User talk:Gregwilkins

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Welcome[edit]

Welcome! (We can't say that loud/big enough!)

Here are a few links you might find helpful:

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page.

We're so glad you're here! -- Essjay · Talk 15:37, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Your recent edits[edit]

Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. If you can't type the tilde character, you should click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 00:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comet article[edit]

Firstly, pay attention to the part of the message above reading 'don't let the grumpy editors scare you off' (or whatever it says, I forget), but also try not to become a grumpy editor yourself.

You are unfortunately suffering from guilt by association; the article as Jacob wrote it, while obviously sounding great to the writers of cometdaily, was way out of line for a wikipedia article...and his attitude since then has been unhelpful to put it mildly. This combined with the mysterious appearance of a few cometdaily people who had never (or very rarely) edited wikipedia before two days after Jacob threatens to get people to come to the article and agree with him....has generated a lot of understandable hostility towards 'cometdaily people'.

Try not to get pissed off in return, be polite and try to follow the policies as best as possible and (hopefully) the editors on that article can start working together instead of fighting.

The article has made next to no progress since I hit the reset button, I've previously been trying to calm things down as I didn't feel I could easily do anything helpful to the article with Jacob reverting everything, it seems he's left us to it now so I'll be working on it tonight. (after the footie of course) I'd appreciate anything you'd like to contribute so long as you can source it, WP:RS should help you work out whether a source is acceptable or not. There will always be exceptions and borderline cases, try the Reliable Sources Noticeboard WP:RSN if you think a source is fine but damiens and IP guy reject it; I'll go with whatever the guys at RSN say.

As for 'senior editors'....there aren't any.

There are admins who enforce wikipedias policies, but in this case I can't see one doing anything except telling damiens (and you tbh) to be polite, and probably warning or possibly blocking jacob....although you never know with admins, I'm certainly not one and I can't tell you for sure whether it would be helpful or not or what one would do, I came pretty close to fetching one myself before jacob agreed to back off.

Much more suitable to the current situation are the various help boards, where you can ask for assistance with specific problems, the applicable ones here are the Conflict Of Interest one, where the article has already been mentioned which is how you've got me...and the civility one. Jacob could almost certainly benefit from civility advice, and to a lesser extent damiens and possibly yourself. But I'd rather not do anything that might get inspire jacob to come back yet, damiens has calmed down since I asked him to and you're only reacting to the hostility you're being shown...so I'd say don't go there either.

Also definitely don't take this to ArbCom....I assume you're american, so think of ArbCom as the supreme court...there's a lot of other options to go through first. If I had to guess at the motivations of someone recommending you go there, I'd say they were hoping the committee came down very hard on jacob.

I'd say the best option for you would be a request for comment WP:RFC, but I'd ask that you wait a week, and only go there if you're still not happy with how things are going then. It's up to you though.

So in summary: Don't mind the grumpy people and try to understand that they do have reason to be grumpy, your contribution is very welcome even if it doesn't seem like it from some people, and don't take things any further just yet...I think we can work this out ourselves if Jacob sticks to what he says about leaving things alone for a while.


Also, I've be extremely interested to hear who owns/runs cometdaily.com, and what their relationship to Jacob is.

