User:Rap Chart Mike/My first and hopefully last ANI

Editing by copying an article into a sandbox, editing there, and pasting over the page in mainspace
Rap Chart Mike is a fairly new editor who has developed a style of editing, where they copy an article into a sandbox, edit it there, and paste over the page in mainspace.
 * edit count
 * edit count

For example at Electromagnetic therapy (alternative medicine):
 * copied page and pasted it into a sandbox perhaps with some changes already made
 * made further changes there - diff series
 * overwrote the page with the new version -- diff

Also did that with Religious skepticism:
 * pasting into sandbox
 * revising it
 * overwrite

And several others, per their contribs.

In my view this is not good because a) it breaks the chain of WP:ATTRIBUTION, and on a more practical level, it makes it very hard to figure out what changed exactly. It took me about two hours to identify what was new and what was old at Electromagnetic therapy (alternative medicine), and then to fix the mess. Some of that work is at Talk:Electromagnetic_therapy_(alternative_medicine).

I asked RSM to stop doing this and they are not interested in that; see here.

Not looking for admin action necessarily (although breaking attribution is pretty serious and they were warned about this by User:Diannaa in this diff) but rather input; am hoping we can convince this person to edit normally. Jytdog (talk) 17:00, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * If there are no intervenien edits between the version grabbed to sandbox and the one pasted back to mainspace, that should have zero impact as to someone doing a single massive edit in the edit field. Obviously if there were interveining edits and those contributions are not kept as they were, that's potentially problematic. --M asem  (t) 17:03, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I do check for that as clearly more work can be done in the interim between the initial copy and the paste of the rework. The pages I have worked in that fashion thus far have been pages that were largely dormant of activity up until I touched them.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 17:08, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * "touch them up" is not accurate. As you said here: Full rework and here, Full rewrite and expansion from stub status.  Please don't misrepresent what you are doing. Jytdog (talk) 17:12, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * "Touch them up" is not what I said. Please don't misrepresent what I'm doing. Rap Chart Mike (talk) 17:20, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Would you have a problem with someone doing a "full rework" by any other route? Andy Dingley (talk) 17:18, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Given that RCM started the sandbox on May 9 and brought it over a few days later, and there were zero edits between those points on the mainspace, this isn't actionable. What if an editor copied an article, worked it offline, and uploaded the revised version? We can't act on that. The only thing I would suggest that if this is done on wiki, that RCM include diffs links in edit summaries (the diff to the current mainspace aritlce when copying to sandbox, and the diff from the sandbox version copied back to the main article) to keep some type of chain of authority. --M asem  (t) 17:19, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * @M asem, that I can do going forward no problem. It's a sensible suggestion I should have though of.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 17:23, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Rap Chart Mike other folks seem to be finding what you are doing to be OK. If you are going to keep doing it, make sure that the initial paste, with that attributing diff, is the actual page only, and doesn't have additional changes. If you save that edit with changes then it becomes really impossible to see what you have done. Also please don't change the citation style when you work over articles, if it is clearly established in the version you copy. And please use edit notes to explain what you are changing, as you go in your sandbox or in mainspace.  OK? Jytdog (talk) 17:55, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * To clarify I wanted to respond here. Leaving notes seems an acceptable idea. I'm not really understanding what you mean by copying the page with changes. I just copy what is there as it stand and paste it to go to work. As far as I've noticed nothing I touched so far has had any intervening changes that were affected by my edits or in conflict with them. As far as citation style goes, when live editing I do preserve the inline editing style but during a full rewrite and/or work over I find it tough to read what I'm doing and so the footnote style (I guess we call it that?). Not getting why its an issue if it's a full re-do.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 18:20, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If you are rewriting the article from scratch, you can arguably change the citation style. If all you are doing is revising it (and that is all that you are doing, as you explicitly said here) then WP:CITEVAR applies. This is part of why I think your approach is not good; it creates an illusion that there is no continuity, but there is a great deal of continuity - you keep a bunch of the content and sourcing (even very bad pre-existing content and sourcing, as you had done with the repressed memory article, as we discussed at the sandbox talk page)
 * You keep flipping your discourse. Above you said "touch up", but just above here and in edit notes you say "complete rewrite". What you are actually doing, is just a series of normal, everyday edits, like we all do, albeit in this convoluted, nontransparent way.   Jytdog (talk) 19:40, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I just want to point out as I am sure this is just a good faith misreading, but nowhere did he say touch up. He said he touched the articles. Touch up and Touched mean two different things. -DJSasso (talk) 10:59, 18 May 2018 (UTC)


