User talk:Snarlyj

Recent edit to Ethnic minorities in China
Hello, and thank you for your recent contribution. I appreciate the effort you made for our project, but unfortunately I had to undo your edit because I believe the article was better before you made that change. The information was backed up by citations and is interesting to people. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. Thank you! In veritas (talk) 22:30, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Admin Noticeboard
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The discussion is about the topic User POV pushing. Thank you. In veritas (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks for alerting me to the issues/discussion. I realize I made several edits to recent articles about China and related topics that may have seemed arbitrary/suspicious. I study sociology and NGOs and the rash of edits was in response to frustration as what I interpret as a specific scholar (Reza Hasmath) who has inserted 1-2 sentence references to his own work in a huge variety of articles. Many of these relate to China and the non-profit center but also ethnicity, sociological institutionalism, civil society, etc. The contributes on wikipedia pages I deleted are indeed linked to citations by Hasmath, but all are either editorials or journals from which only self-citations have been produced. So he (presumably, but could have been a fan of his work) in 2014/2015 added 20+ citations to his article here (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9481077&fileId=S0305741014001155 - but this is not a robust publication, having since only been cited by 12 other articles ALSO by Hasmath https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=13476438643111708638&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en). I absolutely did not delete everything he contributed, nor anything that is supported by general consensus or other work in the sociological community. But after noticing several seeming out of place references to his recent publications, I became concerned and then rather annoyed at what I saw as self-promotion disguised as scholarly contributions. If this was out of order, or should be addressed in a different format/method, I apologize and welcome your feedback. Snarlyj 02:02, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for responding, my reasoning is explained on the incident board. Thank you for clarifying your reasoning to me, the issue was for me at least is your edit summaries did not explain the source issue so I thought you had more issue with the content than anything. If you have any more questions just respond here or leave a message on my talk page. I realized I should have been more direct to you in the beginning, but I see your point now; article talk pages will be your friend especially for the type of edits you want to make. In veritas (talk) 03:01, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@In veritas Thanks for following up with me personally and explaining here and on the admin board why my posts were flagged, and how I can work to make more productive edits and provide clearer justification for them. I appreciate you offering your view/interpretation of my changes and raising your concerns with more experienced editors so that I could fully understand why my contributions caused some alarm, and can be sure my future edit summaries are direct, tailored, and explicit about my reasoning. I also learned a lot about Wikipedia today, so that was a nice bonus! Thanks again for your thoughtfulness and commitment to maintaining high quality articles. Snarlyj (talk) 08:46, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I hope the welcome section below has useful links for you, and keep editing because many articles need sources and high quality content. In veritas (talk) 15:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Welcome!
Hello, Snarlyj, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
 * Introduction and Getting started
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article
 * Simplified Manual of Style

You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit The Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

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! In veritas (talk) 02:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

February 2016
Thank you for your contributions. Please mark your edits, such as your recent edits to Affirmative action, as "minor" only if they are minor edits. In accordance with Help:Minor edit, a minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Minor edits consist of things such as typographical corrections, formatting changes or rearrangement of text without modification of content. Additionally, the reversion of clear-cut vandalism and test edits may be labeled "minor". '' Also, please be sure your edit summaries are accurate. This change was not a "minor grammar edit". Thank you.'' — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 05:56, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the clarification - After reviewing the help page, I see I was indeed using the "minor edit" tag incorrectly. As a new/lay editor I was thinking that only minor changes to content were made by deleting extraneous/unsupported statements, but I understand now that any content deletion or edit beyond typos should not be marked as minor. I apologize that a couple edits likely violated this rule - I probably should have started out with more restraint until I learned the ropes and norms of Wikipedia editing. I will avoid this mistake, as well as strive to provide clear, accurate, and explicit edit summaries along with my future contributions. Snarlyj (talk) 08:29, 6 February 2016 (UTC)