DpEpsilon

Questions regarding edits to Steve Dickson

Greetings Thanks for taking the time to write - I’m all for making wikipedia the best it can possibly be, so I appreciate your feedback.

Firatly though; I’m relatively new to editing wikipedia entries, so I’m not sure that this is the best way to reply to your message. If there is a better way, please let me know.

You referred to the fact that my edits of the ‘Steve Dickson’ page doesn’t follow wikipedia’s Manual of Style. I’m happy to learn about that, but a glance at the MOS page looks hugely detailed amd overwhelming. I’m not sure exactly which of those many many parameters you had in mind when you say I should pay more attention to the MOS. I would really appreciate you being more specific, or even updating the page in question itself so I can see from example what you mean.

Or perhaps you mean I’ve fallen prey to ‘recentism’...

“Recentism is a phenomenon on Wikipedia where an article has an inflated or imbalanced focus on recent events. It is writing without an aim toward a long-term, historical view. This can result in, among others: ▪ Articles overburdened with documenting controversy as it happens.”

In that case, I see what you mean. Does that mean the whole thing should be reduced to a short synopsis of the event, with links to further material, rather than verbatim quotes and so on?

As for ‘using straight quotation marks in articles,’ on my machine, at least, that’s how the quotation marks appear; perhaps I’m missing something?

Thanks again, conspiracyofjoy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Conspiracyofjoy (talk • contribs) 11:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Conspiracyofjoy: Hi, thanks for your questions. Sorry I could not get back to you earlier.

The best way to reply to messages on your talk page is to continue them on your talk page and use the Reply To template, though this is fine as well.

I agree the manual of style is quite an intimidating document. I don't know it off by heart, nor do I think many people do, but I've developed a rough sense of what Wikipedia articles are supposed to look like over time, so if I think something looks off I check with the manual. It might take some time to get used to it, so don't be discouraged! If you're unsure about something specific, you can try searching through Wikipedia policy, or type {{help me}} on your talk page with any questions and someone will show up to answer them.

There are many experienced editors are happy to help newer editors, so even if your changes aren't perfect, don't worry about aspects of style you don't know about or have a good feel for. If it's a page which receives even a moderate amount of views, someone will fix your changes, and hopefully provide some guidance. If someone corrects your changes and write any messages on your talk page, feel free to clarify why they made changes on their talk page. I'm not so experienced myself, and I do make mistakes which I've had to ask the editors who came to correct changes about.

I do think your edits did fall prey to recentism in the way you described: There should be more summary, less dialogue and fewer quotes. I noticed some of the quotes you listed came from the video included with the source rather than the body of the article. A good guideline here is to only include some key quotes included in the text of cited sources, rather than listing many quotes from the included footage (which because it's a primary source, generally should not be relied upon anyway). Additionally, quotes should generally not be censored unless they are censored in the source they are taken from.

With regards to the curly/straight quotes, which web browser are you using? I believe some browsers insert curly quotes by default. Internet Explorer and Edge may do this, and so will some applications like Microsoft Word if you copy text from it to Wikipedia's editor.

Thanks again for your contributions, and thank you for willingness to accept feedback and ask questions! DpEpsilon ( talk | contribs ) 05:27, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Much Appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Conspiracyofjoy (talk • contribs) 08:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

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