User talk:Newtonmj

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Hello, Newtonmj, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your edits to Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Meszzy2 (talk) 07:19, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

June 2020
Welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions, but in one of your recent edits to Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, it appears that you have added original research, which is against Wikipedia's policies. Original research refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and personal experiences—for which no reliable, published sources exist; it also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. Please see below for details Meszzy2  (talk) 08:27, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Henry Dundas Edit Removal
Hello Newtonmj, and welcome to Wikipedia. I have reviewed your first edit, and have made the decision to revert it as I believe a good amount of it was not in line with our Wikipedia policies (WP:POLICY). As I understand you had good intentions, and due to the nature of the topic at hand, I want to make clear the reasons that led me to revert your edit. Overall, this is what I found when I reviewed your first edit and why I decided to remove it. I do however really encourage you to stay and read up on Wikipedia's core content policies at WP:CCPOL! You may also wish to create a discussion regarding sources and information on the articles talk page and collaborate to help improve the article. Thanks, Meszzy2  (talk) 08:28, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * First of all, I believe your edits contain a fair bit of original research (WP:OR), or more specifically falls under synthesis of published material (WP:SYNTH). I have several examples:
 * In the lead paragraph, you write that Dundas "pursued a largely successful policy to expand Britain's slaveholding empire" with the citation being the textbook Pax Brittanica?, which I took a look at and seems to be mainly about British foreign policy into the 1800s except for Part I, in which I only see Dundas mentioned on page 31 writing to the navy about opposing France's naval power. I see this textbook has information on the consequences of the American War and the French Wars, which would make it a great source for an article on British foreign policy at the time, but it is not a source about Dundas. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia meaning we simply take and state information from reliable sources, we are not analyzing sources and doing our own research about individuals. As the WP:NOR policy states directly in the lead "This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources (WP:SYNTH). To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented."
 * After text about Dundas' role in the Joseph Knight case, you write "Despite these statements in court there is no evidence that Dundas's involvement in the case was motivated by personal abolitionist sentiment or that he had ever previously been active in legal activism against slavery in Great Britain." For your source you used an article titled After Somerset: The Scottish Experience, however in reading the article I see that it references Dundas as one of Knight's counsel, but I cannot find what you state claimed anywhere in the article. Again, it is against Wikipedia policy to do original research and as WP:OR says, your claims must be directly supported by the source material. The source material must make this claim, you cannot make this claim because Dundas may not be mentioned enough in an article, as that would be WP:OR, and also not pass WP:VERIFY.
 * I believe your other sources also seem to be original research. As I've said under WP:OR, the articles must not be about Britain but make statements about Dundas directly.
 * I notice you wrote "In 1806, prominent Whig politician and abolitionist Charles James Fox made it clear that Dundas had been a key opponent of immediate abolition", but as the source you cited Appendix 1 from a textbook titled Governments and Tourism which is an excerpt from the UK's house of commons Hansard from 1969 about Britain's tourism industry, with no mention of Dundas. I am not sure why you have made this a source.
 * The above issues with citations makes it seem like you may be finding sources after you write. If that is not the case, you should provide page numbers to your text sources, as stated under the WP:BURDEN policy.
 * I see you refer to Dundas twice as Minister for War and Colonies from 1794-1801, however looking at the Secretary of State for War article, it would appear that his position was just Secretary of State for War, and that Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was a position not created until 1801, which would later be split apart in 1854. Please again be careful on the accuracy of your additions.
 * You added into the opening paragraph about Dundas' role in opposing immediate abolition of slavery and expanding slaveholdings of the British Empire. Wikipedia's manual of style for biographies (WP:MOSBIO) outlines specific details about what goes in the lead paragraph for a biography at MOS:OPENPARABIO. It should after the basic information very briefly state the roles and why the person is notable. For example in William Pitt the Younger, it simply states about him being the Prime Minister and when, without getting into details about what he did as Prime Minister.
 * You have added in what seems to be original commentary, which is again against policy. You wrote, "Despite the lack of any evidence to support the notion that Dundas proposed gradual abolition as a means of actually effecting the abolition of the slave trade, historian Brian Young notes that..." Again as an encyclopedia, under WP:VERIFY we want to primarily rely on secondary sources (WP:SECONDARY) rather than primary sources (WP:PRIMARY), to prevent any accidental original research. As the policy states "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation", which appears to be what is happening in the pre-existing text. WP:SOURCE lays out the criteria we often want - reliable, published, independent mostly secondary sources. The source appears to be a BBC article directly quoting Brian Young as a professor writing about Dundas, which is acceptable. I believe your addition here would also break WP:NPOV.