User talk:Marchjuly

Sevcohaha sock

Hello Marchjuly. I'm fairly certain I've identified a Sevcohaha sock (you created the original SPI). Do you think it's worth filing a report (I'm not sure they have multiple accounts at the moment)? Because of their behaviour/attitude, I've also twigged that it's an editor who vanished after being blocked in January 2014 for personal attacks. Number 57 21:20, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Number 57. I'm not sure which account you're referring to, so I can't give my opinion either way. Bbb23 was the administrator who closed that SPI, so if you're worried about mistakenly accusing someone of sockpuppetry, then maybe ask them for advice. However, if you really feel this is a case of WP:DUCK, then you can start a new SPI. Just follow the instructions in "How to open an investigation" at WP:SPI. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:38, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

It's more of a question of whether you think they're worth blocking if they're back to using a single account, or is their past behaviour enough for a block? Cheers, Number 57 21:46, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

If you look at User talk:Sevcohaha, you'll see that they did appeal their block as recently as February and their request was declined. They also had their user talk page access revoked by Vanjagenije, so there may be more to this than what it looks like. As I said, I don't know the account you're referring to, so I can't look at the edit history and say either way. They were advised to take the standard offer; If they ignored that advice by creating another account and returned to editing as before, then that indicates that they still don't fully get why they were blocked and that they should be reported. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough. The account is Bring back Regi Blinker (talk · contribs). The clues:

• Sevcohaha's usernames were all digs at Rangers. Regi Blinker is a former Celtic player (Rangers' main rivals)
• One of their first edits was to return to Katie McCabe, created by SevcoFraudsters and also edited by CraigWhyteisthelegalownerofIbrox.
• Other articles in common include Stephanie Roche (SevcoFraudsters), Celtic F.C. women (SevcoFraudsters), Castlebar Celtic W.F.C. (SevcoFraudsters), Leah Williamson (Målfarlig!), FAI Women's Cup (SevcoFraudsters, CraigWhyteisthelegalownerofIbrox), Malin Diaz (Målfarlig!), Fran Kirby (Målfarlig!, CraigWhyteisthelegalownerofIbrox), Vittsjö GIK (Målfarlig!),

In several of those edit histories you can also see the vanished user. I think it's a very obvious sock, but I'm not particularly familiar with the SPI process, so I'll leave it to you if that's ok? Number 57 22:14, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

• The account is  Confirmed. Thanks, Number 57, but SPI isn't that scary. You seem perfectly able to present evidence on this Talk page.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:45, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

@Number 57: The fact that Sevcohaha has made quite a number of good edits indicates that this is not competency issue. They posted a very sincere sounding unblock request on their user talk and clearly stated they were willing to accept whatever the reviewing admin's final decision turned out to be. They were advised to wait 6 months before requesting another unblock. If they had done that, they would've have been unblocked and could have gone back to editing. For some unexplained reason, they decided to create another account and go back to editing the same pages. Unlike before perhaps, they clearly knew this is not acceptable based upon their unblock request, which unfortunately means any future unblock request is going to be viewed with suspicion. They've just made it a bit harder for a any administrator to remove the block.

It was only a the use of a single phrase that made me wonder about the connection between Målfarlig! and ServcoFraudster. For you, it had to do with the connection between the usernames and Rangers FC. All editors have certain tells that they probably never realize they have until someone points them out. Sevcohaha went back to editing the same genre of articles and making basically the same comments in talk page threads. Someone else would've eventually noticed this and probably checked to verify their suspicions just as you did. It's puzzling why Sevcohaha chose to travel down that path once again and kind of makes you wonder if they were just conducting another experiment (see their user talk) to see if anyone would notice. This Is Spinal Tap should be required viewing for everyone. You can learn a lot from that movie. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:40, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Marchjuly from Leon Raper

Hi Marchjuly,

Thank you very much for your comments about submitting my page for possible approval. I'll get that done by tomorrow. I'll submit my page and if it is rejected I'll understand. If it is ok, I will go back prior to some revisions by your people that I didn't think were necessary. If you don't want me to do that please let me know.

Many of the negative comments are regarding my references. They keep asking me for citations. I have copies of all documents I put into references - with other people talking about me. There are also quite a few pictures in the articles. The articles going back to the early 1970's are all stored in my garage. I wish I could be more helpful.