 * There is no problem with this. MediaWiki is smart enough to give good minimal diffs, no matter whether they edit, paste or re-type an article from scratch.
 * If your issue is with making large changes in one atomic saved edit change, then that's a different issue. I would agree that some forms of this are clearer in the history than others. But saving thousands of one letter changes isn't great either, and long history here is that neither has any consensus strongly either for or against it. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:17, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Why is this a problem? Are they overwriting other editor's edits? Otherwise, it's no different than editing on the page itself. And make a few large edits is often less annoying than dozens of small edits in a row on the same page. Natureium (talk) 17:21, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure why this is an issue. I am pretty sure we even encouraged people to do this at one point so that they wouldn't have millions of tiny edits in the edit history and would avoid conflicts. As long as they aren't blowing away other peoples intervening edits then this is actually a good way to go about things. -DJSasso (talk) 17:28, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Hm, folks are disagreeing with me. That is what it is. I strongly prefer incremental edits which makes it much easier to see exactly what the editor is doing.  For a new editor like RSM this is especially important for them to learn how things work. As you can see at Talk:Electromagnetic_therapy_(alternative_medicine), they kept a bunch of crappy sources that never should have been there at all, and added some poor sources including a predatory publisher, along with the some very good ones.  They did post at the talk page asking for the changes to be reviewed, waited one day, then noted that they were implementing the changes...  but this is like some school assignment where experienced editors are asked to be TAs. I have no desire to be somebody's TA - this is way too demanding.
 * it would be more tolerable if there was an initial paste of the exact page into the sandbox (with the attribition in the edit note) then diffs for the changes made, so at least the specific changes could be looked at over there in the sandbox. But RSM often includes edits in their initial saved edit in the sandbox, which makes that impossible.  This is not normal editing. Jytdog (talk) 17:38, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I actually find it much much harder to read an edit history when there are a tonne of tiny changes, large single changes make it much easier to read what is happening all in one shot. With many small changes I have to click back and forth a tonne of times to find what I am looking for which makes its a huge burden and makes it much easier to miss something. -DJSasso (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I almost always click "← next-to-last editor" when someone edits more than once in a row. I want to see all they've changed, not all the incremental changes. Natureium (talk) 17:42, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah I end up doing that a lot as well. But sometimes I need to find what actual edit made a certain change so that it can be reverted or something like that or so I can get a diff to post in a discussion. -DJSasso (talk) 17:44, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * What isn't normal about this? Attribution is the same as it would be if they had edited in the box. They made the changes, and their name is attached. That's attribution. The diffs are the same no matter where they did the editing. It's pretty much the same as using the preview button.
 * Jytdog, do you use wikEdDiff? If not, that might help. It shows exactly what words are changed instead of the whole section. Natureium (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No i don't any fancy plugins or scripts. Just whatever the default software is. I'll look at that one. Jytdog (talk) 17:43, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I totally forgot that I am using that, it does make a huge difference. It really should be the default. -DJSasso (talk) 17:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Same with revisionjumper. I didn't realize that wasn't default until I double checked after I mentioned it above. Natureium (talk) 17:47, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I just enabled it and tried it on this diff. Not helpful. I feel people are responding abstractly and not to what it is like to work with this kind of editing, concretely. Again it was about two hours out of my day to sort out what this person had done.  Jytdog (talk) 17:48, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You clicked the ∆, right? I think people are responding in the abstract because they aren't finding an issue with the editor's edits. It doesn't seem like a problem to me. Natureium (talk) 17:50, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think we are a little stunned that someone is complaining about it. I am having a hard time trying to see where its hard to understand his edit. I literally recommend to new users to do exactly what you are complaining about because it stops people from jumping all over their edits before they are done and stops them from being scared off. It used to be atleast in my opinion the way most editors who were doing major edits to pages did things. Don't know if it is still the case. -DJSasso (talk) 17:54, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think it's a good practice and especially helpful for new editors. I used to use the preview button instead of saving a large number of small edits, but I've been lazier about that lately. Natureium (talk) 17:58, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No i didn't click the ∆! OH! Now I see.  Well i learned something.  Thanks for your time. I am going to wait to see RSM's response to my note to him above about making the initial paste with no changes and will then withdraw this. Jytdog (talk) 18:03, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I can work with this method, if the initial paste is the actual page and not the page-with-changes already made, and there are edit notes explaining the changes made in the sandbox. The normal editing needs to happen somewhere so that specific diffs can be pointed to, and discussed. Jytdog (talk) 18:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You said, "But RSM often includes edits in their initial saved edit in the sandbox" What does that mean? I just copy the article, leave a note on the talk page, do my work on it in a sandbox and paste it back in. Before pasting back in I check to see if its been changed in a manner that matters to my rewrite. Are you suggesting that I should document everything that I do and leave each sand box for posterity? Rap Chart Mike (talk) 18:13, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I mean like this. That was the first edit you saved in your sandbox of the Repressed memory page. As we discussed on that page's talk page, that was not a copy of the article - it was a copy with changes already made.  That is what you should not do, because there is no diff of the initial set of changes.  You should paste the article exactly, save it, then start making changes, so there are clear diffs of all the changes to the original version. Jytdog (talk) 19:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It's pretty clear what that initial set of changes was. So what if you can't diff it then? You can certainly diff it when they paste it back in.-- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:35, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * People should be making careful edits somewhere, with edit notes explaining what they are doing. This is WP 101 stuff. And no the details are not easy to see, without spending a shitload of time. WP content and sourcing is specific when you are actually editing. Jytdog (talk) 19:47, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * And again, this is a new editor. Without specific diffs to show them mistakes, it is very hard for them to learn. Jytdog (talk) 19:51, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

