User talk:Hatbird

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Rich Farmbrough, 20:42 12 December 2006 (GMT).
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U-Pack Moving
Please stop inserting material taken from other websites, as you have done at the U-Pack Moving page. This is a violation of copyright, and is not allowed on this project. - TexasAndroid 19:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Please stop. The material you are trying to insert at U-Pack Moving is from a corporate website and cannot be placed here as is. Also, on the reverting on both U-Pack Moving and ABF Freight System, Inc you are on the verge of violating WP:3RR rule. So you are in double violation of rules around here. I am an admin here, so consider this an official warning. If violations continue, you will most likely be blocked from editing the project for a period of time. - TexasAndroid 20:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You are now in violation of WP:3RR on U-Pack Moving. Instead of blocking, I am giving you one final warning.  There are ways to get some or all of your information onto the project.  edit warring and copyright violations are not the way.  This needs to stop now. - TexasAndroid 20:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Hatbird, you need to understand two things,
 * If you are an agent of ABF you have released that text under GFDL.
 * It is not considered a "Good Thing" for people to edit articles about themselves. People here includes companies. If you have an issue with the content of the ABF article, then by all means leave a comment on the talk page.  At a pinch fixing errors would be acceptable.  Certainly don't put promotinal information over an existing article.  If you need any help, just ask. Rich Farmbrough, 20:41 12  December 2006 (GMT).

Ok. Another admin has chosen to block you for the WP:3RR violation. So be it. You are only blocked for 24 hours, so once that time passes you will be able to edit again. So the issue next becomes, what now? What will you do when the block expires? Wikipedia is a community project, and has a number of rules to help keep peace around here. WP:3RR is a basic policy to avoid edit wars. It says that if you revert more than 3 times in a 24 hour period, you are edit warring, and are subject to a block. I suspect you did not know about this rule, which is why the block is only for 24 hours. The block is to put a stop to the edit warring. When you come back, you will know. What Rich says above is true. If you are a agent of ABF, then you do indeed have the right to place that material here. But you need to keep in mind that doing so places the material under the GFDL. You will be forsaking any say in what can or cannot be done with the material beyond the limits of that license. And you cannot take it back, once you knowing place it under the GFDL. Do you want to see that material show up on a competitor's web page? You cannot object to things like that once you have placed the material under the GFDL. So you need to be very, very, very sure that that is what you want. Read that link carefully to see exactly you are doing to your rights to that material. And if you are not an agent of ABF, you have no rights to take their material and place it under the GFDL yourself. But beyond all that, on the ABF Freight System, Inc page you are taking a well formatted project page and replacing it with a totally unformmated blob of text. A big thing about the project is how nicely interlinked it is. You are throwing away all that linkage. There may be some good information in that blob, but it really needs to be integrated into the existing page, rewritten to not violate ABF's copyrights, instead of dumped wholesale in place of what is already there. Rich is also right about it not being a good idea for pages to be written by their subjects. A big thing about the project is maintaining a NPOV as much as possible. Neutral Point of View. And it is very, very difficult for the subject of an article to be neutral about themselves or their company. It is not prohibited for subjects to edit their articles, but doing so very often ends badly. If you are an agent of ABF, you likely should declare this fact. At the very least, if your bias is known, it can be dealt with in the open. I hope you took the time to read all this. I took the time to write it because I am assuming that, despite the edit warring, you were editing in good faith, and would thus like to see if I can help make things smoother when you are able to edit come tomorrow. - TexasAndroid 21:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear Gatekeepers: Please unblock my editing provileges. Wikipedia rules were not knowingly violated and mistakes made will not be repeated. Please note, my editing and revisions--which were repeatedly rejected out of hand--were designed to render the entry for ABF in a NPOV. The entry for FedEx was used as a guideline. Despite the poor formatting of my revision, you will see that it compares well with the entry on FedEx, which has received no complaints of "advertising." In fact, the complaint of advertising that now appears on the ABF entry only supports my case that the revisions are in fact warranted. -- Hatbird 15:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, Hatbird. I was unaware that the blocks had been extended to indefinite, instead of just a 24 hour block.  But I'm taking you at your word that you will not repeat the problems of yesterday, and have unblocked you.  I suggest you read my email to you and take it to heart.  When you resume editing of the ABF page, you need to tread very, very, very carefully, or you will quickly find yourself blocked again.  If you make a change and it gets reverted, please do not revert back but go directly to the ABF article's talk page to discuss things.  And do changes in small increments, giving a chance for them to settle in, and for you to build up lost good faith that you can/will learn to work within the project's rules.  If you can do so, I think that both you and the project can benefit from your presence. - TexasAndroid


