User talk:OrewaTel

April 2019
Hello, I'm Gab4gab. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Sir George Monoux College, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Gab4gab (talk) 13:23, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello again OrewaTel, my edit summary and my message here explained that I removed your addition of dates because you didn't idendtify a reliable source.  Content in Wikipedia requires a published reliable source for verifiability.  Verifiability is an important Wikipedia policy.  Thank you for locating and referencing a source.
 * Regarding why only 1/4 of the names listed have a 'citation needed' tag: I reviewed the linked articles and when there wasn't a good source supporting attendance I added the tag. If you look at the article for Carpenter you won't find a mention of any school.
 * To provide helpful information for other editors without inserting it in the readable article you can use hidden text or add comments to the article talk page. Gab4gab (talk) 15:07, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand
Kia ora, I noticed that you supported Wikimedia New Zealand initiative a while ago. I'd like to let you know that currently we're trying to build a platform for our Aotearoa community through Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand. If you're keen to join us, please feel free to do so! We'd love to have you among us. Regards, Podzemnik (talk) 01:41, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Astrological sign
Hello OrewaTel, don't you notice Mercury is double? Regards --Serols (talk) 07:03, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Serois. Yes! Classic and Modern Astrology tend to agree that on which planets rule which signs; consequently most planets are doubled up in this table. The main difference is that Modern Astrology knows about Uranus and Neptune, Classic Astrology only knows 7 planets, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn so most planets are associated with more than one sign. OrewaTel (talk) 07:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Henry the Green Engine for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Henry the Green Engine is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Henry the Green Engine until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Laplorfill (talk) 22:25, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

God Defend New Zealand revert
Hello OrewaTel, I see that you reverted my edit to God Defend New Zealand enacting the consensus at Categories for discussion/Log/2021 March 11, which was almost unanimously in favour of Category:Multilingual songs being merged to Category:Macaronic songs and the former discontinued. Please revert your edit or remove the category as there was consensus for that category change. Circumvention of consensus can be considered disruptive editing, which can lead to sanctions and/or blocks. If you believe my close was improper given the discussion that had occurred, the correct way to dispute the close would be WP:DRV. If you disagree with consensus generated, you could file a new WP:CFD with your proposed change. However, please keep in mind Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. Either way, your current edit is not the way to go about things. Please let me know if you have any questions, The SandDoctor  Talk 21:24, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I shall immediately revert my edit. BUT! Irrespective of any consensus about merging categories God Defend New Zealand is not a macaronic song. I shall put a note in the talk page. You cannot vote to change the meaning of a perfectly good English word. OrewaTel (talk) 05:01, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for reverting. It is totally fine to disagree (and I hold no opinion either way on this matter), but consensus is binding insofar has how we go about things. However, consensus can change (that link also discusses how). -- The SandDoctor Talk 17:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Revert of my edit to Goulash
I noticed that you reverted my addition of an interlanguage link template (ill) to Goulash. The template purposefully creates a redlink and interlanguage link, and gets replaced with the English link by a bot if the page is created, to encourage creation.  dud  hhr  Contribs 06:38, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for explaining. And thanks for accepting that my reversion was an honest mistake.OrewaTel (talk) 07:54, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Conversation with User:165.234.101.234‎
BRO YOU BIG MEANY HEAD WHY YOU BAN ME (Unsigned comment from User:165.234.101.234‎)

I have moved your addition to the correct place. That is a separate section at the end of my talk page. Please sign any posts you make on a talk page by adding 4 tildas. (~)
 * I didn't ban you. The proof is that you are still able to edit my Talk page. I didn't even revert your edits. Another editor got there first. However you made 3 edits that were not constructive. This included adding information that you must know to be untrue. Consequently I posted a warning against making unconstructive edits. Since you already had a level 1 warning, I posted a Level 2 warning. This was the mildest warning available to me. If you make more damaging edits then you will get a level 3 warning. Administrators take level 3 warnings very seriously and sometimes ban the editor without further notice. OrewaTel (talk) 23:39, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Full stop location.
I did this because the period is always on the inside in American English, and this sentence was in reference to the American president at the time. It's a small thing, so it doesn't really matter, I just thought I would state my reasoning. Tayuro (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you. The full stop (that's Kiwi for period) should also be inside double quotes in Kiwi English. But that is because double quotes normally delimit an entire sentence. The sentence, The boy said, "That's my book." should really be written The boy said, "That's my book.". but the second period must be removed. Contrast this to The book was called "Great Expectations". Strictly speaking we should use single quotes for titles and the period always follows single quotes. Should we use single quotes for quoted phrases? It would solve all arguments but I suspect that it would be wrong. OrewaTel (talk) 05:06, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