There is some excellent advice and information here for someone new at this. Very enlightening stuff folks.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 18:25, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * This is pretty much the opposite of collaborative editing. If there is disagreement about any of the changes, be prepared for a reversion of your entire edit, and then do it the normal way, one change at a time. Other editors should be able to have input on each change, and that can be single letters, numbers, formatting, and sources. We're a team here, not a one-man show.-- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 19:59, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Who says that is "the normal way"? You absolutely cannot revert an edit in full because you disagree with one aspect. You need to remove the aspect you disagree with. That's collaborative editing. Natureium (talk) 20:02, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Come to think of it, I've run into this a lot with political articles. There is a small group of editors in the habit of reverting all edits that they can find something disagreeable with. If they think your addition was grammatically incorrect, they'll remove everything instead of working collaboratively. I've mostly been actively avoiding improving political articles because of this extremely aggressive practice. Natureium (talk) 20:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That would be wrong. I'm talking about multiple changes in one large edit. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 20:27, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * But there's also nothing wrong with making multiple changes in one large edit. You can remove whatever changes you think are bad, but you can't revert a whole edit just because you disagree with one of the changes made. You need to remove just that change. Natureium (talk) 20:31, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Naturium that is just bizarre. Making a whole series of edits off WP (normally, like all of us do every day, but some where else,) and that dumping that whole thing into mainspace is just ick. It matters what is in mainspace. I will always revert a big dump like that if I find a couple of things that are bad.  Always Jytdog (talk) 22:04, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * And that would be disruptive editing, if you did it enough it could easily lead to a block. If there is something wrong with an edit you remove the bad part you just don't blanket revert everything. -DJSasso (talk) 23:18, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Uh no. You and I have not interacted before which is odd as we have both been around a long time. Although I see that this is because (obviously) we work on very different topics usually. But not even here or some other notice board. Odd. In any case, you are apparently some kind of "every sperm is sacred" person; I focus on high quality, NPOV content, mostly on content about health and medicine. In my view every sperm is not sacred; lots of edits harm WP. I think it is good that we don't cross paths much! Jytdog (talk) 05:04, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Believe me, I revert a lot. Lots of edits do harm WP and deserve to be reverted. But reverting large portions of good content to just get rid of a small amount of problematic content hurts Wikipedia. Since you edit health articles perhaps the analogy of using a scalpel instead of amputating the entire limb is appropriate. -DJSasso (talk) 10:57, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have never seen this approach as a requirement for collorative editing, and is very much an anti-thesis to how we accept editors making large-scale revisions of articles. If this was being done on a very active article, yes, it would be a problem, but it's clearly not the case with any of the articles in question. And there's no difference about doing this in an offline editor and bringing those changes into the main article, either. --M asem (t) 20:24, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Maybe I should explain the context better. Rap Sheet Mike reached out to me to review their "improvement" (also called "my work") to the Repressed memory page, after they made this series of edits to Fecal microbiota transplant, after which I made this series cleaning that up and fixing other problems, and then left this note at their talk page. I had never edited the Repressed memory page nor its talk page.


