User talk:MarkMcB
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External links
Hello, I'm MarkMcB. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added have been removed because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. tregoweth 06:32, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
Baffled
First, wiki is a great idea. I use the site quite often. But what baffles me is the resistence to content additions. I have written a few original article on various aspects of computing. Using these articles as a reference, I added content to wiki pages and then referenced my articles. Apparently that's "linkspam." Fine, whatever. I just think it's sad to delete content because of what you "think" it might be, ESPECIALLY when there is a section on a wiki page that says "needs to be added." Oh well, I guess I'll just be a user and not a contributor. MarkMcB 20:48, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
- Fine. Take your ball and go home. The rest of us will play by the rules, which preclude self-aggrandizement. Zora 00:14, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- I love it. The inability to discern between "self-aggrandizement" and a citation to what the editors of the pages call "useful information." MarkMcB 00:24, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Blanking
Please do not delete valid article content. This is basically vandalism if it isn't being removed because of the merit of the content itself. Dmcdevit·t 22:30, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
- As I stated on your talk page, you deleted the reference so I deleted the content I added. If you're not up for academic references just because I own the site that is the reference, don't get upset when I delete my content. You're right, random deletes are vandalism, which you started. I was merely cleaning up your mess.MarkMcB 00:14, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Please allow me to help
Mark, as a non-admin, and somewhat of a new user myself I completely understand where you might have felt wronged. The main issues here, as I see them, are that your site, OmniNerd, was not deemed notable enough (based on a written Wikipedia guideline which factors in Alexa ranking and Google hits [called a "Google test"]). In addition, the article, written by two of the site's creators, can, and usually will be seen as "vanity"—you are writing an article on something you created. Sadly, "quality" of the site has no reflection on notability, and I urge you to recreate it once it reaches a level of necissity. Your "link spam" as it is called, meant that you were linking articles to your own site, that, as decided on your VfD, was not notable enough for its own article. Spam, as it's called means that you continually linked to your site in several different articles, a seemingly obvious ploy for more traffic. My first article, a joke, was deleted, leaving me feeling quite saddened and betrayed. I quickly realized that I had made a mistake, and am now somewhat of an active user. And I encourage you to do so as well, we need as many good people as we can get. Thanks a lot, -Sunglasses at night 01:21, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for the feedback. I'm slowly learning the numbers game that somehow equates to quality. That's ok though, I'm sure one day in the near future OmniNerd will be "notable" enough. My biggest irritation is that they were deleting the citations that the site so clearly asks for in bold on the edit page, yet they were leaving my content. It just seems that if they're going to delete the citation, they should delete the cited content as well. It's particularly odd to me because one user on OmniNerd has been published and has a book on the shelves of your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, yet because he writes for OmniNerd as well, his content is somehow unworthy. Another user is about to have the content of an OmniNerd article published in a computer science book, but again, it's not good enough for wiki. I guess I should just be glad that I have OmniNerd and am capable of judging content for its value, not the number of hits it gets per day. So again, thanks for the kind approach. Your advice is appreciated.MarkMcB 01:47, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- I agree with what Mysekurity says and am trying not to sound unnecessarily harsh to you (though your messages on my talk page seem to be getting more hostile each time). So let me try this again. But first, let me tell you that this has nothing to do with admins. I am an admin, yes, but I, like others, am only using my normal editorial discretion. Now, I never said that any of the information you contributed was wrong, or that it needed to be removed, quite the opposite. All I dispute is that the OmniNerd reference is reliable enough to go in our encyclopedia. The reason I looked up the stats on Alexa was not because there is some numbers game going on, but just because I wanted to get an idea of how widely read it is (which somewhat correlates to how reliable it is). You are fond of referring to Wikipedia:Cite sources, but please reread the actual policy there. "Wikipedia articles should cite reliable sources for their information." Now read Wikipedia:Reliable sources, particularly the online sources section. I do not believe Omninerds is reliable, and so, even if was used, it would hurt Wikipedia's credibility to use it. That also doesn't mean I think Omninerds is wrong. Just that I can't rely on it to be right because it hasn't been independently verified to be so. Well known online sources like New York Times and PBS are. That is why I don't want a reference to OmniNerd on the articles. I do encourage you to continue to contribute, however. Dmcdevit·t 02:39, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
