User talk:Ezlev/Archives/2021/February

Geneva Consensus Declaration
Hello Ezlev. I had recently modified the Geneva Consensus Declaration page. And you undid my edits. The reason I made those changes was to remove all references to opinion or irrelevant facts that only serve to influence the reader's opinion. I believe Wikipedia should be factual only.

For example "most of the signatories are illiberal, authoritarian, or autocratic governments which predominantly subscribe to hard-line religious viewpoints". This does not describe the Geneva Consensus Declaration but only serves to paint the signatories in a bad light. This is an attempt to influence the reader.

It goes on to say "some of their leaders have been accused of human rights violations". Again, this does not help the reader understand what the Geneva Consensus Declaration is all about and besides that, an accusation is not proof. I could literally accuse any country in the world of anything I want and make the same statement that "this country has been accused of X". It means nothing and again is only included in an attempt to influence the reader's opinion of the Declaration. That kind of propaganda has no place on Wikipedia.

"most of the countries did not appear to take them seriously" is not only propaganda, but entirely without evidence. If you have to use the word "appear" then you know you're only stating an opinion.

"Human rights activists described the declaration as an international attack on women, gender, and sexuality". How a specific group describes the Declaration is again irrelevant to the declaration itself, as any declaration is going to have its detractors and enemies. If you want to point out groups that criticise the declaration then you should at least also point out groups that support the declaration and give both groups equal space, otherwise again it is nothing more than an attempt to influence the reader.

"Some of the signatories may have been motivated by a desire to undermine established international institutions" is a blatant opinion statement without any evidence to back up or prove their motivation. Why is speculation about the reasons for signing a declaration on this page? Is Wikipedia a place for speculation and opinion?

Please remove all references to opinion, speculation and propaganda. This is not the place to promote your own ideological views, or to attack the ideological views of others. This is a place to present facts for the benefit of all. Wikipedia started out as a fact based information source, as an encyclopedia should be, but has since been overrun with opinions, speculation and biased attacks and that's a shame because that's not what this place was meant to be. Please, if you're an editor of Wikipedia, then you must consider yourself a non-biased journalist presenting only the facts with the only goal of informing the readers, not influencing them. Consider yourself an impartial observer looking from some distance away, not personally involved, and not personally caring how the reader responds to the information you provide as you're only providing the facts, like how a robot would. That is how the greatest historians recorded history, and that's how we should be recording today.

This may seem like a strange comparison but I'm reminded of how we are trained to observe children in child care. When we do observations of children at play we write down only what we see, not what we assume or think. For example, if Johnny picks up a block, frowns and throws it I would say "Johnny picked up the block, frowned and threw the block" not "Johnny picked up the block and appeared to be angry so he threw it". The first statement is simple facts, the second statement inserts my interpretation of the facts. Wikipedia should be only a statement of facts, not our interpretation of those facts.

All we have to do is explain what the Consensus states, who signed it and when and then the readers can make up their own minds on whether or not they agree with it. We don't need to encourage them one way or the other on how to think. That's insulting to the reader and a disservice to the integrity of this site.

I hope I've made clear to you why I removed those parts of the page, and I hope you agree that Wikipedia articles should be factual only for the subject in question and not be written in such a way as to influence the reader's opinions by inserting our own biases, interpretations of facts, opinions or propaganda, or even to reference the one-sided opinions or propaganda of others as they relate to the subject.