JPEG instead of PNG
Hi, I didn't delete anything. I am replacing the PNG version by the identical JPEG, which is much better suited for displaying on Wikipedia. Thanks, Yann (talk) 13:00, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * That is a good idea in the article but of course if the JPEG is better than the PNG then it cannot be identical. On the talk page we had a statement that the pictures should be, A, B and C. Now you say that picture D is essentially the same as C but better and you changed the statement to the pictures should be A, B and D. But you left the original signature on your amended statement. It would have been better to leave the original statement and add your statement. Please note I have not and do not intend to revert the change to the article. OrewaTel (talk) 14:26, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Oxford commas
Hi. What's wrong with them?

--Evilfreethinker (talk) 23:40, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * It's a matter of style. Some people like them others don't. Strictly speaking English grammar should prohibit them. (There is no pause when you list "Item1 and Item2" whereas there is a pause between earlier items in a list. "Item1, Item2 and Item3".) However an uncomma'd list can be ambiguous and in speech we sometimes add a pause. "The teams in Croquet are Red and Yellow, and Blue and Black." In these circumstances the comma is necessary and not just style.
 * The problem is that whilst Oxford commas are not wrong, they aren't necessary. An editor who likes them will put them in and then another editor that doesn't like them will take them out. This bulks up the history with unnecessary fiddling. My feeling is that I'll leave them alone. If I do a wholesale rewrite than I'll use my preferred style but I won't make an edit that simply consists of changing the commas. So if I had come across your edit in a month's time, I would have ignored it. And if at that time someone had gone through and removed all the commas from a (then) established edit, I would have reverted that change. OrewaTel (talk) 00:22, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation. Got it. I thought they are necessary. But since they are optional, I think I'll leave them alone, too, if their absence does not create direct ambiguity. Evilfreethinker (talk) 09:53, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Euphemisms
So, we can't have euphemisms, but you don't think my change to the wording was an improvement. No probs. Could you elaborate on your edit summary, particularly where you said that they weren't exact synonyms? I'd like to know why you didn't think they were exact synonyms, I was under the impression that they were, but my reasoning on that may not have been entirely on the mark. Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 22:35, 8 November 2022 (UTC)


 * The article Boscastle is written in British English and "no lives were lost" is a British idiom that is very specific to the particular incident . In contrast, "there were no deaths" is a general comment. The contemporaneous fatal traffic accident in Truro is too far away to matter but if it had happened in nearby Tintagel then "there were no deaths" would be wrong. I suppose that you could say that all idioms are euphemisms but over time they become standard language. OrewaTel (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

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Point or feature?
Hi. At Mount Taranaki, I changed "second highest point in the North Island" to "second highest feature of the North Island" with the edit summary, "The peak is a point - the mountain is better called a feature". You reverted it with the edit summary, "Readability is important". What is the issue with the readability of the "feature" wording? Thanks. Nurg (talk) 08:06, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Just say it out loud. "This is the second highest point in the North Island." "This is the second highest feature in the North Island." The first sentence is a standard idiom. The second sentence is awkward. Compare to the sentence, "The Dead Sea is the lowest point on the surface of the Earth." The Dead Sea is not a peak and it's an area rather than a single point but you would never say, "The lowest feature on the surface of the Earth." If you re-instated 'feature', I wouldn't edit war but I would never say, "Aoraki is the highest feature in New Zealand." and I don't know anyone who would. OrewaTel (talk) 08:53, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Nurg (talk) 09:34, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

HarveyCarter
HarveyCarter is, in fact a Nazi, and that question was a tip-off to his standard bad-faith behavior That sock was blocked,along with more than a dozen others While I realize your answer was in good faith, the question was not. Please don't feed the Nazi troll.  Acroterion   (talk)   14:22, 29 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you. A number of people (not you I hasten to add) have a habit of deleting nonsensical points from talk pages. I tend to re-instate these as a matter of course. There is no problem with nonsense being spouted on a talk page provided that the points are answered fairly and firmly and don't spill out onto the article. However offensive material does not have any place in any pages and Nazi propaganda along with other racist cant is always offensive.
 * Did Hoover actually make that comment? He was a nasty individual and 40 years later the US had a similar attitude when Argentina invaded British territory. So it is plausible. OrewaTel (talk) 00:00, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Reply to your talk page message
Hello. I replied to your talk page message on Chris Hipkins. Looking forward to hearing your response. Kiwiz1338 (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Answered! I agree with you. OrewaTel (talk) 11:11, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Invitation to an in-person meetup in Mohua / Golden Bay
Thinking about your summer break? Think about joining other Wikipedians and Wikimedians in Golden Bay / Mohua! Details are on the meetup page. There's heaps of interesting stuff to work on e.g. the oldest extant waka or New Zealand's oldest ongoing legal case. Or you may spend your time taking photos and then upload them.

