User talk:Wulfburk

Wikipedia and copyright
Hello Wulfburk! Your additions to Battle of Metz and Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine have been removed in whole or in part, as they appear to have added copyrighted content without evidence that the source material is in the public domain or has been released by its owner or legal agent under a suitably-free and compatible copyright license. (To request such a release, see Requesting copyright permission.) While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues.


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It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa (talk) 15:32, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Neutral point of view at Wikipedia, and COI
Hi, Wulfburk. I noticed that you added material to Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine and to Battle of Metz quoting a recent, self-published, Ph.D. thesis by Jeffrey Mullins. One of Wikipedia's Five Pillars is Neutral point of view, and if you are Jeffrey Mullin or have any personal or professional connection with him, then you are discouraged from using this source in your edits here at Wikipedia. Here is a standardized message about this. I urge you to read this message, and follow the links. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC) Hello, Wulfburk. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:


 * avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization or competitors;
 * propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the request edit template);
 * disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Conflict of interest);
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:Spam);
 * do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

--        I am not the author of that thesis nor do i have a connection to him. I do however do my own research on the topic and simply stumbled upon the thesis while looking for sources on Google Scholar. (also i'm not sure this is how you reply to a talk page). Should i expect my additions to be kept redacted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wulfburk (talk • contribs) 18:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Wulfburk (talk) 18:44, 8 March 2021 (UTC)  (apologies for another ping). On Battle of Metz the changes i've made were in contrast to an uncited, UNSOURCED, and SELF published internet page, this: https://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/campaign_awards/cufftitles/metz.htm. Is a PHD thesis less reliable than that?

On the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine, i added a few comments to a paragraph that didnt even have a reference: this one "While Montgomery and Bradley each favored relatively direct thrusts into Germany (with Montgomery and Bradley each offering to be the spearhead of such an assault), General Eisenhower disagreed. Instead, he chose a "broad-front" strategy, which allowed the Allies to gain ground from the beaten Germans in all sectors, allowed the advancing Allied forces to support each other"

You should note that i had deleted a copied paragraph of the thesis on that page. Your reversion added them back to it (see the Market Garden topic on Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wulfburk (talk • contribs) 18:44, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Hello, Wulfburk, thank you for your response. As for how to respond on a talk page, please see WP:TALK for general usage, and for more specific information about responding, use of indentation, and signatures, please see WP:THREAD.  For starters, just type  at the end of your messages on talk pages; that will automatically add your signature.
 * Since you mentioned you found that article on Google scholar, can I ask what search query you used, that included this source among the search results? When I tried, I found a lot of seemingly higher quality sources. These links might help:
 * Allied advance:
 * Battle of Metz:
 * Regarding your additions, you're welcome to put them back, if you can find a source which fulfills the requirements of Wikipedia's core policy of WP:Verifiability, which requires citations to a reliable source. Bravo, for adding a citation, but the choice of source was a weak one, imho. Imho we can do better than a 2020 Ph.D. thesis for this. That's not to say you absolutely cannot use it (you could ask at the Reliable sources noticeboard to solicit more opinions about that question, if you like) but if this is the only source that supports that content, and in all the floods of ink and paper that have been expended on World War II by historians, no reliable history or respected journal article can be found that equally supports it, that would seem very suspect to me. You can also discuss this further either at the WP:Tea house, or at the Talk page of one of the WikiProjects organized around a topic related to the article, such as for example, WT:WikiProject France, WT:WikiProject History, or WT:WikiProject Military history. Hope this helps, Mathglot (talk) 19:00, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * If you removed something copied into the Market Garden topic that my revert readded, that should be removed again. Can you point me to it, or just remove it again?  Thanks for pointing this out. Mathglot (talk) 19:01, 8 March 2021 (UTC) I see you did so; thanks. Mathglot (talk) 19:12, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

i've removed the paragraph i had deleted. Now, my search query on google scholar was "normandy campaign division logistical needs", filtering from 2017 onwards (at least on the portuguese version -i'm brazilian-, 2017 is the farthest you can go without manually choosing the period). The thesis is the fourth option on the first page, and the first with a pdf ready to be read. Hence why i bumped into it easily enough. The reason for that specific query is that i was doing a research on how much supply tons per day did the division slices of the british, american and german armies require in normandy, which Mullins does talks about.

