User talk:Stevencswg

Your edits
Hi there, welcome to Wikipedia and thanks for making your first edits to St Patrick's Church, Hove. Unfortunately, in this case i've had to revert your edits to the previous version, but hopefully if I explain why, you'll be able to make some further edits. Wikipedia has some key principles, especially around how we prove what we write. The main two can be seen here: WP:V and WP:CITE. The upshot is that we don't necessarily write what is true, but what we can prove to be true using external references. This is especially true when it relates to a living person.

At the moment, the article is an accurate reflection of what is written in the articles cited, which are all established media organisations. We can make some changes, but in order to do this, we'd need more references which show that the changes are true. For instance, saying that the charges are unsubtantiated is all well and good, but we need an article somewhere reputable that says that, as it's in direct conflict with what the sources we have say.

I appreciate that this can be frustrating in some instances, but it is a key safeguard in making the encyclopaedia as accurate as possible, by always quoting external sources, and not allowing people just to write what they want. What is does prevent, for instance, is someone writing in an article that a person was guilty of a crime, when no such thing occurred. What can be put is an allegation that was made and reported upon, and then a summary of a report that indicates their innocence.

I hope that helps, and if you need any help or more explanation, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page.

Regards, OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 11:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

[Your message copied below to make conversation contiguous]


 * I am parish priest of St Patrick's Hove and see that some of your revision of the St Patrick's entry is see either inaccurate or misleading.


 * For example, you report Fr Sharpe as being 'forced to resign', more accurately he simply 'resigned' - rightly in my opinion. Allegations were certainly made about him. They may have been well founded, but ... none of them was proved. He remained a canon of the cathedral and continued to work in the diocese. (I believe he became a Roman Catholic in spring 2011)


 * The other changes I made to the document simply explain that after Alan Sharpe's departure management of the project was transferred to Riverside — and I've included a link to the only useful website reference i can find.


 * The information you give about the monastery leaving St Patrick's doesn't make full sense. The sentence seems incomplete. I was a member of the community when the decision was made and my correction offers useul information.


 * 11:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevencswg (talk • contribs)


 * Hi there. Thanks for coming back to me.  Now, I don't have any particular axe to grind in this debate, but I do have an interest in upkeeping the policies.  The changes I reverted are the ones related to Fr Sharpes departure .  I can conceed the 'forced to' point, although I think this originally came from a source.  In terms of the veracity or not, as I said above, we can only put here what is reported, and we can't write what isn't already published (see WP:NOR and WP:V).  So, where you inserted '(and not as some newspapers misreported from the church collections)' we can't include it, unless you can find a relevant reputable source for it.  That is just something you 'know', and can't be proven.  For the same reason, an editor can't write '(Name of person) abused me as a child' - it might or might not be true, but if it hasn't been reported anywhere, it has no place here.


 * Your edits don't appear to include anything about Riverside, or about the monastery leaving, and i certainly haven't reverted any on that subject, so feel free to add them. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited --Stevencswg (talk) 13:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)at 12:31, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back.

re Fr Sharpe's departure, I think you ought to concede 'allegedly' as well, since nothing was ever proved or was claimed to have been proven. As I say, after Sharpe left St Patrick's he continued to work in the diocese. Rightly or wrongly, he remained a canon of Chichester and was appointed to Sedlescombe and Whatlington parish. See this link I'll submit further references when I have time.

The Riverside material and other changes were submitted, but presumably have also been blocked. I'll have another go another time.

We in the parish are not looking to defend Alan Sharpe or to excuse or cover up anything that may have happened in the past.

But we concerned that the article seems now to be wholly in the control of a self-appointed supervisor, one who, as far as any of us know, has no direct contact with the place. I'm an academic; I know about the importance of sources and references. But I also know about the limitations of secondary sources. The fact that a source can be quoted doesn't render it a reliable source. And that fact that it has been frequently quoted doesn't, of itself, make it more reliable.

13:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * This is of course, not in the control of anyone - it's the encylopaedia that anyone can edit. That said, it does have rules.  I don't claim any dominion over it - just that complies with the rules.  I fully appreciate the frustration that can come with only reporting secondary sources, and never using primary sources, but those are the rules, and thats what we have to work with.   You won't find me (or most other editors) changing edits that meet the key  rules (WP:V, WP:CITE and WP:NOR).  I am more than happy to include information as you suggest about him keeping other positions within the church, if you've got citations for it (ideally an actual article rather than a letters page from the paper).


 * Wikipedia keeps all its history (here if you'd like to look), and you didn't submit those other changes. All I can think of was that you can sometimes get edit conflicts if another editor has made a change whilst you were typing.  It would have told you this, but your change wouldn't have been saved, so you'll have to reenter that.