User talk:StevenKayTrenton

June 2009

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Tammy Faye Messner, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Plastikspork (talk) 08:50, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

June 2009: Wikipedia Edits

In reply to your revision of Tammy Faye Baker -- Well done, and thanks for proving a point that I had made in a workshop that I am conducting.

In doing a workshop on the accuracy of online research with university students, an argument arose as to the validity of Wikipedia in that user contributions are posted without verification and checks for accuracy.

My student asserted that information, especially small bits of information, can be placed in a Wikipedia article and not be detected for extended periods of time.

As someone who uses Wikipedia for research -- not as the final word, but as an invaluable tool for obtaining initial information and resources for addition research -- my argument was that it is generally accurate and is in a state of continual correction and refinement. The "food for worms" insertion (just a few short words) was expected to remain until at least next week's class. However, the rapidity of the correction shows that Wikipedia works remarkably well. While individually, inaccuracies may exist, on the whole, the correction mechanisms demonstrate a resource that can provide reliable information as a basis for further investigation. I will use this at next week's class.

Regards, StevenKayTrenton

I watch about 1500 articles on Wikipedia, which is a near zero fraction of all articles, but I do my best to help keep the vandalism/unsourced/errors to a minimum on the articles that I watch. There are other editors who don't watch specific articles, but do randomly review recent changes. There are bots which watch for obvious vandalism. Biographies are one of the more frequent targets, and over half the pages on my watch list are biographies. There is a proposal to put these articles on permanent "semi protection", which would prevent unregistered users from editing. There have been movements to create a watch group for all BLPs. There really is no foolproof solution. In my opinion, there should be a way for constructive editors to identify articles which are are not being watched, so we can attempt to provide more uniform coverage. If you really wanted to introduce a long-lived error into a WP article, you could probably pick some article about some random small town with a very low edit frequency and it's very likely that your edit would persist for much longer. Every so often, I come across vandalism which has persisted for over 6 months, but this is very rare. There is also the famous case of the student who inserted a false quote into a WP article about a person who had just died hours earlier. The quote was quickly removed, but the student re-inserted it more than once. A newspaper then quoted Wikipedia, and that newspaper was quoted by others, and next thing you know the false quotation is seen as fact. The student later came forward, but the point was made about relying too much on what you read on WP. Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 15:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

June 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. We welcome and appreciate your contributions, including your edits to Vuvuzela, but we cannot accept original research. Original research also encompasses novel, unpublished syntheses of previously published material. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your information. Thank you. McGeddon (talk) 17:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

November 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Silsbee, Texas, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. The reverted edit can be found here. Thank you. some jerk on the Internet (talk) 21:21, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

December 2011

Please do not add unsourced content, as you did to Knights of Columbus. This contravenes Wikipedia's policy on verifiability. If you continue to do so, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Elizium23 (talk) 00:11, 14 December 2011 (UTC)