User talk:68.175.117.78

June 2019
Please refrain from making test edits in Wikipedia pages, even if you intend to fix them later. Your edits have been reverted. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 07:26, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

You have been blocked temporarily from editing for abuse of editing privileges. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page:. Materialscientist (talk) 07:26, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:RS goes into this in detail, and specifically lists IMDB. --Yamla (talk) 20:17, 2 June 2019 (UTC)


 * 1) Thank you for your attempt to improve articles, and especially thank your for the work you put in reverting your own edits when you realised that you had mistakenly made edits based on an unreliable source. It is unfortunate that your good-faith attempts to help led to being blocked from editing.
 * 2) The reason why IMDb is considered an unreliable source is that it accepts user-submitted content, without substantial checks on the accuracy of that information. There have been times when total lies, completely misrepresenting films or television series, have been established on IMDb, and there have probably been far more times when good-faith but mistaken information has been posted there.
 * 3) I looked at a few of the articles you edited, and on none of those that I looked at was IMDb given as a reference, though it was given as a "see also" link. I am not personally convinced that allowing "see also" links to a site that we know is unreliable is a good idea, but I suppose the idea is that all we are doing is saying "here is another site related to the topic of the article, which you may find helpful", without vouching for the reliability of that site, whereas when we actually add content to a Wikipedia article we should be confident that it is valid, and so we should have a reliable source for it.
 * 4) Even though I did not see IMDb used as a reference in any of the articles I checked, people certainly do give it as a reference, because they don't realise it is not a reliable source. Wikipedia editors who know better remove references to IMDb, but not all of them get noticed right away, so unfortunately bad references sometimes remain in articles for a long time. It is natural for a new editor to look at what other editors have done to try to see what is acceptable, but unfortunately the fact that others have done something is not always a guarantee that it is a good thing to do.
 * 5) I would encourage you to consider creating an account. There are various advantages in doing so, including the fact that users who have an account are more likely to be given the benefit of any doubt, more likely to have other editors explaining to them why there edits are considered problematic, and less likely to be blocked from editing without adequate explanation. Editors without accounts should not be treated any worse than those with accounts, but I'm afraid they often are. I used to edit without an account, and created an account because one day I found that the IP address I was trying to edit from was blocked, through no fault of mine. Obviously it's up to you whether you do the same, but you may like to at least consider it.
 * I hope some or all of these comments may be of some help to you. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)