User talk:Отец Никифор

Welcome!

Hi Отец Никифор! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

As you get started, you may find this short tutorial helpful:

Learn more about editing

Alternatively, the contributing to Wikipedia page covers the same topics.

If you have any questions, we have a friendly space where experienced editors can help you here:

Get help at the Teahouse

If you are not sure where to help out, you can find a task here:

Volunteer at the Task Center

Happy editing! I dream of horses (Hoofprints) (Neigh at me) 01:43, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for useful links! I looked for places like Teahouse Отец Никифор (talk) 21:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Introduction to contentious topics

You have recently edited a page related to gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them, a topic designated as contentious. This is a brief introduction to contentious topics and does not imply that there are any issues with your editing.

A special set of rules applies to certain topic areas, which are referred to as contentious topics. These are specially designated topics that tend to attract more persistent disruptive editing than the rest of the project and have been designated as contentious topics by the Arbitration Committee. When editing a contentious topic, Wikipedia’s norms and policies are more strictly enforced, and Wikipedia administrators have special powers in order to reduce disruption to the project.

Within contentious topics, editors should edit carefully and constructively, refrain from disrupting the encyclopedia, and:

• adhere to the purposes of Wikipedia;
• comply with all applicable policies and guidelines;
• follow editorial and behavioural best practice;
• comply with any page restrictions in force within the area of conflict; and
• refrain from gaming the system.

Editors are advised to err on the side of caution if unsure whether making a particular edit is consistent with these expectations. If you have any questions about contentious topics procedures you may ask them at the arbitration clerks' noticeboard or you may learn more about this contentious topic here. You may also choose to note which contentious topics you know about by using the {{Ctopics/aware}} template.

-- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 10:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Your Teahouse question about SEGM

Hi, Отец Никифор. I think your Teahouse question as well as the reasoning in the discussion you started at Talk:Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine show an interest in improving articles. This one happened to be in a very contentious topic area, but good reasoning based on Wikipedia policies and guidelines can (and should) be used in discussions on any topic. I happen to disagree strongly with your conclusions about bias and lack of neutrality at SEGM, but that's not why I am posting here. Rather, it is to say that your reasoning shows a willingness to think about it and engage on Talk pages, and then at the Teahouse when you had questions, and I think you have the makings of a very good editor here, and I wanted to encourage you to continue.

A lot of key terms at Wikipedia such as WP:Notability, WP:Verifiability, WP:BIAS, WP:NEUTRALITY, and WP:DUE WEIGHT have very specific meanings that cannot be completely understood from their dictionary definitions. You are still a brand new editor, and it takes a while to get on board with all this, so I would agree with the recommendations from other Teahouse responders to set aside discussions about very contentious topics, but only for the time being, as I think you will come up to speed more rapidly than most. In the meantime, watch those discussions, and start dipping into policy and guideline pages to learn about them as you go.

You could also read past discussions. Many popular topics have archival Talk pages containing past discussions that you can consult (but not respond to!). Talk:Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, for example, has three such archival pages: they are linked as "1, 2 3" at the top of the Talk page in the Talk header just above the archive search button. Any time you are tempted to start a new Talk page discussion (especially if on a contentious topic), I would urge you to read the archives first; a typical newbie gambit is to raise their brilliant idea at Talk at some article, unaware that it is has been exhaustively discussed previously, possibly coming to a meeting of the minds involving many editors over quite some time working hard to find a compromise that is acceptable to many with differing opinions. It can be rather frustrating to see a new editor come in with their bright, shiny idea, blissfully unaware of this history. That doesn't mean that previous discussions lock the article into a particular pose, but since Wikipedia is a volunteer, collaborative effort, it does mean you should be respectful of the effort made by fellow editors, and not jump in feet first without a suitable awareness of what came before.

I hope you continue editing, and continue using the Teahouse (and the WP:Help desk) as you continue to expand your editing here, as I think you will become a fine editor. And I'd like to also add my Welcome to Wikipedia to you! Mathglot (talk) 15:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed response with links and suggestions on where to find more information. I have read the NPOV policy, but I still don't quite understand how decisions are made regarding what is considered WP:DUE or WP:FALSEBALANCE. Is there a specific procedure for this, or is it interpreted at the discretion of senior editors?

In the WP:NPOV guidelines, there's an example stating that even something as universally condemned as genocide should not be denounced in Wikipedia's voice. I find this example quite illustrative:

Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that genocide is an evil action but may state that genocide has been described by John So-and-so as the epitome of human evil.

I don’t see a clear method for supporting a position. If I find 10 articles from reliable sources, would that be enough to reconsider an article? Отец Никифор (talk) 18:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

You should've come with your ten articles to support your POV from the very start. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 21:50, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

If you read WP:DUE carefully, you will see that it is not a numbers game, but one of of proportion. It would be great if you could ponder WP:DUE for a while, and absorb it; even some senior editors completely do not get it. I remember a frustrating discussion at one of the French Revolution articles, were a senior-ish editor thought that his many sources listing America as one of the top influences of the French Revolution was sufficient to list it as a top influence, but he was mistaken. There are thousands of books and god knows how many articles about the French Revolution, and finding 25 sources all agreeing about something about it does not mean it can be added to the article, as there may be 3075 sources that say the opposite. That is what I mean about a numbers game. So, your question about "ten sources" cannot be answered in isolation, although it is certainly worth mentioning in a Talk page discussion, so that it is clear that it is not just the view of one or two sources. Still, depending on the total number of reliable sources available about conversion therapy (and I am guessing there are thousands), ten would be less than 0.1%, and thus qualify as a "tiny minority" (if that is all there are) and according to WP:DUE should not even be mentioned in the article at all.