Golden Bay is hard to get to and the airline flying into Tākaka uses small planes, so we are holding some seats from and to Wellington and we are offering attendees a $200 travel subsidy to help with costs.

Be in touch with Schwede66 if this event interests you and you'd like to discuss logistics.  Schwede 66  09:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Level 2 since you refused to discuss the last time you mass-reverted
Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia. Your edits appear to be disruptive and have been or will be reverted. Please ensure you are familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and please do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive. Continued disruptive editing may result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you.
 * If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, please discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively, you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant noticeboards.
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1. You really need to stop confusing spelling errors with WP:IDONTLIKE IT; there were none at all the last time you did this, just a single stray keystroke in all the test you reverted.

2. Copy edits do happen, especially in articles with bad grammar and incomplete sentences.

3. References do happen, especially when there is a tag that say te article needs it.

I don't like noticeboards but I don't like templating people either and here we are. Since apparently you are asserting OWNership, I will in future make one change per edit, but if there are ENGVAR problemsI'm missing, or we need to discuss why sentences need verbs and/or why verbs need subjects, we can do that. Please avail yourself of the entirely unused talk page. It, and the sorry state of the article, led me me to believe the article was abandoned.

Since your behaviour is apparently not some sort of driveby aberration, please be aware that what you are doing is called edit-warring (and not even over content) and unexplained removal removal of secondary sources. I will henceforth be enforcing [[WP:3RR}}.

I also strongly suggest a careful reading of PLOT which you do not seem to have yet encountered, in particular Strictly avoid creating pages consisting only of a plot summary and Real-world perspective is the preferred style for plot summaries that encompass multiple works, such as broadly describing a series of novels, describing key events that might have happened in earlier works that impact the present work, or the biography of a fictional character over multiple works. This can often be aided by provided appropriate section headers for each of the works as to delineate the divisions of the series. and However, such narration must employ out-of-universe style and include real-world descriptors. Characters should not be presented as if they are real persons, fictional settings should not be treated as a real place, and so forth, which is where I am trying to take the article. No, my edits did not do this in a single step, but see above, these articles need a lot of work.

Since you are in NZ this conceivably is a dispute over dialect. Please find this thing we call an article talk page and explain to me what exactly these "spelling mistakes" might be. Next time you do this first time or not I will take you to 3RRN; I only refrained this time because the remark about fatuous comments indicates that you might be capable of self-awareness and surely a Terry Pratchett fan must have a sense of humour somewhere, even if you seem to currently have misplaced it. Elinruby (talk) 04:49, 17 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your extensive comment. But you seem to have missed the point.
 * A single stray keystroke is a spelling error. We all make mistakes but most of us read what we have written before posting.
 * t is true that copy edit errors happen but these should be picked up when the editor reads the copy
 * There is a difference between a reference which you use when you are adding a cite and a note which adds an inline explanation
 * Despite living in New Zealand I am quite fluent in English. Thank you for your racist comment.
 * It it the responsibility of the editor to to check the spelling and grammar. It should not be dumped onto a reviewer who then has to go through looking at the differences.
 * As regards Ownership or WP:IDONTLIKEIT neither is appropriate here. I have edited three of your contributions to remove spelling and grammatical errors without reverting the whole mess.
 * I have only found three errors in your comment here.
 * Please remember that WP:3RR also applies to you.
 * We are not in a content dispute. I have no problem with most of your content. I do have a problem when I can't make out what you are trying to say because your text is ambiguous. I do have a problem when an edit is made simply to change word order without improving things. If the edit is worse than the original then it is difficult to avoid reverting.
 * We don't need to discuss whether sentences need verbs. They do. Similarly most verbs need subjects. (The passive voice of intransitive verbs is an unusual exception.)
 * Finally, whether I have a sense of humour is beside the point. We are not writing a humorous essay. We are writing a serious encyclopaedia.
 * By the way, when did I ever refuse to discuss any subject?
 * OrewaTel (talk) 05:35, 17 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I was just coming in here to say that I did find an "a" that should have become "an" and fixed that. Please stand by while I pour myself a glass of AGF. A few points in the order of the egregiousness of your comments:


 * It would not occur to me that racism would be an issue when noting that you are in New Zealand, which is a matter of location not race, afaik, but I was in fact referring to my own somewhat non-standard engvar, developed through decades as an expat. Nor am I a native speaker necessarily, depending on whose definition of the term we are using, but English *is* my maternal language and there is no question that I am fluent. I may occasionally however use devices where the spellcheck isn't set to English, and I am not certain which English the spellcheck on this device for example is set to.