JackGunn (talk) 20:05, 4 February 2021 (UTC)Jack
 * , I made that revert solely because your edit removed sourced content without a full explanation for doing so. That raised red flags for me because disruptive editors often use edit summaries like "removed opinion" for edits that are actually removing well-sourced content. Upon seeing that your edit had removed content which was supported with citations to reliable sources, I made the revert; I had no other motivation for doing so. I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience my edit caused. I fully agree that non-neutrality is an issue on Wikipedia, and I'm happy that you've chosen to create an account and work to make this platform better.
 * A quick note: In your message above, you said that if you're an editor of Wikipedia, then you must consider yourself a non-biased journalist presenting only the facts with the only goal of informing the readers, not influencing them. I want to make sure you're aware of the wording and meaning of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, WP:NPOV. This policy makes clear that articles are expected not just to present the facts but also, as you put it, the one-sided opinions or propaganda of others as they relate to the subject if those opinions are relevant and meet certain other policies. Rather than arguing for the removal of any non-objective content, I encourage you to focus on making sure that non-objective content meets these other Wikipedia policies such as due weight, no original research, and attribution.
 * As for the Geneva Consensus Declaration article, I think I'm going to place an issue tag and maybe do some work on it when I get a chance. Thanks for taking the time to leave me a message! I've also dropped a welcome template on your talk page with some more links you might find useful. warmly, ezlev.  talk  22:14, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Tagging pages for deletion
Hello, Ezlev,

Just a reminder that whenever you tag a page for deletion (CSD, PROD, AFD, etc.), you need to post a notice on the page creator's talk page. If you use Twinkle, the program does this automatically for you once you set up your Preferences so I encourage you to try it out. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 07:28, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks for the reminder! I do use Twinkle, and I know it placed an automatic notification for a CSD tag back on Feb 1, but evidently not for the one from today. Time to poke around the preferences for a little while, I guess. Again, thank you for bringing it to my attention! warmly, ezlev.  talk  07:46, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , update to my reply above: based on the Twinkle preferences, it looks like notifications for a WP:G6 tag are only automatic when the Db-copypaste template is used as opposed to the generic Db-g6 template with rationale. It's probably because there's no templated notice like Db-copypaste-notice for the generic Db-g6, right? That'll be a tricky quirk to remember, but I'll try my best in the future! warmly, ezlev.  talk  07:57, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Pending changes reviewer granted
Hello. Your account has been granted the "pending changes reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on pages protected by pending changes. The list of articles awaiting review is located at Special:PendingChanges, while the list of articles that have pending changes protection turned on is located at Special:StablePages.

Being granted reviewer rights neither grants you status nor changes how you can edit articles. If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.

See also: Mz7 (talk) 04:52, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Reviewing pending changes, the guideline on reviewing
 * Pending changes, the summary of the use of pending changes
 * Protection policy, the policy determining which pages can be given pending changes protection by administrators.

Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment
Your feedback is requested &#32;at Talk:The School for Good and Evil (film)&#32; on a "Media, the arts, and architecture" request for comment. Thank you for helping out! You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. &#124; Sent at 11:31, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Kameelion
Hey! I got your review message, thank you for that. I’m still getting used to working this site. Please can you give me advice on how to improve as I already think I’ve done a decent job with detail, facts and not being to vague. Please can you help in assisting me. Ashcroft18 (talk) 19:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks for asking! The main reason I declined the submission of Draft:Kameelion was its use of "peacock terms," which promote the subject without adding encyclopedic content to the article. One example from near the beginning of the article is burst on to the music scene, which doesn't fit the encyclopedic tone we use on Wikipedia. However, another area that needs work is the references. Every claim needs to be supported by a reliable source, which doesn't include social media platforms like Twitter/Facebook/Youtube or iMDB.
 * I do think Kameelion is notable and should have an article on Wikipedia, and this draft is almost there. Adding better sources and/or removing unsourced content will make a huge improvement, and giving the article a neutral point of view will be important as well. Let me know if you have any other questions! warmly, ezlev.  talk  21:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Hey! Thanks for getting back to me and being so helpful! I will try and edit some of the text then and change some wording. I will try and sort out the reference issues. Sometimes, the only links to show it was truthful, was via YouTube or Twitter etc. I am going to work on it today. I keep reading it over and over, and I can't seem to find anymore "peacock terms", if you can try and point others out so I could rectify; that would really help me. I've tried to be as neutral and formal as possible, but I am just starting out.

Thanks. Ashcroft18 (talk) 09:24, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 23:32, 13 February 2021 (UTC)