User talk:Gbristol

Nomination of The Wachter Family of Bismarck, North Dakota for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article The Wachter Family of Bismarck, North Dakota is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/The Wachter Family of Bismarck, North Dakota until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Night of the Big Wind talk  21:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, friend
Hi Gwen!

Thanks for the excellent first contribution to Wikipedia. My apologies that you've got hit by the quality-control school bus the first time you crossed the street — pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and let's talk, shall we?

Your article is running into trouble in large measure because it resembles a genealogical essay, which are very often about individuals only of family interest and are generally regarded as not "encyclopedia-worthy," for lack of a better word. I'm pretty positive that your piece DOES contain an encyclopedia-worthy biography, but things need to be finessed a bit.

I'm going to go after your piece with a sharp scalpel this morning. Please don't be upset about it; hopefully and presumably the end result will be something that will meet muster with those volunteers working as quality control inspectors (that is, it should meet the criteria for multiple, independent, substantial published sources and clearly be about an encyclopedia-worthy topic.) Don't assume that my changes are the final word here — please do make amendments and changes as you see fit. I will need to work fast though, since the deletion clock is ticking on this piece (once an article is challenged at Articles for Deletion, there is a 7 day period for debate, after which time an outcome can be rendered or else the debate is held over for additional time for more input.

PLEASE DO get in touch with me if you have any questions about Wikipedia's (complicated) policies or what is going on here, or if you have questions about jargon or how to do this or that when editing a Wikipedia page. You may either contact me through my "talk" page, which is the link (talk) following my signature below, or you may email me directly if you are more comfortable doing that: MutantPop@aol.com. Again, thank you for your excellent first contribution and I hope you don't let the rough-and-tumble first experience here put you off from making additional contributions in the future. —Tim Davenport, Corvallis, OR //// MutantPop@aol.com //// Carrite (talk) 17:14, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Gail GWEN!. I see that you're trying to ask questions on my talk page about the article but I am unable to see what you are asking. Talk pages are edited like article pages, just start a new subject at the very bottom of the page and add the message I should be able to see it. I am reworking the page as a biography around the patriarch, will include subsections about his heirs, and hopefully the end result will meet muster. I see that almost everything is related to obituaries in one source, which might be a problem at Articles for Deletion... Have you found reference to the family, especially G.C., in a book or anything like that? Carrite (talk) 17:49, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Gwen. I got the message that time. Yes, it's kind of a pain when "edit conflicts," the software goes pretty weird. You might want to set aside for an hour or so until I get done chopping things up. I sort of agree that this should be, most properly, a piece about a FAMILY, but unfortunately once something is in AfD there is a lot of scrutiny (including these messages between us, I note) and there isn't much time to fix things up. Hopefully people will grasp that the family is notable...


 * The worst case scenario won't mean a loss of the information, things will (on request) just be ported over to your personal page where you can continue to work on them. It won't be visible by searching the encyclopedia, but neither will it be destroyed.


 * One of the tricky things here is the doctrine that a subject's "notability" (encyclopedia-worthiness) is not an inherited characteristic. Thus the sons' biographies aren't includable just because of the father's importance. But, assuming the patriarch's biography is deemed "notable," then detail about the family can be appended to his bio. That is my strategy, anyway. There is SOME chance things would have been retained the way you put the piece up, but pretty risky, in my estimation — less than a 50-50 proposition.


 * Anyway, I'll keep hacking away here. If It looks like I'm wiping out important detail, don't worry too much, everything is preserved in the "history" of the piece. Just click that link, click a date of a version, and there it is. Things can be re-imported into the piece at a later juncture, if you desire. Right now things need to be chopped down like crazy so that it doesn't look like genealogy, which gets the axe almost every time at "AfD"... Carrite (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Your recent edits
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button or  located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 18:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi again
Okay, the main chop-a-thon is over. I see that you were accidentally editing on the "redirect page" -- basically the page is now at this location Charles Wachter now and all the editing needs to happen there. If you need to recover any of the work you did on the redirect page, you'll need to navigate there and get it out of the history section -- I can do that for you if it's a huge confusing problem. Things have to be done in only one place to avoid creating what is called a "fork." If you think things should be renamed back to the family, that change can be made -- but I'd wait until after the "Articles for Deletion" debate ends before you attempt that.

I'm not 100% sure that the debate will close as a "keep" the way things now sit, but it's probably 80% chance of success the way things are now structured. Some of those external links still need to be "cleaned out," I think you mistook the meaning of the jargon phrase "wikification," which means adding blue links to the body of the article with double brackets — North Dakota (like this). Basically, the external links should be few in number and deal with only the most important things -- a couple of the obituaries and the piece on the family that I have moved to the top. Carrite (talk) 19:35, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Hey, you did the signature right! The best thing that can be added now is more biographical material on G.C. Wachter, cited to an independently published source. If you have any of that in your bag of tricks, that would be helpful. I'd advise NOT to add much more in the way of family detail not dealing with him at this time — it's a fine line that needs to be finessed here, as a biography it's right on the borderline of keep vs. delete and if it slides more towards family history that might tip it the other way. That probably seems counterintuitive to you, but that's my take... It seems like an obviously notable entity, "The Wachter Family," but family entities are outside of the norm at Wikipedia so things have to be brought under the umbrella as a single biography with a supplement. Even that is the matter of debate, as you are seeing. I tell people that AfD is something like traffic court, with two possible outcomes: walking scot free or being given the death penalty. You don't want your stuff to be in this traffic court — but once it's there, you've got to make your best case and hope for a reasonable judge.


 * Again, in the worst case, a "delete" close, we'll make sure to have the article "userfied" to your page so that you can recover your work and play with it, see if you can get it into a form that will pass scrutiny. It's a pretty close call here, I wish I could say this was as simple and obvious a "keep" situation as it should be, but there's a big philosophical debate behind wikipedia between those who favor a vast and those who favor a focused encyclopedia and this topic is right in the middle of these visions. Just smile and hang in there on this, don't lash out, it will work out in the end. We'll soon see how it goes — although I think it likely that things will be held over another week for decision. Carrite (talk) 20:02, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I will also mention something that is unclear to newcomers to Wikipedia, you have the right to voice your opinion, pro or con, in the deletion debate itself regarding the article you have created. If you do decide to do this, start with the word "Keep" or "Delete" in bold face type (use three single apostrophes on either side of the word to create that) and then explain your reason why the article should be kept or deleted. You'd be advised to cite how it applies to the Wikipedia policy WP:Notability with respect to the General Notability Guidelines, which is what deletion debates are generally all about. Carrite (talk) 20:36, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

And the final result is...
...No consensus. Not as good as a "Keep," but the default is to preserve the material rather than to delete it, so the axe has been avoided. Congratulations and good work! Another published work or two dealing with the patriarch in a substantial way would effectively bulletproof the piece. Hopefully nobody else will pick on it though... Anyway, go for it with graphics, etc. now and just ask if you have questions or problems. best, —Tim //// Carrite (talk) 06:46, 12 December 2011 (UTC)