 * When I got to their sandbox, it looked like this. Never having seen the actual article, I just started looking at it, and very quickly saw that it was a) not good, and b) very, VERY LONG. A shitload of work for anybody to review and provide meaningful feedback on.  Really - before anybody responds to this, go look at that page as it stood there and imagine what kind of feedback you might give. Go look at the history of that sandbox and even try to figure out where the history for this "improvement" starts. really, go try.  When you find the initial version, try to figure out if that is the original pasted version, or something else.  You will pretty soon ask yourself, why am I using my time to do all this digging around, just figuring out what the hell I am looking at?
 * Like I said I just treated the page like its own thing after that realization hit me. The page was awful on a bunch of levels and I said so. This was for some reason upsetting to RSM, and it turned out that the parts I was criticizing, were not their work..
 * I found that bizarre. If you want me to look at a diff, show me the diff.  If you want me to review a huge half-plagiarized thing, understand that if the parts you plagiarized suck, they suck.
 * The way that RSM is working, is not a good way of working. It is a waste of experienced volunteers' time, and not a good way for new users to learn, because what the new user actually did, is completely unclear without a shitload of digging by other people. I am not a TA and nobody here is a TA. I will gladly review some diffs, but not a whole, huge, half-plagiarized thing presented as "my improvement".
 * I don't understand why experienced editors here are not grasping this. Jytdog (talk) 22:04, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This is why I said above - if RSM or anybody else wants to work this way --
 * make an initial paste of the page into a sandbox, and attribute that per WP:Copying within Wikipedia (easy for somebody else to find it, and honors the whole attribution thing)
 * go ahead and edit that, and use edit notes on each edit, to say what you are doing in each edit. This is what edit notes are for. We all expect this.
 * If you want somebody to review that final version in the sandbox, then fine. They can easily pull up the big diff or walk through the small ones, and any specific edit can be diffed and discussed on the talk page.
 * if alternatively you want to then turn and overwrite the page in mainspace, do your dump, and in the edit note clearly attribute with a diff back to your sandbox, and people can go there and see the individual diffs. (this alternative is VERY not preferred in my view)
 * either way, the attributions, the transparency, and showing of the editing steps with clear edit notes is 100% standard practice.
 * -- Jytdog (talk) 22:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Except that this isn't 100% standard practice. Not even close. The only thing we require and even then it isn't mandatory is a an edit summary on the edit when they post back to the main article. Everything in a sandbox is considered ephemeral and the sandbox itself is often deleted when its done being used. As numerous people above have mentioned we treat a sandbox the same way we would treat someone copying it to an offline editor like Word and then posting their changes into Wikipedia. -DJSasso (talk) 23:23, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That is wrong. WP:CWW and common sense both require attribution when copying anywhere within Wikipedia. Also, collaboration requires explanation so if someone copies Example into their sandbox they need to give a clue in the edit summary that it comes from Example for others, in addition to WP:CWW copyright policy. Johnuniq (talk) 23:34, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well yes the copy to the sandbox does need to say hey I copied it from the original. I was more talking about the keeping the sandbox as a permanent history of every change the editor made with edit summaries to everything they do in their sandbox. The copying back to the article however does not per WP:NOATT. (assuming no one else has edited in their sandbox) -DJSasso (talk) 23:44, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I said "permanent" no where, and it is kind of ugly that you are implying I did. I understand that you are getting all passionate about this, but please don't start distorting things. This is a new user, remember? Everybody should use good edit notes all the time, but especially somebody who is trying to learn the ropes here, should be urged to use edit notes and describe what they are doing. Communicating with other people in the flow of editing is essential to what we do here. Jytdog (talk) 05:11, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not passionate about this in the slightest, I could pretty much care less, I would argue it is yourself who is. You completely