User talk:Paul Allens

November 2019

Hello, I'm Larry Hockett. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit seemed less than neutral and has been removed. If you think this was a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Larry Hockett (Talk) 10:03, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Recent editing

Hi - I've noticed you've been making small changes to a number of different articles today. I'm afraid that I've had to undo quite a few of them because you introduced grammatical errors into articles, or wrote in a manner that is not compliant with our manual of style, such as addressing the reader directly as 'you'. Please be more careful with your edits, and be sure that what you are doing is actually improving the text. Thanks GirthSummit _(blether) 10:27, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

December 2019

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Pakistani rupee, appears to have been inappropriate, and has been reverted. Please feel free to use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Please read WP:ENGVAR. You were not correcting spelling mistakes. David Biddulph (talk) 09:09, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi Paul. Thank you for your corrections to grammar and spelling. Some of these have been reverted because they contravene our policy on varieties of English. The spellings that you are taught in school in America are not always those used in other varieties of English. Our policy on which spelling to use is given at WP:Engvar. Please do not change spellings without a good international reason.

You will also note that some word changes have been reverted because they change the meaning of a sentence. Keep up the good work, but please be careful. Dbfirs 21:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at British literature. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. General Ization ^Talk 17:51, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

January 2020

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did to Mailbox provider. Wikipedia is not a collection of links, nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include, but are not limited to, links to personal websites, links to websites with which you are affiliated (whether as a link in article text, or a citation in an article), and links that attract visitors to a website or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam guideline for further explanations. Because Wikipedia uses the nofollow attribute value, its external links are disregarded by most search engines. If you feel the link should be added to the page, please discuss it on the associated talk page rather than re-adding it. [1] GermanJoe (talk) 15:04, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Extremely problematic edits

@Girth Summit: you've warned this editor before. He's gone through articles mentioning the word "job", and thus at Book of Job[2] and Job in Islam[3] he's ended up referring to "The Job". Also " failed at attempting Job" and "suggested that God was not a rewarding Job". There are some good edits but I have no idea how many bad ones there are, I don't have the time to check them all. Sadly I think that this editor is doing more harm than good. Except for their reply to you on your talk page, they've ignored all the messages above. Doug Weller talk 12:07, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted a number of Paul Allen's edits that seem to be attempting to 'fix' grammar but often ignore content, meaning or WP:ENGVAR. While some edits are fine, I agree with Doug Weller that unfortunately this editor seems to be doing more harm than good. Melcous (talk) 12:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller I just did a few spot checks on Paul's contribs. As with Melcous, I'm seeing an assortment of decent gnomish edits, but some massive clangers like the 'Job --> the job' ones you mentioned above.

Paul Allens - there is a concept here referred to as competence is required. Those changes to the articles about Job go beyond what could easily be described as an oversight - I can't tell whether you were deliberately vandalising those articles, or if this was done as some sort of accident. We are encouraged to assume good faith, and so I am going to discount the possibility that you were intentionally trying to damage the content of those articles; my problem is that the only other possibilities that I can think of for why you would do that would be: (a) that you didn't read the article before editing it, or (b) you read the article, but don't understand English well enough to know why your edits were wrong - neither of which is acceptable. Can you shed any light on why you made those particular changes? Best GirthSummit _(blether) 12:51, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Paul Allens, you posted the following on my talk page. I'm moving it here to keep discussion in one place.

Hi, I just read your message Girth, and I am extremely sorry about the last edits I have made referring to 'the job' and other problematic entries. I did not read the whole article carefully and tried to fix some grammatical errors which I think have gone wrong. I apologize for those edits, and now I would strictly follow the guidelines. Thank you for your message.

I'm concerned that you would edit an article that is so obviously about a person called Job, rather than the idea of paid employment, and misinterpret it like that. It seems to me that you either didn't read it at all, in which case you absolutely should not have been editing it, or you simply don't understand English well enough to pick up on that kind of thing. Reviewing your edits, sometimes they are reasonable corrections, but there are far too many where you are not improving the sentences you're editing. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to block your account from editing, but please take this as a final warning - your editing seems to consist primarily of making minor tweaks to grammar. Sometimes this results in a small improvement, sometimes it makes little difference, but sometimes it is to the very serious detriment to the sentence, introducing obvious glaring errors. Other people are having to tidy up after you - that needs to stop. GirthSummit _(blether) 07:40, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Got it, thank you for your detailed response. I will take care next time.

Unfortunately Girth Summit the competence issue remains. Paul, you have made 10 new edits today. In this one you added an unnecessary definite article ('the') to the name of the publisher within a reference; in this one you added unnecessary and grammatically incorrect indefinite articles ('a') to 'social change' a 'change in high society' which changes the meaning; in this one you added another incorrect indefinite article which makes the whole sentence grammatically wrong; in this one you added an unnecessary definite article and a grammatically incorrect indefinite article; in this one you did make some helpful grammatical fixes but also added a grmmatically incorrect 'the' before lay-by and incorrectly changed 'cost' to 'costs'; in this one you added an unnecessary and grammatically incorrect s; and in this one an incorrect 'the'. Sorry to be pedantic, but all this is to point out that the vast majority of your edits are actually introducing grammatical errors into articles, suggesting your English skills are not as good as you think they are and you are just making work for other editors to clean up. I suggest you stop making these kinds of edits immediately. Melcous (talk) 08:01, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry I had a tool activated in the window, I will refrain from doing such edits next time as its creating more troubles. Please I request you to not ban my account, I will not give you any complaint from now. Please give me a chance to improve the mistakes. I will not introduce any type of grammatical errors now.

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