User talk:Neutral POV Enforcer

You have been blocked from editing Wikipedia  as a result of your . You are free to make constructive edits after the block has expired, but please note that vandalism (including page blanking or addition of random text), spam, deliberate misinformation, privacy violations, personal attacks; and repeated, blatant violations of our policies concerning neutral point of view and biographies of living persons will not be tolerated.  Will Beback   talk    06:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Margaret Sanger
Hi. I see that some of your edits to this page have been reverted and that you've been temporarily blocked from editing. Although your change comments suggest that you think this was "censorship of significant minority views" based on another editor's "preferences", I think the reversions were more a result of the style of your edits than of their content. In fact, I wish I could revert the reversion, since your edit discusses an important aspect of Sanger's views that is underemphasized in the article as it stands — although it is mentioned, other parts of the current article implicitly deny it, e.g., "She rejected any type of eugenics that would take control out of the hands of those actually giving birth," which is a false description of her views, at least in 1921. But the quality of your edits was so poor that restoring them would make the article worse instead of better.

You can almost certainly achieve the balance you seek. Here are four suggestions for improving your edits in the future:

First, back up your assertions with references to reliable sources. Blackgenocide.org is an unashamedly partisan site (starting from the very domain name!) full of illiterate misspellings and punctuation problems, providing no references to primary sources, with no reputation for accuracy that I know of, signed with a @yahoo.com email address and a P.O. Box. It might be relevant to link it from an article on Clenard Childress, if he's notable enough for a Wikipedia article, but it's not relevant to the Margaret Sanger article. It's what we call a questionable source:


 * Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties, which includes claims against institutions, persons living or dead, as well as more ill-defined entities.

This description fits blackgenocide.org to a T: blackgenocide.org has no reputation for checking the facts and no editorial oversight; it's a website expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist (specifically, it equates the legality of abortion to genocide, and attempts to link it to racism); and it relies heavily on personal opinions. Also, as far as I can tell, it cites no primary sources itself, even in cases where it purports to quote others, which would serve to conceal any falsehoods it may or may not be propagating in support of its extremist views.

Instead, look for reliable sources. Since Sanger actually did advocate mandatory sterilization of the "feeble-minded," a policy which was adopted for quite some time in the US and quite controversial, it should not be difficult to find reliable third-party sources to back this up; Amazon has at least two biographies of her, and numerous articles about her have been published in periodicals over the years. If absolutely necessary, you can fall back on primary sources; Sanger made her opinions at one point in her life quite clear in The Pivot of Civilization, and continued to publish her opinions widely throughout her life. However, be very careful that your edits don't quote her out of context, or they are likely to be reverted, particularly since you already have a black mark on your record here.

Verifiable accuracy using reliable sources is a fundamental aspect of the NPOV pillar that your username refers to.

Second, use good style in your references. Instead of just making an inline link, use , and inside the , use one of the citation templates, such as ; you can find its proper usage described at Template:Cite. Be as specific as possible: provide page numbers, URLs, specific quotations, names of publishers, year of publication, and so on. In theory, of course, some helpful WikiGnome could come along and fix up a sloppily-formatted reference that you added. In practice, though, the less work you put into the article, and the worse the result, the more likely it is that someone will revert it. By demonstrably putting in real work to improve the quality of the page, you can reduce the suspicion that you are only here to make trouble, rather than helping out the project.

Of course, this applies to every edit you make; you should take care that it's formatted correctly, without spelling and punctuation errors, and so on. But your edits didn't have those problems; they just had carelessly-formatted references (which also happened to be to questionable sources, as described in the first point.)

Third, assume good faith. If you snark in your change comments that other editors are "censoring" your "significant minority views" (as if that's relevant on a matter of amply verifiable fact such as Sanger's views on eugenics!) and add a sarcastic "sorry, but", as you did, you're going to piss people off, which makes them (a) less able to consider your edits fairly, (b) less able to contribute fairly themselves, and (c) likely to believe that you're just here to make trouble, rather than wanting to make a real contribution. Successful collaboration in a Wiki depends on a body of people who aren't overly pissed off, because pissed-off edits are almost always bad edits.

Fourth, don't make only controversial edits. There are lots and lots of places where you can contribute without participating in edit wars. If you don't do that, then other editors will, again, come to believe that you're just here to make trouble, not to make Wikipedia better, and most or all of your edits will eventually be reverted and you will probably get banned permanently. Your choice of username is going to make this an uphill battle for you; it strongly suggests that it's a WP:single-purpose account. When the block on your account expires, you might consider switching to a new account name, and maybe linking to it on your user page to avoid the appearance of WP:sock puppetry. (Linking is not mandatory, but it might be a good idea; see WP:CLEANSTART.)

Uncontroversial edits are a lot easier than controversial edits. You don't have to defend them from reversion, they're much easier because you can afford to be quite a bit sloppier in referencing them, and they're more fun, because people don't launch personal attacks on you for them.

I guess I should disclose where I'm coming from on these issues.

Depending on your definitions, I'm probably not a Christian. In the US system of racism, I'm "white", although I'm about 5% Cherokee. I admire Sanger's courage, and I support birth control, but I deplore some of her views, including her advocacy of mandatory sterilization of certain people (in her case, the "feeble-minded", rather than any ethnic group). I'm no Sanger scholar, although I've read some of The Pivot of Civilization.

However, to me, all of these issues shrink into insignificance next to the issue of access to accurate information. I think genocide, mandatory sterilization, racism, and other human-rights abuses only exist because of ignorance. I think the petty power struggles among groups of people, likewise, stem from ignorance — whether racial groups, religious groups, political groups, or nations. I think the most effective way to fight these problems is by providing universal access to all human knowledge, a project for which Wikipedia is currently an enormously important and effective implement. That's why I started contributing to Wikipedia in 2001, why I've been editing occasionally ever since, why I helped out with Wikimania last year, and why I'm writing you this message.

So I deplore things that decrease the quality of Wikipedia in order to serve some lower purpose, such as birth control, anti-abortionism, or some other political struggle. I think you'll find that most Wikipedians feel the same way. People will rarely revert your edits just because they are in the service of some political struggle — probably the vast majority of the edits to Armenian genocide or Scientology are by people with strong political views, and many of them have questionable motives — but they will revert them if your edits make the article worse instead of better, as in this case.

So I share what I take to be your interest in improving the accuracy of this article, even if it casts someone I admire in a bad light. I encourage you to try again, but do a better job next time. Your passion for the subject can be harnessed to do good instead of ill.

Kragen Javier Sitaker (talk) 17:50, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, I failed to notice, but the block on your account was only for 24 hours. You've been unblocked for a while now. Kragen Javier Sitaker (talk) 17:54, 23 August 2010 (UTC)