So, try to shift your view away from the numbers game and to the proportion game, and proceed that way. Then the next question becomes, what if there are too many reliable secondary sources to consult all of them in order to get an accurate view of proportion of a given opinion among them? This is a long topic (upon which I ought to write an essay some day), but there are several approaches. One way, is through issuing unbiased search queries to a search engine and analyzing the results; this is tricky to perform, and trickier to analyze. Here is a discussion about changing the title of an article to The Buddha, which involved a lot of analysis of this type; see the § Discussion and the § Ngram tests.

Another way is through using the limited number of reliable tertiary sources (encyclopedias, dictionaries) as a proxy for what a too large number of secondary sources say. This was also used at that same discussion; the data backing it up is here. Bottom line: Wikipedia is not about Truth with a capital 'T', and we do not try to figure out 'who is right'; nor do we try to point out 'all sides'. What we do is clearly stated in WP:DUE and amounts to fairly representing the majority, and significant minority viewpoints (not in equal proportion), and ignoring the viewpoints ascribable only to a tiny minority (regardless if they are the ones who are right—if they are, that will be reflected in time in WP:SECONDARY sources, and some time after that (always afterward), Wikipedia, as a WP:TERTIARY source, will summarize the opinions of the majority of secondary sources).

Another way to put it: Wikipedia is always a lagging indicator; we are never are the vanguard of new trends or information. Mathglot (talk) 22:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I want to clarify that my intent is not to provide sources in support of conversion therapy, as I do not endorse it. My goal is simply to enhance the neutrality of the article. From my perspective, if I can identify at least 10 secondary sources from reputable media outlets that describe SEGM in a neutral manner, this could support the inclusion of more balanced coverage, rather than focusing solely on negative aspects. Currently, the SEGM page contains 33 references, and 10 neutral sources would represent a significant portion of the citations.

It seems the current negative framing is based on the assumption that the organization’s harmful nature is universally accepted. However, if other reliable sources recognize SEGM as a legitimate organization, it suggests that this view may not be as universally held as assumed. Does this reasoning seem valid? Отец Никифор (talk) 23:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

No, it does not, because of WP:DUE. I understood your intent perfectly from the beginning, and the goal is admirable. However, your claim that "if I can identify at least 10 secondary sources from reputable media outlets that describe SEGM in a neutral manner, this could support the inclusion of more balanced coverage" is not in line with Wikipedia policy on WP:DUEWEIGHT (assuming that the overwhelming majority of sources describe it otherwise, which is my understanding), and as I have already explained WP:DUE above and why you should not be relying on a numbers game here, I won't repeat myself, other than to say, let it go until you have a better understanding of WP:DUE. This has zero to do with the fact that the topic is a contentious one (other than the fact that it is more visible, and you get more pushback about it). Mathglot (talk) 04:29, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Which programming languages do you like?

Wikipedia has an insane amount of tools behind the scenes. Check out WP:BOTS and Wikipedia:Bot_activity_monitor. People write stuff in many languages, from the obscure to the well-known. Do you have any language preferences? Polygnotus (talk) 04:45, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I prefer python but know JS too Отец Никифор (talk) 09:41, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I've been very WP:BOLD and I have WP:COLLAPSEd the stuff above because those complicated debates suck. Coding is much more fun!

We got:

Action API

REST API

XTools API, see https://xtools.wmcloud.org/

EventStreams, see https://stream.wikimedia.org/v2/ui/#/

There are many scripts, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_scripts/List and Wikipedia:Scripts and Wikipedia:User scripts.

A lot of the older scripts need to be updated, because there were some breaking changes.

Have you seen mw:Manual:Pywikibot? The nerds hang out at WP:VPT. I have worked on stuff like User:Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences and User:Polygnotus/Scripts/SourceTable and User:Polygnotus/typo.js and User:Polygnotus/Scripts/TypoFixer.js. Polygnotus (talk) 09:46, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Отец Никифор (talk) 09:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Almost forgot, of course we also have WP:DUMPs and stuff like WP:AWB.

How good (or bad) are you at coding on a scale of hello world to Terry A. Davis? Polygnotus (talk) 10:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm professional Отец Никифор (talk) 13:07, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah I was hoping you had moved on from the gender stuff. It is no fun. Why bother repeating a mistake that has been made thousands of times already? Polygnotus (talk) 21:32, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Practice is the best way to learn. I'm not stuck on this topic and I'm trying to find ways to improve articles. No worries! Отец Никифор (talk) 14:28, 15 October 2024 (UTC)