 * Since we're on the subject of envar though, I assume that we can agree that Discworld articles should use British spellings? If I slip up on that, for the record, I have no objection to you correcting that. Also, my typing is terrible, I know it, and I do review it, thank you very much. I do not consider it reasonable to revert an evening's work over an "a" that should have been "an", however, although I understand that you apparently feel otherwise.


 * Back to the allegation of racism -- I guess you could be Māori; if so and if what I said came across as a hurtful swipe at that ethnicity, then I apologize for any unintended hurt feelings.


 * You should however take note that as a rule, allegations of racism that are determined to be unfounded are considered ASPERSIONS and are also sanctionable. Consider this your warning about *that* I don't want to escalate the template level this soon.


 * I have had to stop examining your reverts for the night as I am trying not to feed your apparent propensity to edit war, see WP:POLEMIC, but there does seem to be more to be done there. I will come back to that as this is a huge mess of an article that has been tagged for years as needing help.


 * Please stop reverting constructive edits over this sort of quibble. I specialize in this sort of cleanup and have over 93,000 edits. Almost all of them are precisely this kind of cleanup. It normally takes several passes before I am happy with an article. I do not claim to be immune to error, and normally deal with any typos I overlook while condensing, rebalancing, or reordering the clauses to go from passive to active voice in a subsequent pass. But then, I don't usually have hostile editing to contend with, since articles this bad are generally abandoned.


 * Anyway. I need another glass of AGF, so... I see it is evening there, so have a good night.


 * I still need to know why you didn't want me to reference the talking dog, btw, and will get to anything I didn't cover here tomorrow. Elinruby (talk) 07:20, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

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Nomination of Brenton Tarrant for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Brenton Tarrant is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Brenton Tarrant (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished. OrewaTel (talk) 22:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

9 January 2024 revert
you reverted my edit that put the 2022 Buffalo shooting in the see also section of the Christchurch mosque shootings. You claim they're not directly related despite Payton Gendron excplicitly naming Tarrant as an inspiration for his actions. It was also a far-right live streamed terror attack like tarrants. Other shootings such as the Halle Synogogue shooting is linked in the see also but you removed the buffalo shooting. if you could provide a better explanation please do so thanks. Elizzaflanagan221 (talk) 15:31, 10 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The problem is that every couple of months you get a nutjob who takes a gun to shoot up a crowded place. They often produce some pathetic manifesto claiming some justification. They all have some common factors so you could, sort of, justify adding a reference in all the other shootings. But if you do that then the Christchurch article would be twice the current length and largely consist of a list of random shootings. The Christchurch shootings were 15 March 2019. Halle Synagogue 9 October just 7 months later. Buffalo was over two years later. You have to have a time limit. On the Christchurch talk page, we had a discussion and agreed, "No more." This discussion has been archived.
 * The Christchurch shooting had a real effect in New Zealand. It was a wake up call for a country that didn't believe such things could happen there. It also provoked a change in gun legislation. In that respect it has links to the 1996 Dunblane massacre. The reaction to Christchurch was such that it made future shootings less likely. This was the case with Dunblane and Halle. Has Buffalo changed anything? No. Any loonie can still buy a load of combat rifles. If Buffalo had resulted in a change to the gun owning laws; if Buffalo had provoked a public reaction that effected a change; then it would merit inclusion. Unfortunately Buffalo was just one more in a list of mass shootings that occur all too often in USA.
 * By the way it was the Halle Synagogue shooting that provoked the discussion on the Christchurch talk page. We considered deleting the reference but in the end the consensus was that it could stay but that it would be the last one. OrewaTel (talk) 18:35, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

User warnings
Thank you for helping to make sure that users are being warned about inappropriate behaviour! But in this case you're giving someone a warning for an edit that was made prior to their first warning.

It's all vandalism and this certainly looks like a vandalism-only account, but per the usage guide at WikiProject_User_warnings, The user must be given a chance to see, and react to, each warning given. Belbury (talk) 12:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you for being polite. I've reverted my warning because if you warn someone, you must be clean yourself. If this User continues to misbehave then it will sort itself out. If the User heeds the warning then it is better that there not be an incorrect warning lying around. Best wishes. OrewaTel (talk) 22:45, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

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