Wikipedia:Editor review/Benjamil

Benjamil
Hi. I've been around for more than a year, but I haven't really started contributing a lot until the last few months. I got joined Wikipedia due to my interest in some topics that are controversial, and following them closely means I spend most of my editing time there. I'm concerned that I might appear to have owning issues, that other editors may think I'm being too wordy on talk pages, and I feel that this hampers my ability to contribute elsewhere. benjamil talk/edits 09:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

 Questions


 * 1) What are your primary contributions to Wikipedia? Are there any about which you are particularly pleased? Why?
 * My primary contributions concern some quite unstable articles related to Islam and its most vociferous critics. I am quite pleased with my efforts to structure these articles, help maintain NPOV and source them using scholarly materials. I have had a few side projects cleaning up missing references and expanding stubs, with which I am also quite pleased.
 * 1) Have you been in editing disputes or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future? If you have never been in an editing dispute, explain how you would respond to one.
 * I recently posted a thread at AN/I after having my user page vandalised, and I have participated in a few threads concerning other users editing the pages I've been editing. I believe I have mostly kept my cool, but I'm worried that I may have come through as biased - my explanation for this is that I believe the conflicts have mainly been a matter of maintaining NPOV.
 * I recently posted a thread at AN/I after having my user page vandalised, and I have participated in a few threads concerning other users editing the pages I've been editing. I believe I have mostly kept my cool, but I'm worried that I may have come through as biased - my explanation for this is that I believe the conflicts have mainly been a matter of maintaining NPOV.

 Reviews 
 * Review by  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh {chat}

I think your handling of the Islamophobia minefield of contention and controversy is well managed.. clearly an area where people must tread carefully, and you do appear to be doing that well, and receiving praise for you civility. I hope you can maintain your optimistic approach, as this is one of those areas where people try to break each other down to drive them from the debate or make them lose their cool and have to be warned. You don't appear to be particularly wordy, and in controversial areas it is going to be important to explain yourself fully than too briefly which can leave your comments open to interpretation, manipulation and mis-quoting, better safe than sorry. I think anyone in a controversial topic who claims they don't have time to read wordy responses should not be involving themselves, if they can't handle thoroughness maturely. So I wouldn't be too worried there. You have a 54% article to 19% talk page contribution rate, which seems fairly balanced, given the areas you cover, a lot of discussion is to be expected to avoid disputes and edit warring. All other contribs seem fairly balanced. Good to see you nearly always leave some form of edit summary. NPOV is not just important, but vital to maintaining balance and encyclopedic "accuracy" in terms of how a reader feels after reading an article.. i.e. do they feel they are being swayed into a certain POV, or left to make up their own mind? In controversial topics there are often periods of "tug of war" which lead articles to shift their balance, and so it is important for NPOV-minded people like yourself to work with opposing editors, to establish respect from both sides, to not be swayed by praise or insult into taking sides, and to guide the resulting article back into neutral territory. It seems to me that you are playing this role well, and I wish you success in maintaining that position, as it is often hard to gain respect during religious or racial disputes, even if you are clearly a middle-man, people will sometimes expect you to be of their faith/race to have 100% trust. If you can gain the respect of editors without then you are a credit to Wiki, as AN/I is usually the route taken when discussion has broken down and diplomacy fails to work.  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh {chat} 02:38, 19 August 2012 (UTC)