User talk:HoffmanJ7

April 2020
Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, please note that there is a Manual of Style that should be followed to maintain a consistent, encyclopedic appearance. Deviating from this style, as you did in Hawaiian monk seal, disturbs uniformity among articles and may cause readability or accessibility problems. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. ''Hi, I am reverting your edit to Hawaiian monk seal. While I think much of the material that you added was an improvement, there is a lot that was not in accord with Wikipedia's guidelines. In particular, relevant categories were dropped, some manual of style guidelines were disregarded (perhaps out of ignorance), a third of the references were removed, & any cultural references to Hawaii were removed. In addition, there were basic Wikilinking and citation formatting mistakes. In addition, such wholesale changes may not in line with the WP:EDITCONSENSUS policy. I therefore ask you to make a more piecemeal series of edits to improve the article, bit-by-bit, & to preview your changes as you go along. Please be prepared to explain things on the talk page as well as in the edit summary. To reiterate, I think most of your textual changes were good, but you made many mistakes simply because you are an inexperienced Wikipedia editor. I believe that will change. Clearly you are knowledgeable, & I very much want to see you further you expertise, as well as learning how to do things properly here in Wikipedia.'' Peaceray (talk) 02:24, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

2020-04-11 edit to Hawaiian monk seal
Aloha, HoffmanJ7,

I reverted your edit to Hawaiian monk seal. While I think much of the content that you added could have been an improvement, there was much that was not in accord with Policies and guidelines. Please keep in mind that a Wikipedia article is both form and content. Improving one does not work if the other is compromised, or if policies & guidelines are not observed.

Specific problems:
 * Manual of style violations:
 * Standard appendices and footers: Wikipedia articles have a specific structure.
 * The See also section should not be a subheading to the the External links section, & should precede both that section & the References section
 * External links is the proper name, not External Links to More Hawaiian Monk Seal Information. This section should appear last.
 * As per Manual of Style: "Capitalize the initial letter (except in rare cases, such as eBay), but otherwise follow sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects) not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects), except where title case would be expected were the title to occur in ordinary prose. See Naming conventions (capitalization)."
 * Manual of Style/Organisms is a guidance that "is complete and is already in use." Specifically: "When a common (vernacular) name of a taxon is used as the article title, the boldfaced common name is followed by the italic non-boldfaced binomial or trinomial name, as applicable, in parentheses (round brackets) in the opening sentence of the lead section."
 * Removal of links to sister projects
 * WP:EDITCONCENSUS violations
 * Removal of applicable categories without explanation or discussion
 * Removal of the Etymology section without explanation or discussion. That edit excised the cultural & state connections to the Hawaiian monk seal. An article about a species is not simply a scientific article, but must also include anything of cultural significance.
 * Removal of a third of references along with its associated material. Sorry, but the (Edit & restructure based on SMM Guidelines) edit summary is far from sufficient in justifying such a wholesale change.
 * Removal of the Taxonbar template that is a standard part of thousands of species articles.
 * Errors
 * Spelling & citation formatting errors. Please see Help:Show preview.
 * Wikilinking & disambiguation errors

This is not an exhaustive list, but I think you get the picture. To be fair, my first edit, an article creation, was replete with citations that conformed to APA style but were a failure when it came to the Wikipedia style of citation. I remain most grateful to the editor who set me straight.

You wrote at User talk:Elmidae that "All of my information has also been looked over by multiple Hawaiian monk seal experts." That may be true, but the edits did not demonstrate expertise with Wikipedia. To that end, I would ask that you please edit incrementally, perhaps section by section if possible. That way, if there were mistakes, then it would be easier to correct than the type of article rewrite that you previously attempted.

Mahalo, Peaceray (talk) 02:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Welcome to Wikipedia, HoffmanJ7! You might be interested in the technical info at User talk:Haagendaz15, though some of it doesn't apply to you (you retained okinas, for instance). It's great to have some more experts on Wikipedia! There is a specific guide for new editors at Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics (I wrote most of it, crit is very welcome). Is the Society for Marine Mammalogy aware of the WP:GLAM and WP:Wikipedian in residence programs? There are lot of good resources (including people) in both.HLHJ (talk) 14:59, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see Society for Marine Mammalogy/Content gap analysis this! Will look into it. HLHJ (talk) 15:03, 6 May 2020 (UTC)