User talk:Julian Birdbath

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Welcome!

Hello, Julian Birdbath, 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 messages on discussion pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! RJFJR (talk) 18:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
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Removing citations to arXiv
Hello Julian, it seems that you've been on a crusade against citations to arXiv. While it's helpful to clarify the reliability of sources, it's not helpful to mass-delete information. For example, you removed a citation in the Addition article, when the citation merely needed improvement.

In the future, please try harder to look for alternate publishers to which the citation can be pointed. If you don't find one, please consider applying the rs template rather than removing the citation entirely; this provides more information for future editors. Thanks, Melchoir (talk) 04:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that - you will see that I have in fact done what you suggested on a number of occasions, when the arxiv article itself has been published or by looking it up in Zentralblatt.  In most cases when I have not been able to do that I have simply moved the references to a "Futher reading" section.  I quite agree that it is not helpful to "mass-delete information" and I haven't done that.  Julian Birdbath (talk) 05:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Goodbye and why
Verification "policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable, published source in the form of an inline citation, and that the source directly support the material in question."

Unfortunately that appears not the be the case in practice. I have discovered that it is possible for an editor to repeatedly insert assertions supported only by his own unpublished research; to commission his friends to insert it for him; edit war to keep it in; threaten anyone who questions him with personal attacks and false accusations -- and nothing happens. Julian Birdbath (talk) 15:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)