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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
A considerable amount of time has passed since this request was made. Netalarmtalk 06:17, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bluegoblin7

[edit]

Bluegoblin7 (talk · contribs) I wish to be reviewed because I have now been with Wikipedia for over a year, and I would like to know how I am doing, and that my edits are doing good! BG7 16:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Review by delldot talk
I looked through your talk page and recent archives. I saw the recent thing over the block--although it obviously caused you a great deal of distress, you didn't seem to lash out at anyone else, which I think is great. If you can get through something like that without yourself causing hard feelings, that's quite an accomplishment. It looks from your talk page (didn't dig anywhere else) like you were blameless, so kudos to you for sticking it out.

But looking through your talk page and archives also made me feel like you may be taking things too personally and getting too worked up unnecessarily. I think it's great that you're interested in ideas for how to avoid conflict (as you mention in Q2); these skills will serve you all your life. I'm really good at it because I hate people to be angry at me. My advice for avoiding drama is this: first, figure out why you're failing to. Is it because you have trouble recognizing when drama is about to happen, or are you stepping into it willingly? If the former, learn to recognize when people are getting pissed off. It's hard in something like WP because we don't have the usual voice and facial cues you do in real life. But you can always ask, and offer to resume after some time has passed to cool down. If it's the second, that's more complex; it's gonna require some changes in your thinking and attitudes. Looking through your talk page archives, my perspective was that you were sometimes engaging in disputes where it was unnecessary; any party could have been like "k whtvr" and problem solved. Maybe try asking yourself "how important is this really?" If it's something you can just let go, definitely do. I remember seeing a scuffle between you and SteveCrossin at his talk page a while back and thinking if either party would have just said "fine, I apologize, let's drop it" the thing would never have happened. At least from my perspective, it's often not worth it. I think a good way to get this perspective is to step away from the computer for a while, maybe go get some exercise to blow off adrenaline. Frequently when I come back after doing that I think "why on earth was I upset about that?" Or I'll reread the thing that upset me and realized I had taken it much more personally than it was meant. Maybe force yourself to wait until you're calmer before responding to something (definitely true for me at least: the stupidest things I've done on this project have been done in haste). I noticed twice in the past couple months you declared you were leaving and then came back; maybe cooling down for a bit could have avoided this.

Another thing to focus on is to try and figure out what you can drop and what's actually important to stand your ground on. Always a judgement call, but my advice to you would be to drop more and stand your ground on less. At least take the time to justify to yourself why you're doing it if you do feel that it's necessary to get involved in conflict. Remember, you can always step back yourself and ask someone else to get involved.

From a more interpersonal perspective, ways to avoid conflict include trying to find the good in what the other person has done: if they're coming to your talk page to criticize an edit of yours, you can acknowledge that they're doing a good job ensuring the quality of the article (if that's the case, anyway). A lot of people you could have potential disputes with are actually very dedicated contributors to the project, if you're having trouble finding good things about them, you're probably not looking hard enough. Acknowledging the good in people's work will have multiple good effects: it de-escalate the hostility, establish a more congenial environment for the discussion, let them know that you don't want to fight, and (let's face it) stroke their ego and make them less likely to want to fight with you. I find that ego is very very frequently the root of conflict, don't you agree?

Another way to keep conflict situations from ever arising is to establish a friendly tone when talking to people even if no conflict's on the horizon. It helps to thank or compliment people if you can do it sincerely. If you do that before making your other statement, the rest of what you have to say may sound less unfriendly. For example, below someone says "From Interiot's 'Wannabe Kate' Tool i say you doing good.  :)" Admittedly, not the most in-depth review, but not harmful. You respond with "Ah but that means nothing to me as i dont have editcountitis! LOL!" not hostile exactly, but you don't establish a friendly tone. The LOL I suspect was intended to do that, but it's ambiguous: are you laughing at them? Is the statement that you don't have editcountitis an implicit statement that they do? You may think it's neurotic, but people are sensitive, it can help to be proactive in making them feel good about themselves. You could have said "thanks for looking, but I don't put much stock in edit count alone. Do you have any comments about the content of my editing?" Or some such. Anyway, hopefully I'm getting across, if I'm doing a bad job explaining feel free to ask for elaboration.

Lastly, it's important to be mindful of the fact that you might be being trolled (intentionally or unintentionally). While I think the word 'troll' is very dangerous and I almost never use it with a specific target, it's obvious that some people stir up drama for the sake of getting a reaction, whether or not they realize that's what they're doing. If you find yourself engaged in a long argument with someone over something that doesn't have any real consequence, you may be being trolled. The way to avoid it is to employ the above drama-avoiding techniques and others.

I think you learned from the dishonesty during your RfA so I'm not going to harp on that much. But I do want to point out that trust is a fundamental value here, and abusing it will only bring you misery. Also, I think the discussion about whether to delete the RfA page should have been dropped earlier, there was no need to continue fighting about that, and it was not good that you allowed yourself to get that worked up about it (see above), although I do understand that it must have been a very stressful and unhappy thing for you. I understand not wanting to have that around, but do you see now the value of transparency and openness, the reason why we do want to keep such records? On the whole, though, I think it was great that you came clean about the sockpuppetry during your RfA.

Other minor comments about editing: I think the /status page is a waste of time and server space. How's it much more helpful than having a look at your contribs? About article, work, I haven't seen much lately. How about choosing an article on a topic you're interested in and bringing that sucker up to GA or FA status? I hope when exams are over we'll see more work from you like that you mentioned in Q1.

I haven't meant to sound so critical, but I did want to go into depth about the conflict avoidance since I think it's super important. In short, look for the good things in people and drop it when the conflict's not important. And it usually isn't. :P Anyway, I hope you take this in the spirit it's intended, I don't mean to be so negative, just that I saw areas that needed attention so that's what I focused on. Definitely let me know if you'd like to make any responses or need clarification. Peace, delldot talk 18:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Questions

  1. Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
    The contribution that I am most pleased of was collaborating and collecting together people and ideas to form WikiProject Derbyshire. The Project has, and indeed still is, grown hugely since it's inception. I also hope that it has enabled Wikipedia's coverage of Derbyshire to grow, and also make the articles a lot better with the collaboration. I am also proud of my tram contributions, in particular my massive expansion of the National Tramway Museum and the creation of Tramcars of the National Tramway Museum. I also am proud of the creation of WikiProject UK Trams, which, although it hasn't been as active as I would have liked, still has been a moderate success. Although I haven't been as active recently due to GCSE exams, my plans for the future include more tram and Derbyshire work... notably Blackpool Tramway, Atlow, and a few others, including reviving my work on British Rail Class 47.
  3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
    Since my time has started at Wikipedia, I have been in several stupid conflicts. The majority have just been either misunderstandings, or simply me not AGF'ing and discussing calmly and politely. Thankfully, these are all behind me now, and in the future I hope that I can deal with them a lot calmer. Indeed, I would like any ideas of the such to be bought up in this review.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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