There was also another comment: "Raper was the first web site developer on the internet related to swing dancing.[citation needed]." Maybe, I should have changed the word "first" to "smartest" otherwise how would have obtained the domain names SwingDance.com (1995), LindyHop.com (1995), DanceCorner.com (1996) and RetroSwing.com (1998). In about 1961 I lost LindyHop.com

I want to thank you very much for your help,

Leon Raper

Hubert Leon Raper 21:25, 7 May 2016 (UTC) Hubert Leon Raper 22:41, 6 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeonRaper (talk • contribs)

Hi Hubert Leon Raper. I've only just done a few small things; other editors such as Jbhunley, Theroadislong, Joseph2302, GB fan and KrakatoaKatie, etc. have done much more to try and help you through this than I have. I understand how frustrating Wikipedia can be to a new editor, but the advice and suggestions they have been giving you are good in my opinion and not really negative. Please try to understand that there is really no your people when it comes to Wikipedia. Anyone who edits Wikipedia (even a single time) is an editor, so to quote Lennon "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together" when it comes to trying to help build an encyclopedia.

Wikipedia has it's own way of defining notability which is quite different from how the term is used out in the real world. Wikipedia articles are intended to reflect what independent reliable sources say about a subject, so what we as editors know personally to be true needs to be verified through such sources. It looks to me as if some of the references you've provided are indeed from reliable sources, but there's no way for Wikipedia to verify what is written in them because they cannot be accessed via the Internet. Wikipedia does not have any way to access all of the documentation you have in your possession, so you are basically asking it to take you at your word. While it's true that sources only have to be published and are not required to be online, it is much harder to verify something packed away in a box in someone's basement than it is for something located online. It is also harder to know which source is being used to support which bit of article content and whether the source provides the significant coverage needed to establish Wikipedia notability. You can help others know what's in these sources by providing as much information about them (including some quotes if necessary) on Draft talk:Leon Raper. Just create a new section for each source and explain how it helps establish Wikipedia notability. This will at least give others some information to work with and help them better understand the source.

One question that you might want to ask yourself is whether you are simply here to get an article about you added to Wikipedia. Your editing history indicates that you are what is called a single purpose account (SPA). There's nothing wrong per se with being a SPA, but sometimes such editors become so focused on a single tree that they completely miss the rest of the forest. It seems as if you have lots of knowledge about dance and other subjects, knowledge that Wikipedia can most definitely use, so it might be a good idea for you to expand your scope a bit and trying editing some existing articles. As I posted to you somewhere, Wikipedia has over 5,000,000 articles which still can be improved. Creating a new article is pretty hard to do, even for experienced editors, so branching out a bit and editing other articles is a really good way to learn how Wikipedia does things. It's also a good way to get ideas on to how to improve your drafts. There is also a Wikiproject called WP:DANCE where editors with interests such as yours can exchange ideas and help each other out. It's OK to put your draft on the back burner for a while and try to edit some other articles.

Finally, please try to properly sign your posts. The way you are currently doing so is not really a way considered to be acceptable. The easiest way to sign is to simply add 4 tilde (~~~~) at the end of your posts. This lets the Wikipedia software know who you are and provides links to your user page. You can add these tilde yourself or click on them in the "Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~" located at the bottom of the editing window right above the "Edit summary" field. Signing your posts really makes is much easier for other editors to interact with you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:21, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Marchjuly,

I need help because I keep getting the following message: "This submission's references do not adequately show the subject's notability." I had much notability presented in my original submission to Wikipedia. However, the volunteers stayed on my back until I removed most of it. I don't think they had a clue about any type of dancing. They didn't seem to want to know much about me. They all seemed to want me to fail to get approved for a Wikipedia web page.

I also don't think my proposed page has been sent to anyone in the Wikipedia Dance Community. If they find a real swing dancer there they will definitely know who I am. They have also probably been to my websites from which I send free dance information to dancers all over the world.

Wikipedia already has a page for Skippy Blair. I have helped Skippy for over 50 years. She just called me a few months ago for a description of Flying Lindy. I also have several pages I wrote helping her with suggestions for her "Dance Terminology Notebook." Skippy is a very nice lady, but she does not have anything on the web that would compete me in any way. Yes she has done a lot for swing dancing speaking and getting paid for it to attend events. My dance web sites are sent for free.

The following are my most notable awards, events & dance videos.

2015 World Swing Dance Hall of Fame Award (Special Recognition Award) - Error: Video heading falsely says US Open, Should be WSDHOF.

http://www.matvsport.com/videos/242981/us-open-2015-hall-of-fame-leon-raper-6-6mb/

2010 California Swing Dance Hall of Fame (Golden Stars Award) - The most highly recognized awards in the world. See 2010

http://casdhof.com/hall_of_fame.html

1973 Flying Lindy competition dancing by Leon Raper & Colleen Raper/Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyLUAJkClmc

1973 World Swing Dance Championships at the Palladium in Hollywood, CA dancing by Leon Raper & Colleen Raper/Johnson (No Video)

Someone removed this from my References on Wikipedia.