Wulfburk (talk) 19:21, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I missed some of the material you added during an edit conflict (a previous one; this appears to be another one, now); as to material you added citing Mullin where there was previously no citation at all, yes, it's definitely better than that. There's an essay called WP:OTHERSTUFF that people sometimes quote here in situations like this, which basically amounts to "two wrongs don't make a right", or a "what-aboutism" objection, and there's some of that here, but to answer your question, imho yes, it's certainly better to have material with a cite, even to a questionable source, than not have one at all; although I suppose what I'd do in that situation, is tag the source with better source needed, in order to encourage its replacement by a source that unquestionably meets reliability standards. Mathglot (talk) 19:24, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Also, in case it got lost in the shuffle: your edits are welcome here, and WP:BE BOLD is also a key guideline at Wikipedia. So, please don't let some initial, unfortunate hiccups slow or discourage you; your edits are appreciated. It's normal as a new user to bump into little roadblocks or potholes, that's par for the course; just keep on going the direction you're going, and bit by bit, it will become a lot easier. Mathglot (talk) 19:37, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I brought myself forth to edit the Battle of Metz article (which took me to the allied advance article) because it explicitly said "As Third Army supply lines became stretched, material (especially gasoline) became scarce, and Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower called a halt to the Third Army advance so that supplies could be stockpiled for Operation Market Garden, an attempt to break into the vital (and heavily industrialized) German Ruhr Valley in the north. This pause by Third Army gave the Germans time to reorganize and fortify Metz, in an attempt to contain the Allied advance.[4]"

As this page points out, (in accordance to Mullins), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_front_versus_narrow_front_controversy_in_World_War_II, the idea that Eisenhower prioritized Montgomery and halted Patton is grossly mistaken. If there is a myth that if Eisenhower had supported Montgomery the war could have ended in 1944, there is also the myth regurgitated by many that Eisenhower did prioritize montgomery, then saw the error of Market Garden, but had already destroyed the hopes of Patton advancing "as far as warsaw", which is, of course, a gross misconception. Given that the above page has been linked to the Allied Advance from Paris to the Rhine article, i find it says much of what i had written and was redacted, so might as well keep it as it is. The Battle of Metz article however, may i then readd what i had added and with the tag for looking for better sources? Wulfburk (talk) 20:04, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * So, after this comment, or soon if you have specific questions, I'm going to gently withdraw from this, as I have other things to do, after leaving you with some final points about your latest comment. Hopefully others will be able to jump in an help you as well (try the Help me feature) or the links I provided will provide further avenues for you. So, a few general points, and a few specific ones:
 * As to your "may I readd" question, these general observations (which apply to any question of this nature):
 * Since these points are about the content of thearticle, ideally the discussion should take place on the Talk page of the article concerned, where other editors interested in the topic can find it.
 * When there is what Wikipedia calls a "content issue", or "content disagreement", consensus comes into play. This means seeking the opinion of other editors, and trying to find agreement about what's best for the article. A corollary of this, is, that everyone is equal here, so although I've been around for a long time and know the ins and outs, and can advise you based on my best understanding of Wikipedia policy and guidelines, so can anyone else, and you are free to disregard it, or disagree.
 * WP:BOLD changes are good. But, others might disagree with your change. We assume that both (or all) parties in a content dispute all have good faith and are all interested in improving the article, but may disagree on the best means to do so. Because of this, when you are reverted, reverting back is discouraged, because it could lead to edit warring, which does nothing to improve the article. Instead, we discuss;  and it's what you've been doing, so that's a good thing. That's called the WP:BRD cycle.
 * Because of Wikipedia's WP:Verifiabilility policy requiring citations for any material likely to be challenged, no one is excepted from this, with the implication that even a professional historian, if they want to edit here, is obliged to provide sources where required.
 * So, that's to set the context for why I can't give you a specific answer to your, "may I readd" question. I could respond, but it would be just my opinion, and because of consensus and WP:BRD, more editor opinion on the topic would be good. So, the real answer to your question is, go to the Talk page, raise it there, and try to get buy-in for your PoV. As to more specific comments, I started to look into this topic, found a few sources, then realized I would have to do a lot of reading to catch up, and I really don't have time for that now. As for Broad front versus narrow front controversy in World War II (see WP:LINK, or look at the wikicode to see how I linked that), on the one hand, it's good to link articles you are discussing with other editors as a courtesy to them, so thank you for that. OTOH, like any blog or self-published source, Wikipedia itself is deemed not to be a reliable source, so you can't use it as an argument about what some other article should say; like always, you should rely on the WP:INDEPENDENT, WP:SECONDARY, reliable sources and let them guide you, keeping in mind the principle of WP:DUE WEIGHT to see how much to say about a subtopic (or whether to say anything at all) as well as what to do, when reliable sources disagree on a point at issue (represent all of majority and minority views, in proportion to their appearance in reliable sources, and ignore the views of a tiny minority).  That's all I can do for now, hope this helps, and do check the Tea house or the WikiProjects for further questions.  If you do start a conversation at one (or more) of the article talk pages, please ping me from there so I can lurk, and perhaps contribute, if I find the time. You seem like you're learning fast, and I'm sure you will become a very good editor; hang in there, there's a lot of stuff to learn! Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 02:35, 9 March 2021 (UTC)