Precious moments
Those golden moments on Wikipedia worth treasuring, when honest good-faith edits have been rewarded with, well....
- Adding a short section describing monuments and memorials at the end of a biographical article is fairly common practice. It might even seem like a constructive idea, but not to one editor, who took umbrage that anyone dared to add content without discussing it with him first. I think that "larding it with more lipstick and jewelry" was just his special way of thanking people for their hard work, and "another crappy anything-goes WikiPedia article" was a subtle accolade. Anyway, happily this contentious section evolved into a fairly good separate article. We're just not allowed to mention it in the main article.
- The day I learned that you mustn't add images to Wikipedia articles without permission from editors who think they own the article. At least, that's what transpired when this seemingly perfectly relevant image was mysteriously deemed to be promotional. Helpfully, a peevish editor informed me "that image is garbage", which was greatly encouraging. Said editor was even kind enough to remove perfectly well-sourced additions and then in a fit of pique, did this. I really learned my place that day. This, by the way, is the same editor that wrote an article detailing the joys of cloud-chasing with this as a lead image, which is in no way promotional. Oh no.
- The time when I learned that the phrase "please cut me some slack" is apparently uncivil. At least that was the considered opinion of one fellow editor, seconds before calling me "lazy" and a "troll". Ah well, you live and learn. Anyway, happily the article that caused such disappointment is now a passable start-class article. You're welcome.
- The time when a well-sourced, well-worded addition to an article was repeatedly removed by a rather ill-humoured, anonymous IP editor who appeared to dislike factual additions concerning the BBC. When challenged about edit-warring, IP petulantly slapped me with an edit-war warning in revenge. Now that calling someone an "uncivil troll" has been established as acceptable behaviour by those who know better than me, I had no hesitation in resorting to this phrase as I erased his retorts. Satisfyingly, matters were resolved with an RFC. Nobody won that day, except rationality.
- Putting in a fairly reasonable change request might seem like a constructive way to collaborate with editors. Incredibly, after 6 attempts I was effectively ignored over a period of 2 years — on the Reftoolbar talk page in July 2017, again in May 2019, on the Village Pump technical, yet again in September 2019, even tried my luck on Phabricator, and one last time in October. How I just love this collaborative working environment!
- The utter determination of an IP in West London to insult any editor that dared to disagree with them, being warned multiple times to behave. Missing him already.
- I often wonder at the bewildering array of articles about bus companies. Are these notable? Who knows? Somehow the editors of these articles manage to rise above the constraints of WP:COMPANY - but sadly not so for my contribution, which was rewarded with instant, unfounded accusations of being in the pay of a bus company and having a Conflict of Interest. It appears that the Wikipedia rule on assume good faith applies to everyone except me. To be fair, the article was not of great quality, but nevertheless not unsourced and evidently a start-class article and a work in progress. Despite the fact that a myriad of forgotten Stub articles survives uncontested on Wikipedia, my effort was literally in existence for 41 minutes before it was slapped with a deletion order. After receiving a slightly patronising lecture on the existence of Wikipedia rules, I gave up quickly - the prospect of entering the Seventh Circle of Wikibureaucracy Hell just to defend a relatively insignificant article was just too daunting, and so my article was deleted. Another lesson learned.
- A piece of music I had uploaded to Commons was, sadly but correctly, tagged for deletion (the composer;s work is not yet public domain - my mistake). In search of a constructive solution, I spent time carefully editing down a 30-second extract and then uploaded it with a meticulously crafted Fair Use Rationale, and notified editors that the copyright problem had been solved on the article talk page. Not so, claimed a disgruntled editor — who didn't actually want to tell me what the problem was without some persuasion, and then refused to offer any suggestion as to how the FUR should be improved. He did explain condescendingly that I should not upload copyrighted media files at all, and then derided me for my supposed lack of knowledge. Happily it all turned out well in the end - I had, in fact, done the right thing. My upload was formatted within the Fair Use rules to be under 30 seconds in duration, was properly documented and was directly relevant to article content. I suppose being a dick about it is much more rewarding that simply hitting the Thank You button for a job (mostly) well done. You're very welcome.
Stans
Stansted Airport transport |
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