User talk:Thompson222

Edits on Ted Halstead
Hi Thompson222

Thank you for your recent edits on Ted Halstead; they all appear to have been well-intentioned. However, I have reverted the one which you explained as "Reinserted sentence about circumnavigation." That edit appears to have in fact been a revert of all (or at least many) of my edits, without that being mentioned or the reasons for it explained.

I see you're relatively new to Wikipedia, so it's understandable that you may not be aware, but the usual etiquette here, except in cases like clear vandalism, is to let the reverted editor know about it, either with a message on their talk page (like this) or by reverting with the "undo" button, which notifies the editor that a revert has occurred. And in any case, the revert should be acknowledged and explained in the edit summary, or if necessary in the talk page. (This page has some useful tips/info/guidelines on these points.) Incidentally, the reason I didn't use the "undo" button so you'd get a notification for me reverting your revert is that there were conflicting edits since yours, so I had to do it manually. That may have been the case when you reverted my edits, but if so, I would argue it would be polite (and productive) to have then let me know on my talk page or something, like I'm doing here, and certainly to have acknowledged in the edit summary the fact you were reverting my edits, and the reasons why.

My edits clearly weren't vandalism, as I explained all of my significant changes, and even many of my minor changes, in the edit summaries, including citations to Wikipedia guidelines saying why the changes were made. So the state you reverted the page to included curly quote marks (MOS:CQ), headings put in title case (MOS:HEAD), and failures to use logical quotation (MOS:LQ), for example, none of which is actually relevant to reinserting the sentence about circumnavigation anyway. These issues aren't really big deals, just stylistic things, but still, articles do look better and are more readable if there's consistency on these matters, and the style guides on those points have evolved from the consensus of many Wikipedia editors, so they should be respected and implemented. If other editors disagree with them, they're of course welcome to discuss that in the relevant places, and maybe the guides will evolve, but they shouldn't simply be ignored.

Other issues were more significant and potentially misleading, such as the use of "currently", which I had fixed. Wikipedia articles will stick around as long as Wikipedia does, except in the rare cases of deletion, so that "currently" could easily have still been there next year, or the year after, or in 2025, when it's clearly not accurate anymore. As such, it's much better to provide an actual time as of which the statement is current/accurate/relevant, so that readers can see when that fact was the case and can get a sense of whether it might be outdated now, and so editors can see if it might be worth looking up whether it's changed. I had explained in my edit summary why this had been a problem, that I'd changed it, and why I'd changed it. Likewise, I had explained things like replacing sources with ones which actually supported the claims; again, that's an actually important matter, as Wikipedia obviously shouldn't justify a claim using a source which doesn't truly justify it. This would allow untrue claims to be "justified" and "referenced", misleading readers. On top of that, such inaccurate citations are in themselves essentially untrue claims, as they imply that those sources say things that they actually don't.

I don't think you actually meant to reinstate these problems with the article, and again, I assume your edit was well-intentioned. However, it returned the article to a state that was less clearly written, less consistent with Wikipedia's guidelines that have evolved from the consensus of many editors, and, most importantly, inaccurate or misleading in places. And the fact that you didn't explain why you were reverting my edits, or in fact acknowledge that you were doing so, means, among other things, that other editors may well have spent the same sort of fairly long time I spent fixing those problems all over again, not realising they could just very quickly revive my version. It's much better to explain what you're doing and why, especially when performing a revert.

Regarding the thing you did state you were doing, I also disagree with that, though again I assume your edit was well-intentioned and I think it may have resulted from a misunderstanding. I didn't actually remove all mention of his circumnavigation. As I stated in my edit summary, I "Removed the sentence about sailing from the lead. As far as I can tell, that's just sort of trivia or a hobby, rather than related to what makes Halstead noteworthy, so there's no need for it to be in the lead as well as in its own section." That info already had its own whole section, and I left it with its own whole section. All I did was remove from this article an additional mention of something that isn't really what makes this person notable or worth reading about, and a mention that was in the lead, as if it was one of the most important things about him and one of the first things readers should know, which I would strongly argue it obviously isn't.

I do appreciate that you acknowledged that you were making that change. However, in future, since this was actually a revert of my change, it would be good to not just say you're making the change but provide some reason why. If I had merely removed the sentence, then maybe you could return it without saying why, though still, a revert should probably be explained. But especially as I had clearly outlined my reasoning, you should acknowledge that reasoning and provide some counterpoint.

The basic reason for all of this is that, if editors revert each others changes without acknowledging why they were made in the first place or why they're being reverted now, and without informing the original editors that this is happening, then some articles could end up sort of chasing their own tails, just going around in circles, with hard work being tossed aside rather than built on. Sometimes changes, even changes that involved hard work, aren't for the best, or aren't totally for the best, and it can be fair to change them back, or change them to yet another form. But in these cases, it should be acknowledged and explained. This way, the shared mission of all of us Wikipedia editors, to create a fantastic, informative, accurate, clear resource for everyone to learn from, can be advanced productively and collaboratively, with disagreements or differences of opinion made clear, talked through, and learned from, and each person's work building on that of the person before them.

I hope this makes sense and hasn't come off as too patronising or anything like that. Have a good time on the rest of your Wikipedia journey :) BreakfastJr (talk) 03:20, 29 July 2017 (UTC) (PS, I left your first edit, which re-ordered the think tanks in the lead, as it was. I would personally go with putting them chronologically from earliest to latest, but that's just a difference of personal preference/style really, so I don't mind your way being there at all.)