User talk:Itzcoatl

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Re: User talk:Ioeth
Hey Itzcoatl, sorry about leaving the warning on your talk page here. The tool I was using to watch recent changes showed me that you had blanked a portion of the article, but when I went back and took a look at it, I realized I was mistaken. I've gone ahead and removed the warning message from your talk page. Other than that, it looks like you've been making some good contributions...keep it up! Sorry again for the warning. :-) --Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 01:46, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see what you're going for. Start a discussion on the talk page about the particular information that you want to remove and why you want to do it.  Let people read and respond for about a week or so, and if everyone agrees, go ahead and take it out! Hope that helps...let me know if you have any other questions! --Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 01:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

A couple of pointers
Hey again. I just wanted to give you a couple of pointers. Whenever you leave a message on a talk page, like you did on mine, make sure that you sign the end of it with four tildes ( ~ ). Doing that will automaticall insert your username and a timestamp so everybody knows who left the message. Also, make sure to type a short summary of the edit you're making in the edit summary box. It's right below the main edit pane when you're editing a page. If you have any other questions or need to get back in touch with me, just go to my talk page. --Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 01:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Good work
Hi Itzcoatl, I noticed your improvements and reference expansion/clarification at the pre-Columbian contacts and Olmec alternative speculation articles. Thanks for those, always good to see new editors making sensible and useful corrections. Nice pick-up on the selective use of results and interpretations of those cited works in the Olmec article; you might be interested to know that a fair amount of that material had been added by none other than Clyde Winters himself. Had been meaning to get around to amending the distortions, but was glad to see you come along and address some of those issues. Keep up the good work, and cheers --cjllw ʘ  TALK 08:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: User talk:Ioeth
Itzcoatl, It looks like the last change that you made went through without being reverted. Sometimes it is hard to make controversial edits like the one you are trying to do, but you are going about it the right way. Using good edit summaries, like you have been doing, always helps. This allows administrators and change patrollers to easily see that the changes you are making are backed up by factual citations. If the changes you are making are too intricate to be properly detailed in an edit summary, the best policy is to add a topic on the talk page and reference it in the edit summary. As far as there being a mechanism to determine what information is more credible, there isn't one, and here's the reason why. This is an encyclopedia, not a journal for peer review or a forum for debate. If there are two pieces of contradictory information that are both backed up in the literature (it happens), it's not our job to determine which one is more correct than the other. It's our job to present both ideas, highlighting the contradiction and the facts that back up each claim. This may be why your changes are being reverted, as you said the claim you removed was documented, but not as well as the one you added. On a sidenote, I noticed you seemed to be having a little trouble with signatures ( ~ )...you should only use the four tildes on talk pages. They don't work in edit summaries and are inappropriate to use in articles (which I don't think you've done). I hope this helps, and please don't hesitate to leave me another message if you have more questions or need more help! --Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 12:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)