editing other pages that are less controversial (what is so controversial about free speech in America BTW?), I had not felt the need to contribute previously because Wikipedia articles seem to be on the whole both informative, and for the subjects I had previously encountered, relatively unbiased. The Gab Wikipedia article appeared to have been written entirely from a non-Gab user point of view and still does appear to use a number of unnecessary words with negative connotations. I will continue to reflect on the overall tone and sub topics of the article as I have time. DellAnderson (talk) 21:33, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

DellAnderson, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi DellAnderson! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Cordless Larry (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)