Have a nice day. Restepc (talk) 16:50, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All good advice. I will definitely try to be less grumpy. But it does not look like damien.rf and anonymous IP dude are standing down. They insist on reverting a simply change on server push that is just wrong - linking comet to a specific technology rather than a general technique. Even the agreed text on the comet page now says that comet is not a specific technology. Their chat continues to push their POV that "comet" is a meme being pushed for advertising or google rank and that it is not in common usage - even though ample citations have been provided. Indeed the citations provided of different commercial companies using the term "comet" to self described have been discounted because "wikipedia is not a link directory". So I think I'm going to give up instead as the current content is a least only a little bit wrong and misguided..... yes I feel less grumpy already! Gregwilkins (talk) 15:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Greg I am definitely guilty of putting you into the same box as Jacobolous, but I hope I could explain that my edits in the push article were based on my technical understanding of Comet (which might be wrong, however based on what was agreed on in the current Comet article). To underline my interest in the topic, I reduce my numbers of edits if someone had the impression that I would push my personal POV instead of contributing from a technical POV? I am sure we can work this out and you are very welcome with your technical knowledge! - M - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 16:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Ah, just seen your new user page. I'll make a couple of points...one, I'm very much under the impression that comet isn't a specific technology...in the same way that AJAX isn't a specific technology. Secondly...the talk page is just that...talk, as I said before, there are no official 'senior editors' here...just because Damiens or IP guy object to adding something, doesn't mean that's what will happen on the article itself...they're not in charge of it any more than you are. When...whoever first said it....says that wikipedia isn't a link directory, they're very probably thinking of Jacobs article, which not only listed but linked to about 40 applications (or whatever) that use comet. That's right out...but as I said, a few notable examples in the article would be a good thing and will be put in eventually....in my experience it's best to work on an article slowly, a bit at a time, when there's a lot of disputes going on about it.
You have jumped right into an argument on wikipedia...and not only that but an argument targeting you and a website you're involved in, so I can understand why you're not feeling good about wikipedia, but I'm going to give you a few bits of advice if you do decide to persevere.
> Remember it's what the article says that's important, not what personal views editors express on the talk page.
>You can add to the end of any sentence or factoid in the article that you dispute. If a citation can't be found backing it up within a week or so (or months for articles which aren't edited often, or for really big articles (greenhouse effect, Hitler etc) unsourced material is usually removed immediately and left out until a source can be found), you can remove it with wikipedias policies blessing.
>Stick to discussing content that is on the article, or is being proposed for the article, rather than other editors conduct or hypothesising about other editors motivations. Not only will avoid you getting in trouble if an admin is called in, it's much better for progressing the article.
>Try not to think people are organised against you or have ulterior motives just because they disagree with you. Always be prepared to consider that you could be dead wrong.
>Be Bold, don't re-add or revert to something that's already been roundly rejected by the consensus, but if you think something should be in the article...put it in. The worst that could happen is someone takes it out again...and it's much more likely that at least some aspects of it will be kept. You talking about contributors vs editors was more accurate that some thought, and for this article I'm definitely an editor...I don't know what I'm talking about; as far as I'm concerned a comet is either a big rock in space or an electronics store....or possibly a reindeer??? Either way I can't write this article, I can just try to keep what is written to a high standard.
>finally....relax; it's not the end of the world. Restepc (talk) 17:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Restepc, if the editors that are more experienced with wikipedea indeed acted how you say wikipedia should work, then I think things would be much more constructive. If they believe that contributed text is unsubstantiated, then I thought they would have just added a [citation needed] and given the contributors (or others) a change to source suitable citations, document opposing view etc. etc.. Helpful questions about phrasing, grammer and points that are unclear or contradicted elsewhere would also be good. But that has not been the process. There is no 2 or 3 week grace period to allow a contribution to be improved and justified, you just wake up the next morning to find that your contributions have been deleted.
It does little good to ask newbies to exhibit patience and tolerance when there appears to be little of that exhibited by veteran editors. You say that I shouldn't think in terms of "people are organised against you or have ulterior motives", yet those are exactly the sort of reasons given when my contributions are deleted (ie that I'm a member of the cometdaily mafia in organized heist of wikipedias google ranking)!
There is an implied arrogance of the wikipedia veterans in their obvious assumption that newbie contributors are simply seeking advantage FROM wikipedia (google rankings,advertising etc.). Surely the default assumption should be that contributors are do exact that: contributing their time and expertise TO Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the wikipedia culture appears to be exactly the opposite, and telling newbies to be simply have thicker skins is only going to re-inforce this bad culture.
I am very active in the open source software movement. I can't imagine somebody contributing code to OS projects being treated with the suspicion and name calling that wikipedia editors have (ok I can believe it for some apache projects). The people who have contributed time and text here have been roundly abused (and then responded in kind) The most reasoned response for wikipedia veterans is that you should simply ignore the abuse and try to continue in some level headed state of zen serenity and understanding. If anybody contributes code to my projects - even if the code is not eventually accepted and/or obviously for their own financial benefit - it is still a welcome contribution and is received with grace. If any existing contributor was to belittle new contributors for their lack of knowledge of proceedures or for the unsuitability of their contributions, then that existing contributor would be told to pull their head in.
Note - There has been some good progress on the comet page: "Like DHTML and Ajax, Comet is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies." - Excellent! Yet every attempt I have made to move the comet link on the Push page from the specific technology section to the general section has been immediately reverted. It's time for the wikipedia veterans to exhibit some patients and tolerance. Your advice is good, I just think that it should be given to all involved. Gregwilkins (talk) 11:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes when you are new to a community it takes a while to get familiar with the culture and habbits. Apologies if I have not been friendly enough and have used too much scepticism! Well, I cooperated your suggestions into the server push article and now take a step back, so you and other editors can work on it for a couple of days. My biggest wish, if I get one granted, would be to get a better definition of what Comet is (e.g. "Comet is a combination of" and list the involved technologies). Have a good time! :) - M - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 18:23, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I understand completely that new communities take time to get used to. But a community that treats newbies badly is a bad community, specially for one like wikipedia that is only successful because of contributions. Newbies should be couched not treated with suspicion. Just saying to newbies: "get used to it", is not really a good way to encourage good behaviour within a community.
The change to the server push article is a reasonable compromise - as it is at least no longer incorrect. However I do not understand why an umbrella term like "comet" is not deserving of a mention in the general section, while a long dead specific technology from a commercial vendor is? I'll add some coments to the comet talk page about the current definition of comet Gregwilkins (talk) 00:16, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Treatment of newbies on wikipedia is a concern, see WP:don't bite the newbies, but in general I think wikipedia is very friendly to newcomers (look at the scarily friendly welcome message you got). There are cases where noobs get bitten though....usually it's if they jump straight into articles such as global warming or abortion.
I didn't intend to give the message 'get used to it'....but more to explain that this is an unusual situation where the suspicion is understandable. Jacob threatened to fetch people to the article who would agree with him (something he knows is extremely banned on wikipedia) and two days later 3 or 4 cometdaily people turn up and jump into the argument, all newbies to wikipedia. Jacob denies canvassing but...there is a policy here WP:assume good faith....sometimes sticking to that policy requires suspending all logic and common sense.
I believe (hope), that what you've experienced isn't the norm, and you wouldn't feel the same way if you'd started on an article where people weren't already there waiting for you with the impression that you were going to be a Jacob clone. I find that in general wikipedia is a very friendly place (and I have the civility help board on my watchlist, so in theory I see the worst of it). So in summary my intended message isn't 'get used to it', but rather 'try not to let what has happened put you off, we're quite friendly really'.
with regards to you saying I should give the same advice to the other editors, it's generally accepted that people who've been here a while will already know....in fact I think there's a policy somewhere about it (wikipedia has rules for everything)...and I have actually warned damiens and IP guy about a couple of things during this. Restepc (talk) 00:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Verifiability[edit]

Please make yourself more familiar with Wikipedia culture and habbits, especially with verifiability. Your advice for other editors on the Comet talk page wasn't according to accepted Wikipdia policy. Here a quote from Jimmy Wales a cofounder of Wikipedia: "I heard [...] pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced". Hope this helps. - 83.254.214.192 (talk) 12:14, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem: Manly Yacht Club[edit]

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