User talk:Norm1979

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Happy editing! Elizium23 (talk) 05:12, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Elizium23. Thank you for your kind welcome!

I actually have been contributing to Wikipedia's content for several years, but didn't bother to join until I received an invitation from another member (you?) after making corrections to another article a few days ago. But never have I seen edits disappear so quickly as my recent edits to the article about Catholic cathedrals in the United States.

I want to apologize if I stepped on your proverbial toes by editing the that article. In looking at that article, I thought there to be room for significant improvement in its organization -- a fact that the talk page seemed to affirm -- and began by rewriting the opening of the article to address the deficiency identified in the "talk" page under the "terminology" heading -- a comment with which I wholeheartedly agree. My intent was a subsequent edit, probably today given the hour (I'm on the East Coast), that would organize the metropolitan provinces and other jurisdictions by the three episcopal conferences to which they belong. Much to my dismay, the edit explaining the structure vanished almost immediately.

It is very disheartening to spend time making improvements that other users have identified as necessary in the article's talk page or correcting something that is factually inaccurate, only to have somebody come along and wipe out the change almost immediately. By way of background, I completed a Master of Theological Studies from Saint Meinrad School of Theology, which is a Catholic national seminary, in 1992, and have been following and studying developments in the Catholic Church very closely ever since, so this is a subject to which I have the knowledge to contribute. But why should I waste my time if you are going to wipe out edits as soon as I post them?

If you have questions about content that I post or you wish to discuss changes, please feel free to contact me by e-mail to norm@beld.net or, if you wish, I can initiate a Zoom call so we can discuss it virtually.

Norm1979 (talk) 14:55, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

October 2020
Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, please note that there is a Manual of Style that should be followed to maintain a consistent, encyclopedic appearance. Deviating from this style, as you did in Roman Catholic Diocese of Davenport, disturbs uniformity among articles and may cause readability or accessibility problems. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Elizium23 (talk) 05:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Elezium23, I concur completely about standard style, and I'm not sure why you are accusing me of deviating. The listing of bishops on that page, which is different from the style of most of the other articles, was a table rather than a normal list before I made any edits. I do like the table format, but it'll be a lot of work to change all the other articles about dioceses to that format.

Was there something else that wasn't in standard format on that page? 24.233.68.163 (talk) 16:34, 23 October 2020 (UTC) And sorry I forgot to log in before posting this reply initially.Norm1979 (talk) 16:44, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to use disruptive, inappropriate or hard-to-read formatting, you may be blocked from editing. There is a Wikipedia Manual of Style, and edits should not deliberately go against it without special reason. Elizium23 (talk) 22:54, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Norm, I would advise you to slow down a bit on your edits. There are many non-standard things included therein. I especially notice that you are deleting "(arch)bishop" from coadjutor titles; coadjutor bishops are titled just that, not "coadjutor" alone. Secondly, you are capitalizing words that should not be capitalized under MOS:CAPS. Please read the guidelines and observe how other articles do it. Thanks. Elizium23 (talk) 22:56, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Headings are not title case. "auxiliary bishop" is lowercase wherever it appears, except at the beginning of a sentence. Elizium23 (talk) 23:32, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you make disruptive edits to Wikipedia contrary to the Manual of Style, as you did at Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond. Elizium23 (talk) 23:00, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations
My good man, congratulations on today's edits! When I saw my watchlist light up again, I was dismayed at the thought of reverting a lot of edits by you, but I began to look at diffs and realize, you are a changed man. You have taken the criticism to heart and all the edits are exactly correct, conforming to policies, guidelines, and overall consensus. I must confide in you that this is a very rare occurrence -- most editors do not reform their ways, especially at a level-4 warning situation. Thank you again, sir, and happy editing! Elizium23 (talk) 01:09, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Elizium23, I try to be more of an "asset" than the first 3/5 of one -- and I'm not above admitting a mistake and attempting to correct it. :-)  And I'm also human -- occasionally I do miss a change or a correction.  But I had planned to "double check" the usage of "coadjutor" vs. "coadjutor (arch)bishop" before your last missive -- IIRC, the Vatican's recent press releases have used the former but the USCCB web site used the latter, so I attempted to go to the latter form on pages where I had used the former.  So, when I got some time today, I went back and started fixing the listings that I had messed up -- and I will always do that whenever I find that I made a mistake.  I might not have gotten to all of them yet, as I'm working my way through the list of dioceses trying to clean up whatever irregularities I find.
 * FYI, I think it makes more sense to include dates as coadjutor (arch)bishop in the listing of diocesan (arch)bishops rather than to have a separate list of coadjutors for two reasons: (1) nearly all coadjutors do succeed the diocesan bishop and (2) a coadjutor (arch)bishop usually has a very active role in the governance of the diocese, even to the point of governing it in the name of a diocesan bishop who is completely incapacitated or very nearly so.  For the few cases in which a coadjutor does not succeed, I've discovered that a "break" tag (" " without the spaces) followed by a hyphen and the information on the coadjutor at the end of the listing for the respective diocesan bishop puts the coadjutor at the proper place in the list without disrupting the numbering of the diocesan bishops.  This approach also works very well for long-term administrators.  We probably should use it for auxiliary bishops "with special faculties" as well since their actual authority is similar to that of coadjutors, but it might not be so easy to identify such auxiliaries -- the only one that I can identify is Donald Woerl in the Archdiocese of Seattle, who had authority to override Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in certain matters. Norm1979 (talk) 02:38, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes, I agree that coadjutors can be included in the same list. Thanks. Elizium23 (talk) 02:48, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Also if we're going to hammer out consensus about things affecting thousands of articles, let's do it in public, such as WT:CATHOLIC, and not someone's user talk page. Elizium23 (talk) 02:49, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , I concur completely regarding public discussion. Thank you for pointing me to the appropriate forum!  I'm pretty comfortable editing but still learning some of the Wikipedia features, so I appreciate your guidance in matters such as this.  Norm1979 (talk) 17:42, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Copying within Wikipedia
Thanks for identifying the source of the material in your edit.

This type of edit does get picked up by Copy Patrol and a good edit summary helps to make sure we don't accidentally revert it. However, for future use, would you note the best practices wording as outlined at Copying_within_Wikipedia? In particular, adding the phrase "see that page's history for attribution" helps ensure that proper attribution is preserved.

I've noticed that this guideline is not very well known, even among editors with tens of thousands of edits, so it isn't surprising that I point this out to some veteran editors, but there are some t's that you need to be crossed. S Philbrick  (Talk)  18:40, 30 October 2020 (UTC)


 * , Thank you for the info. I'm still learning best methods, and very much appreciate guidance from experienced users.  I'll try to remember in the future.  Unfortunately, I'm human and prone to mistakes, but I also do fix mistakes -- both mine and those of other contributors -- when I catch them.  Norm1979 (talk) 22:12, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

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