User talk:Lilstarfish

Please do not add commentary or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles, as you did to al-Qaeda. Doing so violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and breaches the formal tone expected in an encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment, use the sandbox. Thank you. — Gareth Hughes 16:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Please stop. If you continue to violate Wikipedia's NPOV policy by adding commentary and your personal analysis into articles, as you did to Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Furthermore, reinserting the same commentary multiple times may cause you to violate the three-revert rule, which can lead to a block.  — Gareth Hughes 16:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello Gareth, First of all I'm sorry for any Wikipedia rules I may have violated. Your comments made me realize that Wikipedia's editing functions are much more serious than I initially understood. I just went through reading about the "three-revert rule", the "Edit summary:" etc.. My sincere appologies for not learning about these important guides before I started editing the pages. I will now read through all information about the editing procedure to make sure I learn the rules.

I do have a couple of question for you, if you have the time...

In your first comment, which I first saw after getting your second Talk message, you asked me; "Please do not add commentary or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles, as you did to al-Qaeda."

This made me slightly confused. I understand that since my edits to the pages were not accompanied with an obligatory "edit summary", my edits may have raised "suspected inaccuracy" flags. My reason for editing parts of the content was actually to reinforce the Wikipedia NPOV rule.

I guess the reason for my confusion is that I have been researching the events of "9/11" since that very day and subsequently also the so called "al-Qaeda" and this is the first time my information on the subjects have been called "commentary" and "personal analysis".

1. What in my edits was considered "commentary" or "personal analysis"? 2. What, in your oppinion, is important to consider to make sure edits will be accepted and not undone right away?

Again, thanks for opening my eyes to Wikipedia's fascinating functionalities. Lilstarfish 19:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello, Lilstarfish. The wording of the previous messages is the standard wording of template messages. Unfortunately, 'functionalities', whether one considers them fascinating or not, are part of running a large project like Wikipedia. You have seen neutrality policy, and with it go the guidelines on verifiability and the policy against the inclusion of original research. Together, these ensure that articles are perceived as being neutral overall, and that all claims can be backed up by references. This is particularly important when the article is about a controversial subject: the kind of subject in which you seem to specialise. You should not include your own speculations in articles, especially if they cannot be backed up by references. I also noticed you use of 'scare quotes', which are a way of including doubt into statements without adding any statements to that effect. The addition of scare quotes to articles in order to undermine the credibility of its statements is not an effective means of rendering clear information to the reader. Perhaps the best course of action is to ask other editors to review your ideas on the talk pages of the relevant articles. Then a consensus can be achieved among interested editors to ensure neutrality. I hope this helps. — Gareth Hughes 20:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello again Gareth,

Many thanks for your valuable information and links. I found the "Wikipedia:No original research" page to be the best overall page for giving any potential editor the most thorough insight in how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Your mention of "scare quotes" (although I have never heard that term before) was also extremely welcome since I use those marks all the time to emphazise that the reader should "pay attention to/be careful about" what is written.

I will spend time going through how other articles are written to see if I can find a good practice for editing and/or adding information to controversial subjects such as the ones mentioned above without stepping on any toes.

Again, big thanks for your help. Lilstarfish 22:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)