User talk:Stwalkerster/Archive October 2019

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Stwalkerster. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).

Administrator changes

Barkeep49

Beetstra • KillerChihuahua • Kusma

Arcadian • Extraordinary Machine • Xeno

JamesBWatson → JBW

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Oversight changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Guideline and policy news

Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Concerned about your deletions

Hello Stwalkerster

I am concerned about your deletions of my factual text. This information is 100% accurate. The servant girl was named, as was the father. She subsequently told my maternal grandmother exactly what happened. I have discretely *not* mentioned certain other matters and have not done so here because I do not know whether this is a private communication or not. As I pointed out (!) this is entirely provable if anyone challenges these facts - and frankly no-one is likely to. Therefore I am at a loss to understand your motives. Please explain to me why you apparently wish this to remain hidden from public knowledge. If there is something that I do not understand about the process then please explain that also.

Lawrence D J Harris Ldjhdata (talk) 10:25, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Ldjhdata. Posts here are indeed public for the world to see. As your post here on my talk page is your only edit, I've been unable to respond to you as quickly as I would otherwise like. I presume that the account LawrenceDJH (talk · contribs) is also yours, and that you are referring to my edit to Kenneth J. Alford? If that is the case, then I would like to draw your attention to the policy on the use of multiple accounts. Don't get me wrong, there are valid uses of alternate accounts - but it needs to be within the polices which have been established by the community.

Now, to the issue you've raised. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - a tertiary source of information. This means Wikipedia collates and summarises material taken from secondary sources. We further limit the secondary sources we pull information from to "reliable" sources - by that we mean published sources which are independent of the subject, have editorial oversight, and have a reputation for fact-checking. A good example of a source we consider reliable would be a newspaper such as the New York Times, or The Guardian. Now, this isn't the only requirement - you also need to add a citation to the source from which you get the information, so that our readers can look up and read the published source for themselves and verify that the information on Wikipedia is indeed a summary of the sources. Unfortunately, you've stated above that you know the information you added only from personal knowledge, which isn't acceptable for use as a source as it's not possible for our readers to verify independently. You state that it is entirely provable if anyone challenges these facts - and frankly no-one is likely to, but we do not force our readers to challenge content in order to satisfy themselves of it's accuracy; that is the entire purpose of citing independent, reliable sources. If you like, you can consider this a request to "prove it" by citing an independent reliable source with which I can verify your claims.

I'm not interested in "hiding" information which is relevant to the subject of the article and which is well-cited, but I do care about the transparency of sourcing and the reliability of the information. It also happens that your addition is only partially relevant to the subject of the article. Having a son is relevant, the identity of mother of the son is relevant, and the son being raised by maternal grandparents is relevant. The identity of the maternal grandparents is not relevant, nor is the name of the son, nor anything the son went on to do. Additionally, the comment It is now time to acknowledge this liaison publicly is inappropriate because Wikipedia isn't a soapbox from which you can make announcements - it's an encyclopedia collecting information from other sources.

I hope this sufficiently clarifies my reasons for removing the content you added. stwalkerster (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

My response to your reply

Given that this forum is public it is somewhat difficult for me to reply in full. I am not aware of having more than one account; this is seemingly beyond my control because I did not knowingly create more than one. The information so far published about KJA is incomplete and my edit was to correct that situation. It would appear that I am prevented from doing so! The task of providing a verification facility is clearly impossible although as I posted in my original edit, a DNA measure would verify that my edit is 100% accurate. It seems that Wiki has invoked a situation, however understandable in some cases, to prevent the truth being published. This is a great pity. The event(s) referred to would hardly have been published in the media for obvious reasons as per 1918. I remain very disappointed that my father's right to acknowledgement is to be denied.

L D J Harris Ldjhdata (talk) 13:59, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: Candidates appointed

The Arbitration Committee is pleased to welcome the following editors to the functionary team:

L235 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser and Oversighter.
Mz7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser and Oversighter.
SQL (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.
ST47 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser and Oversighter.
Stwalkerster (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.
The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.
Xaosflux (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.

The Committee thanks the community and all candidates for helping to bring this process to a successful conclusion.

The Committee also welcomes the following user back to the functionary team:

Ivanvector (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who resigned his CheckUser permission in May 2019, is reappointed as a CheckUser following a request to the committee for return of the permission.

The Committee also thanks Timotheus Canens (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for his long history of contributions to the functionary team. Timotheus Canens voluntarily resigned his CheckUser and Oversight permissions in September 2019.