- I apologize if I seemed hostile. It wasn't my intention, just being a little sarcastic. I somewhat follow what you're saying, but here's my disconnect. You're stating (A) the paraphrasing on wiki, which is less than the article on OmniNerd, is good enough to stay, and (B) OmniNerd is not good enough to cite. I don't follow. You if A is good enough, then why isn't B? The link wasn't to the OmniNerd homepage, but rather was to the article from which the information was extracted. I could understand if you were saying A was poor quality and seemed unreliable so you checked B and confirmed, but you seem to be saying that A (the known lesser) is ok, yet somehow B is not. I just don't follow. I never cited the OmniNerd site, I cited the article with more detailed information. This is why it seems like a numbers game. You're telling me that you can cite the NYT, but newspapers are known to slant stories, often intentionally. Why then would you be unwilling to cite an article, regardless of the site it's on, if it's correct and well-annotated? It's just confusing to me. Like I said before, I'm not concerned with the deletion. If you want to rid wiki of my work, that's completely ok with me. My concern is with your method. It seems very contradictory. If you don't like my source, then why would you like my contribution to wiki? If B is bad, wouldn't it follow that A is too and should be deleted? MarkMcB 02:49, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I said the website is unreliable, but I never said it was poor quality or wrong. What I'm trying to say is that the quality doesn't matter and has no bearing on te reliability. Consider for a second that it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. I could write the most brilliant prose in my diary every night. It could be better than any other resource. It is accurate. But it is not reliable. What I mean by that is that others who are not knowledgeable on the topics it contains and would use it as a resource don't have any way of knowing if it is accurate or not. It is unreliable it that aspect: not that it is necessarily wrong, but that it is not well-known enough for it's accuracy to be knowable. OmniNerd is the same way. It just as easily could be perfect, but I can't verify that and so it's still no use to me. So if I assume good faith on your part that all of the information added was accurate, than of course I want the information to stay. But that still doesn't make the website (which could be absolutely accurate) reliable to the outsider. You say that newspapers are known to be biased, but (if we accept that) it would still be possible to use a well-known newspaper with a well-known bias, because that bias could be taken into account when analyzing it's usefulness. Please tell me you see what I mean. Dmcdevit·t 03:11, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
- First, though I disagree with you, thanks for keeping up this discussion as you could have just as easily ignored me, I appreciate it. I understand that OmniNerd isn't notable/reliable/whatever-you-want-call-it. It's a fairly new site that's trying to be a major player on the Internet. I understand that this won't occur overnight. I understand that you see "OmniNerd" and think, "what the heck is that?" That's all great and good. My concern is that I think the resolution should be one of two things: acceptance of content and citations, or rejection of content and citations. In every academic paper I've ever written for research or in college, I've always had to back my claims. The general line of thinking was that if you didn't come up with it on your own, tell everyone where you did. That's what is done on OmniNerd. All articles have references on the site stating where various information came from. We've gotten submissions in the past that have been tossed out because the author would not cite his/her information. I think that's a good practice. But now on Wiki I'm being told that I can post information and give absolutely no information regarding its source. I think that's terrible practice. Why should a reader believe anything I provide Wiki if that user cannot find the information's source? It would be great if a user looked at the OmniNerd citation, decided he/she could find a better source, tweaked my text and then provided the better reference. Then all future users and myself would benefit from the maturing sources. But as it is there are no sources for the information I've provided and I think that's bad. It's bad because it leaves the user with a dead end, and because if my information isn't entirely correct someone may assume that it is.
- Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I said the website is unreliable, but I never said it was poor quality or wrong. What I'm trying to say is that the quality doesn't matter and has no bearing on te reliability. Consider for a second that it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. I could write the most brilliant prose in my diary every night. It could be better than any other resource. It is accurate. But it is not reliable. What I mean by that is that others who are not knowledgeable on the topics it contains and would use it as a resource don't have any way of knowing if it is accurate or not. It is unreliable it that aspect: not that it is necessarily wrong, but that it is not well-known enough for it's accuracy to be knowable. OmniNerd is the same way. It just as easily could be perfect, but I can't verify that and so it's still no use to me. So if I assume good faith on your part that all of the information added was accurate, than of course I want the information to stay. But that still doesn't make the website (which could be absolutely accurate) reliable to the outsider. You say that newspapers are known to be biased, but (if we accept that) it would still be possible to use a well-known newspaper with a well-known bias, because that bias could be taken into account when analyzing it's usefulness. Please tell me you see what I mean. Dmcdevit·t 03:11, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
- I apologize if I seemed hostile. It wasn't my intention, just being a little sarcastic. I somewhat follow what you're saying, but here's my disconnect. You're stating (A) the paraphrasing on wiki, which is less than the article on OmniNerd, is good enough to stay, and (B) OmniNerd is not good enough to cite. I don't follow. You if A is good enough, then why isn't B? The link wasn't to the OmniNerd homepage, but rather was to the article from which the information was extracted. I could understand if you were saying A was poor quality and seemed unreliable so you checked B and confirmed, but you seem to be saying that A (the known lesser) is ok, yet somehow B is not. I just don't follow. I never cited the OmniNerd site, I cited the article with more detailed information. This is why it seems like a numbers game. You're telling me that you can cite the NYT, but newspapers are known to slant stories, often intentionally. Why then would you be unwilling to cite an article, regardless of the site it's on, if it's correct and well-annotated? It's just confusing to me. Like I said before, I'm not concerned with the deletion. If you want to rid wiki of my work, that's completely ok with me. My concern is with your method. It seems very contradictory. If you don't like my source, then why would you like my contribution to wiki? If B is bad, wouldn't it follow that A is too and should be deleted? MarkMcB 02:49, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- I agree with what Mysekurity says and am trying not to sound unnecessarily harsh to you (though your messages on my talk page seem to be getting more hostile each time). So let me try this again. But first, let me tell you that this has nothing to do with admins. I am an admin, yes, but I, like others, am only using my normal editorial discretion. Now, I never said that any of the information you contributed was wrong, or that it needed to be removed, quite the opposite. All I dispute is that the OmniNerd reference is reliable enough to go in our encyclopedia. The reason I looked up the stats on Alexa was not because there is some numbers game going on, but just because I wanted to get an idea of how widely read it is (which somewhat correlates to how reliable it is). You are fond of referring to Wikipedia:Cite sources, but please reread the actual policy there. "Wikipedia articles should cite reliable sources for their information." Now read Wikipedia:Reliable sources, particularly the online sources section. I do not believe Omninerds is reliable, and so, even if was used, it would hurt Wikipedia's credibility to use it. That also doesn't mean I think Omninerds is wrong. Just that I can't rely on it to be right because it hasn't been independently verified to be so. Well known online sources like New York Times and PBS are. That is why I don't want a reference to OmniNerd on the articles. I do encourage you to continue to contribute, however. Dmcdevit·t 02:39, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
So my point is that if OmniNerd truly is unreliable, then it's content is too. If you don't want one, then don't take the other. If you do take content from the site, at least tell people where it came from so they can decide whether or not more research needs to be done. It's all part of the academic process. I've never turned in an academic paper and been told "delete note 43 because that source is unreliable." Rather, the fact that it is unreliable lets the reader know that this particular claim may need further validation. So yes, I see what you mean, but please tell me you understand why I think the link between text and citations is so important. Please tell me you understand that my intentions aren't spam, arrogance, or any other self-serving reason. I love the spread of information. If I didn't I would spend all of my time creating a site called OmniNerd and attempting to transfer the best of that site into the gaps on Wiki so that others may benefit. I simply think claims should be founded in something.