 * As I have said on the talk page of the ABF page, I am currently cautiously optomistic about the situation on that page. You have shown a willingness to learn how to work within the project's rules and guidelines, which is very encouraging.  I plan to continue to give guidance and suggestions as I think of them to give.
 * I strongly suggest you work through the links given in the new editor welcome that was placed at the top of your talk page. They give some very good information about how things work around here.
 * Let me also give you some guideline and policy links that you can check out. Being familiar with the rules will help you avoid breaking them.  WP:OWN, WP:LEGAL, WP:NPOV, WP:3RR, and WP:AUTO (This is where the problems with editing articles about yourself (or in your case, your company) are detailed.  Note that, given that this is a "guideline" and not a "policy" it is not a prohibition against such editing.  But it'll show you where the problems and issues with such editing are coming from.).  That should give you enough to read to start with. - TexasAndroid 16:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

ABF page and advertising dispute
This is intended as another helpful advance warning, so that you do not end up blocked in your editing. I'm trying to anticipate the way the future *could* go, and direct you to possible policies that you could end up violating if you are not careful.

One is WP:NPA, No Public Attacks. So please be very, very careful in what you write about Centrx. Yeah, you are in a dispute of sorts with him, but that is no excuse for attacking him. IMHO "pompous" is borderline, but not yet over the line, but another admin may look at it differently.

Another is WP:POINT. You make the comment about sticking the advertisement tag on many other articles. Talking about that in the theoretical sense is one thing. The moment you tried to actually do it, you would be violating WP:POINT and likely get yourself blocked. Disrupting things here to make a point. Not a good thing.

As for where to go from here, I am not going to personally be of much use in this debate, because advertising tone/NPOV disputes are something I am very, very weak in. As I said before, I'm strong on the technical side of things. One thing I can do, however, is point you towards some people who are strong in such things. Neutrality Project. You are in essence having Centrx make claims that the page is POV to ABF's side. So bringing the page to the attention of people who specialize in dealing with neutrality may help to get some clarity into things. These people may come in and say that the page is fine as is. They may come in and give a laundry list of things that need improvement. They may come in and start cleaning up the thing themselves. Or they may do nothing. But in any of those cases, I think you will be no worse off than you are now, and may be better, and one way or another we hopefully get a better article.

As for Centrx, instead of calling him pompous and an abusive admin, how about asking him to give specific examples of what he has a problem with on the page? Slapping a label on the page is one thing. But IMHO he really should be willing/able to back that up with specifics of why he has a problem with the current page. And if you go this route, please, please be polite. You may already have him rankled with your comments against him on the ABF talk page, so it may be difficult to work with him. But this in general is one possible way forward. - TexasAndroid 15:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your continued guidance. I appreciate it a lot. I'll use more restraint. It's just that IMHO Centrx is -- and has a record of being -- pompous. The first time I went to his talk page, I saw that he had accused me of being a sock puppet. I left a comment correcting this accusation and got no response. Later, I also left a comment regarding banners placed by Centrx lamenting the lack of references and the advertising tone. Again, I got no response.


 * That said, I have no intention of being disruptive. Any disruptive actions taken by me earlier were reactionary and unintentionally in violation of rules or guidelines. As to this disputed charge of an advertising tone, that's wholly without merit. Every positive mention in this article is written in a neutral tone and is backed up with a third-party reference citation.


 * Again, thanks for your help. Hopefully, source creditability and integrity matter at Wikipedia. However, both are sorely lacking with regard to this disputed banner posting. Hatbird 16:29, 26 December 2006 (UTC)