Should I just give up, or should I keep on trying to get Wikipedia page approval.

Leon Raper

Hubert Leon Raper 21:25, 7 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeonRaper (talk • contribs)

Hi again Hubert Leaon Raper. Before I try to answer your questions about your draft, I am going to suggest a few things that I think will make it much easier to communicate with other editors via Wikipedia. Some of these may have been suggested before by myself and others, so I apologize if I am telling you something you already know. To be frank, the harder you make it to communicate with you, the less likely some editors are going to be willing to try and help.

• Please take some time to read through Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Talk pages are how we as editors communicate with each other, so it's important to understand how to use them correctly. I think it would be wise for you to put your draft to the side for a little while and better familiarize yourself with how to use talk pages.
• Please sign your posts using the 4 tilde (~~~~). As I and others have said, there is a special way of signing your posts on Wikipedia so that not only other editors can tell who posted what where and when, but also so that the Wikipedia software can tell who posted what where and when. Simply adding "Hubert Leon Raper 21:25, 7 May 2016 (UTC)" is not sufficient or even efficient. It takes over 30 charcters to type all of that when all you really need is to type ~~~~ at the end of your post for the same information to be automatically provided by the Wikipedia software.

Now, I will try to answer your questions.

• Wikipedia's notability guidelines require that subjects have received signficant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. Significant coverage means something more than just a passing or brief mention in a newspaper or magazine article or on a website. The coverage should be such that any editor/reader, including perhaps those who do not know anything about you or about swing dancing, can look at the the source and say "OK, this is not just name dropping, but fairly in depth coverage about who this subject is and what they have accomplished, etc." This does not mean that you can only cite a 1500 page book that someone has written about you as a reference, but it does mean that something a little more in depth is needed to show notability than websites/article which only mention you by name or only very briefly (perhaps in association with some event, organization or other individual). So a website such as casdhof.com/hall_of_fame.html is probably sufficient to show that you have received such an honor, but not in depth enough to establish Wikipedia notability. The only way I could see this being helpful in establishing Wikipedia notability was if this award can be shown to be dance world equivalent to major awards such as Oscars, Grammys, Pulitzer Prizes, Nobel Prizes, etc. The award would have to be so notable in its own right that anyone recieving it is almost surely to receive signficant coverage of it in reliable sources.
• Sources which are independent from the subject matter are needed to show Wikipedia notability. Anything you have authored/published in print or online such as personal websites, YouTube videos, books, etc. are considered by Wikipedia to be primary sources. Primary sources may be used in certain cases to verify article content, but Wikipedia requires that sources written by other persons completely unconnected to the subject matter be provided to establish notability. I am assuming that the Arizona Daily Sun and Orange County Register, etc. articles you have cited as references were written about you, but not written by you. These may be helpful in establishing Wikipedia notability and I have tried looking for online versions of all of the references you listed, but have not had any luck so far. As I explained above, sources are not required to be online but being online does make it much easier for any editor anywhere in the world to verify the source. If an AfC reviewer is unable to verify what is written in the cited sources, they are going to be less likely to approve a draft.
• I am not familiar with Skippy Blair, but whether she has a Wikipedia article written about her (actually it's a stub in her case) is not really relevent to whether there should be a Wikipedia article written about you. As I've posted before, there are lots of articles added to Wikipedia each and every day which probably shouldn't be added in the first place. Sometimes these are deleted rather quickly and other times it takes years for someone to notice. What I'm trying to say is the fact that another article exists does automatically not mean it should exist. That is why saying that other stuff exists is not really considered justification that an article written about you should exist. Wikipedia notability is not transferable or inherited, so an individual is not really Wikipedia notable simply because they may have a connection with someone who is.
• Many drafts submitted to AfC are rejected the first couple of times they are submitted. It has nothing at all to do with the AfC reviewers wanting to see you fail or not wanting to know anything about you, but everything to do with whether the reviewer feels the draft satisfies relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The AfC reviewers who declined your draft are Samtar and Onel5969. You can ask them to clarify their concerns about the draft at User talk:Samtar and User talk:Onel5969. There is no limit on the number of times a draft may be submitted, but constantly submitting the same version over and over again is eventually going to be seen as disruptive. I cannot say whether you should give up. Wikipedia editing is supposed to be fun, but it can also be very frustating when things don't go as we like. The question (once again) that you need to ask yourself is whether you are here to help build an encyclopedia or here only to get an article about you added to Wikipedia. If it's the former, then they are many ways to do so and have fun. If it's the latter, then the end result tends to be more frustration.

