User talk:68.107.131.23

Your recent edits

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w/r/t Intraplate deformation

I didn't read the article. I don't know or even particularly care whether you're right. You may very well be. What I do care about is following Wikipedia's policies and procedures. Blanking the page does not one of them.

While it is unfortunate should you be right that the Main Page would have inaccurate information on it, the correct procedures are as follows:

1. Bring it up at the Did You Know discussion page. You can do so whether or not you have an account, although you're still well-advised to sign your statements by entering four tildes (~~~~) for better organization of the discussion.
2. If you think this entire article is completely wrong, bring it up at Articles for deletion.
3. If you think some of the information is accurate, but some is not, then improve it yourself. Nobody's stopping you.

Thank you. Lockesdonkey (talk) 07:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I did all that. I've been completely ignored. The AfD instructions are a joke and allow the article to remain on Wikipedia while a bunch of people who know nothing about geology argue with each other. Does it nmatter that the article is wrong? Isn't an encyclopedia a repository of correct information?

Because so much of the information is not in the sources that are in the article, it would take hours to check them all. I found enough that was completely wrong to be confortable just deleting everything. You put it back, then you're the vandal.

You, sir, are wrong:

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia

I told you the article is wrong, and you deliberately put the bad information back in. You are the vandal.

I understand this can be rather frustrating, but I can see a few things that were going against you:

1. You didn't sign the comment or give any information about yourself. Unsigned statements are often associated with vandals on the wiki. We obviously assume good faith, but remember that most of us aren't specialists in geology, so we couldn't tell you if the contents of a technical paper really support the information in the article. Thus the assumption--not a particularly good one, but perhaps a necessary weasel for the purposes of building an open encyclopedia--is that these people with sources are more likely to be right than this random anon with no sources.

The article was written by someone who knows nothing about geology, why should I have to give my degree to point out an error? If you don't know geology, and you can't tell whether the technical paper supports what is said, please don't write the article. I hope he's not writing more articles for wikipedia.

1. Tying into that: Yes, it is extremely annoying to ensure that all information is properly sourced. But you need to make your case. Because we don't know as much about the field--especially considering that this particular article seems to be about a fairly new concept--we as laypeople recognize we're not in a position to evaluate or even understand a technical geological article. So you, the apparent expert, have to take the time and energy to do that yourself. You don't have to like it, but if you care about it this much, that is your burden.

You don't know enough to see that the article doesn't have a word about melting ice caps in it? It's not a new concept.

1. You seem to have assumed malice or incompetence, when in actuality it appears likely that the admins with authority to change DYK are just too busy--with life, not Wikipedia--to actually do what you want done. These things that go up on the main page can take many hours to be updated, simply because everyone who works on these things is a volunteer and does it whenever they get the spare time. So chill... maybe someone'll take care of it.

Then you should do better and not post it in the first place.

1. You blanked the page. That was kind of rude. I know you wanted to make a dramatic gesture, but trust me, it just annoys people and doesn't really get you anywhere. Sometimes you have to live with imperfection. I'm a law student and I see not-quite-accurate stuff on law-related articles all the time--but I put up with it, because I don't have my sources in front of me, or because the actual situation would be nigh-impossible to explain in a manner a non-specialist could understand.

You shared bad information with a hundred thousand people. That's much ruder than removing the information from 100,000 people or however many read the main page. Wikipedia wins rudeness. If you don't have editors who can write technical articles, don't put them in such a public place for everyone!

1. You called the bad info vandalism. That's tantamount to calling me a traitor, and we reserve the title for only the most odious sorts of editors who intentionally and maliciously disrupt the encyclopedia. This is more a problem of carelessness (or, to use a term from my field, negligence). It's more like neglecting to clean up some oil on the ground than intentionally putting it there. If someone slips and falls on the first bit of oil, it's an accident (or should I say negligence); if they slip an fall on the second one, it's battery. The person who falls is every much as injured, but the person who left the oil there gets treated very differently: the guy who just forgot to clean it up will only be liable for compensation, but the guy who intentionally left it there will be assessed punitive damages and may be charged criminally, as well. The difference between putting bad information in the encyclopedia intentionally and putting bad information there because you honestly think it's the truth--or because you have reason to believe so--is similar. Many people put in common misconceptions in a lot of articles; we remove them quickly and get on with it, since most of the time the incorrect info is someone's honest mistake, and we don't want to scare the newbies. It's policy to assume good faith for a reason, you know.

I posted a reason in my edit summary and on the article talk page. You chose to ignore it. Intentional is part of vandalism.

Finally, please recall: In a few hours, the offending DYK blurb will be removed from the Main Page entirely and quite probably forgotten forever. DYK gets updated pretty frequently. Also--I seriously doubt that a lot of people really look to DYK that much.

So hang in there. It'll be all right in the end. --Lockesdonkey (talk) 08:05, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

So, it's okay if it's wrong as long as it's only there for a few hours? Is that the standard for encyclopedias?