User talk:Graywalls

Welcome!

Hello, Graywalls, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! RFD (talk) 15:05, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Line breaks

This isn't a criticism, I'm just curious: why do you insert <br /> tags and extra whitespace in edits like this, this, and this? Is this intentional on your part or just something weird done by the VisualEditor? Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 04:11, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Must be. There are so many bots here and there that can take care of finalizing the technical appearance so I try to focus more on contents than tidying up. Graywalls (talk) 05:24, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

I strongly encourage you to be more careful with your edits. Removing line breaks and multiple lines of whitespace isn't "finalizing the technical appearance" of a page—those are formatting issues that need to be cleaned up by human editors. Some other slips from your edits include accidentally removing a Commons category, inserting an extraneous character at the top of a highly visible page, and whitespace issues similar to what I mention above ([1][2][3][4][5]). Please go slower and use the "Show preview" and "Show changes" buttons to catch mistakes like this. If the VisualEditor is at the root of these problems, consider just editing the regular wikitext. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 19:23, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Please re-read WP:G11

Welcome, new editor, and thank you for working on the often thankless task of nominating articles for deletion. Please carefully re-read the description for the speedy deletion criterion WP:G11. Here's an excerpt: Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. It may also help to read the detailed description at WP:NOTPROMOTION, specifically item 5, which includes this text: Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources....

You improperly applied WP:G11 to Bit House Saloon (now at Draft:Bit House Saloon). The prose on the page is written neutrally, and it is all referenced to reliable sources that cover the subject of the article directly. I'm not saying it would survive at AFD, but G11 does not apply. Thanks, and happy editing! – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:49, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

It appeared unambiguous advertisement, because most of the contents consisted of series of coverage like "Bit House Saloon was named "Portland's 2015 Bar of the Year" which doesn't look like how encyclopedia articles are written. What do you think? Graywalls (talk) 16:53, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

That is a factual, neutral, sourced segment of prose, if you quote the whole clause with references:

"Bit House Saloon was named "Portland's 2015 Bar of the Year" by The Oregonian,"

As for "doesn't look like how encyclopedia articles are written", compare the above sentence to this excerpt from the lead of Midnight's Children:

"Midnight's Children won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981."

I'm not saying that the Bit House Saloon is as notable as Midnight's Children, but again, from WP:G11, Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. CSD exists only for pages whose deletion should be uncontroversial. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:09, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Graywalls, I'll also let User:Jonesey95 reply to you, but adding mention of Bit House being named bar of the year by The Oregonian in 2015 is accurate, neutral, and an accomplishment worthy of inclusion. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:07, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to reflect what reliable sources say about a subject. If there is positive coverage of a subject in independent sources, the encyclopedia should reflect that. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 18:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm talking about cherry picking and assorting them in such a way that it is clearly a promotional purpose. You will see in vehicle ads "JD Power and associates rates the best safety in class, consumer report rates it highest fuel economy in class for under $30,000" for promotional purposes. While the statements are true, when contents from a lot of different sources are carved out and assorted together to paint the image the way the business wants it and the reception makes up almost the entire body of the article, that's advertisement. Graywalls (talk) 18:37, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

You claim the sources are cherry-picked. Taking the case of Draft:Bit House Saloon, can you find negative coverage of the establishment in reliable sources that could balance the positive coverage? Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 18:50, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Travel and eats guide aren't going to bother mentioning "this place sucks" so you won't be expected to find them. What I mean is that a pile of shallow coverage perhaps don't substitute for depth of coverage. Graywalls (talk) 18:54, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Ok, but now you've changed your argument. Initially you said the sources were cherry-picked, giving the article a promotional tone; now you're saying the coverage of the saloon is too shallow (meaning, I presume, you think it's non-notable). If it's only the latter that you are arguing for, then you shouldn't have tagged the article as a G11. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 19:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Again, Graywalls, the emphasis here is that G11 is not the right criterion. The words of G11 do not say "articles that have only positive coverage about a subject are eligible for G11." If you can't find a speedy criterion that applies adequately, you always have AFD as an option. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:07, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

References

A cup of tea for you too!

This situation reminds me a lot of something that happened about a year ago. It dragged on for months, with lots of moans and groans from the prolific article creator about how we were all so unkind in deleting his articles when we could have fixed them for him. When he'd irritated enough people, that contributor was eventually banned from creating any new articles. Deb (talk) 19:47, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Fekner

Fekner sent me a nasty email saying we had ravaged his page. I think we massively improved it. Some people seem to think WP is a promotional vehicle for their personal careers.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 02:46, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

concerned about your edits and interactions with others

Hi Graywalls,

We've interacted once or twice, but mostly I've watched articles in my watchlist and on various talk pages (including yours). I've seen a pattern of editing that comes off as disruptive, hostile, or prickly. Just from the past few days:

• "For a while, I couldn't understand why you're so adamantly opposed to deletion and continue to tendentiously engage in circular argument and try to sway participants to "switch votes". I think I've built a plausible theory."
• undoing an edit, stating "compounds to the deterioration of an already sloppy article"
• "Applying best available true facts rather than ASSuming and doing editor WP:OR to make it sound nice at the expense of disseminating unverified information. DO NOT get trigger happy and revert w/o checking talk."
• "i'd appreciate if you'd stop asserting your version as "it was better" in edit comments. I put 2014, because it describes observations of nature reasonably expected to change in five years. Also, "the portland mercury" would give an impression it was from news coverage. Disclosure of "restaurant listing" makes it clearer, thus more informative."
• "stop vandalizing my page"
• "There's nothing to talk about. This appears to be just one of the many you have sprayed and prayed in a batch."

and some patterns (versus individual quotes above):

• Litigating over every response placed in a half-dozen AFDs; see also WP:LAWYER
• Revert warring with Another Believer (talk · contribs) over an image that is on Wikimedia Commons because you believe it is copyvio (without/instead of dealing with the source file; note the file is about a 6-12 months than the wweek article you linked to as the source). [6]
• Getting into a battle over a link to a documentary on Youtube, even after a consensus is given

It seems you have a bias towards the removal of content, and some of it (coincidentally?) tends to line up with things that Another Believer has created or contributed to, perhaps after a debate on an article deletion, which appears to be your first significant interaction. I'm not sure if that's related or not, but combining all of these behaviors together has .. gathered attention from other users, who mostly seem to be responding in good faith towards the community building.

This has intensified- while I was writing this and pulling diffs I saw you called out Another Believer for canvassing "both on and off the Wiki platform". Certainly I've interacted with Another Believer in the same way I've interacted with you- because our interests in Oregon articles tends to intersect. I don't think I've met either of you but I'm also really bad with names and faces.

Your edits have made it clear that you are well-aware of "how Wikipedia works", the policies and so on. So I'm not linking to specific pillars/guidelines/essays. Mostly I wanted to directly approach you with this to see how intentional it is, and if there's a more general issue or concern you have outside of specific commits. tedder (talk) 22:54, 4 April 2019 (UTC)