For what it's worth, "Skippy Blair" was created in 2009 by an editor named Altenmann who is still active on Wikipedia. I've pinged Altenmann in this post, but perhaps you can directly ask them to take a look at your draft by posting at User talk:Altenmann. You can also post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance and ask some editors more familiar with dance related articles to take a look as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:03, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Marchjuly,

Thanks for the info about Skippy and Altenmann.

I would like to make a recommendation regarding my web page. Can we take one issue at a time and resolve it or delete my page.

My first recommendation would to solve the autobiography issue. Wikipedia people know I wrote my page. However if the page is published Billions of people throughout the world won't have a clue who wrote it. If this issue can be resolved then we can move on to the next issue. If not Wikipedia can just cancel my page and I'll move on to something else in my life.

Thanks,

Hubert Leon Raper Hubert Leon Raper 19:13, 9 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ::::LeonRaper (talk • contribs)

Hi again Hubert Leon Raper. I am not sure how I can help you in any other ways than what I've tried so far since there are only so many ways to say the same things that others have been trying to explain to you as well. Trying to write an article about yourself is an autobiography according to Wikipedia. Autobiographies are not expressly prohibited, but they are highly discouraged. Creating a new article that complies with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is hard to begin with; creating an article about yourself or something you are closely connected which complies with Wikipedia's various policies and guidelines is much much harder to do. It's not impossible, but it's extremely hard. So, the problem is not so much that it is you writing the article (i.e., it's an autobiography; It's that you've failed to establish that you are Wikipedia notable by showing you have received significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. Wikipedia has no way of verifying any of the documentation you have in your possession, so you basically seem to be saying "trust me, I have these articles, etc. and I know they show I'm Wikipedia notable. You need to take me at my word". That is a leap of faith that Wikipedia simply does not take and your inability to understand that basic concept makes it easy for others to assume that your primary interest in Wikipedia is promoting/recording your activities/accomplishments in dancing.

The next thing you seem to not completely understand is that Wikipedia articles are not owned by the subjects they are written about or by the people who create/edit them. In other words, it's not "your page" or "your draft" any more than it is "my page" or "my draft". Editors have absolutely no ownership rights or exclusive editorial control over any content they add to Wikipedia. Anyone anywhere in the world can change whatever they want whenever they want for any reason they want and there's very little that can be done to stop them. All we can do as editors is try and clean up improper edits when we find them and keep articles as stable and as compliant as possible. Creating content is one aspect of Wikipedia. If you're looking for total control over what is said about you, then you're better off using one of the websites you have to reach out to others.

You also seem to feel that as long as you don't explicitly say "written by Hubert Leon Raper" somewhere within the article that only "Wikipedia people" will know. That's irrelevant and not true. First of all, there are no "Wikipedia people" per se because anyone who reads/edits an article can claim they are a "Wikipedia person". Anyone who can access an article can click on its edit history and see who created the article and when so anyone accessing "Leon Raper" can see it was created by someone whose user name is Leon Raper. The same person can then click on the link to your user page and read every post anyone has ever added to your user talk page or see any post/edit you have ever made in Wikipedia. Anyone can do the same for me or any other editor. There's pretty much a record of every edit ever made on Wikipedia, so it's quite simple to find out who created/edited what and when.

I have tried suggesting ways for you to become more familiar with Wikipedia and how it works, but they seem to have fallen on deaf ears. You even seem unwilling to do something as simple as properly signing your posts using 4 tilde even though it's been explained to you numerous times by myself and others. This post not intended to be disrespectful, but as I said at the beginning there are so many ways to say the same thing over and over again. Wikipedians are volunteers and I'm pretty sure that you're going to be hard pressed to find anyone willing to come at their own expense and to personally inspect the documentation you have it your possession. Moreover, even if they did it would still mean very little since there would still be no way for others to verify said documentation. So, you need to provide as much information about these sources as you can on the talk page of the draft so that others have something more to work with. That's no guarantee that doing so will get your draft approved, but it may lead to a better understanding of these sources and whether they are useful for establishing notability.

It's getting harder to avoid coming to the conclusion that you are more interested in what Wikipedia can do for you than what you can do for Wikipedia. Unfortunately, you are going to find it hard to get others to help you if that's their impression of you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:02, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Hubert Leon Raper 15:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I have 2 .pdf files containing Articles and Pictures (1) Orange County Register, Oct 1974 and (2) Jitterbug Magazine, Sept 1992. Just let me know how to get them to you. Leon Raper Hubert Leon Raper 15:18, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Hubert Leon Raper 15:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeonRaper (talk • contribs)