implied permanent by indicating that the sandbox would be there for people to go back and look at the edits individually. If they aren't there permanently then that can't be done. So yes, you did indicate permanently. -DJSasso (talk) 10:51, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I can't remember ever disagreeing with before, but I have literally no idea what the problem is here. If Rap isn't including an attribution in his sandbox creation that's a small issue, but compressing dozens of edits by one person into a single edit does not "break attribution". As others have said, if there are no intervening edits, and I'll add, if Rap is the only person editing his sandbox, then there's no problem at all. I've done this, lots of people have done this. You don't have to record each incremental change in a series when one person is responsible for all of them. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There is nothing wrong with using a sandbox to develop edits.-- Toddy1 (talk) 06:16, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That is true, there is not a thing wrong with using a sandbox to develop edits. That is not what is going on here! It is rewriting of whole articles, where the whole article is then copied over with the revised content.
 * Maybe this is a subject matter thing. People don't work that way in health or medicine. Nor have I seen this done on any bios I watch.  The only people I see doing things even close to this in health and medicine are students.  Paid editors sometimes offer up whole drafts in their sandboxes too.  Do people partially rewrite whole articles (Keeping much of the old content and sourcing -- even unsourced content and bad sources -- and adding new content and sourcing in some places) in their sandbox and then do complete overwrites in other topics? (real question!) It is this mix, of bad old content and sourcing, sometime reordered and sometimes left in place, in combination with new content, that has been crazy-making for me, with no easy way to tell what is old and new Jytdog (talk) 06:25, 18 May 2018 (UTC) (clarifying Jytdog (talk) 13:43, 18 May 2018 (UTC))
 * If you're implying I'm a paid editor then I'm going to have introduce my own action. There is no basis for that accusation other than your clear disbelief that people are disagreeing with you.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 09:23, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That is not what he said. Jytdog is replying to the people who think rewriting an article in a sandbox is normal procedure, or at least, not abnormal. Johnuniq (talk) 11:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I just want it very clear that I am not being paid to do anything.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 11:54, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have used the "do all the edits in one pass" method for many years in cases where a lot of article rework is required. WP:BLOWITUP is often the only solution for articles with severe and fundamental problems. Sometimes I've pasted the article to be edited into a text editor rather than a sandbox. I also watch for intervening edits in the time I have the article "offline". And I try to leave an explanation on the Talk page with a summary of changes I've made, and why. If this practice is considered unhelpful or against policy by the community, it should be documented in a guideline. Otherwise, how is anyone to know? - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:23, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Jytdog - developing even a few sentences can be time-consuming, particularly when adding references. This is something that I (and, clearly, others) prefer to do with regular save points but it would be inappropriate to commit something unfinished right back in the article. In addition, revisiting the text after a suitable break allows for far more effective proof-reading. It could be done in an external editor and you'd never know - doing it using a sandbox means it is there for everyone to see what is happening plus makes it easy to correctly preview the wiki markup, internal links etc. You do not seem to be convincing anyone this is in any way problematic - I suggest you WP:DROPTHESTICK. Dorsetonian (talk) 11:19, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This is spot on. --JBL (talk) 12:41, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that pretty much else finds the general process unproblematic for the most part. Hm. It still seems to me that people are not looking at how RSM is doing this. I realize that my description of this was general and people are responding generally. Jytdog (talk) 13:35, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I am closing this, as this is hopelessly off track and focused on the general process, and that is mostly my fault. If somebody wants to re-open feel free. Jytdog (talk) 15:17, 18 May 2018 (UTC)