User talk:Pjheadford

Welcome!

Hello, Pjheadford, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! DB1729^talk 15:19, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Categories

Hello. Regarding this recent edit of yours,[1] I noticed you attempted to add an item directly to a category page.

In Wikipedia, categories must be added to the article, not the other way around. Please see Wikipedia:FAQ/Categorization#How do I add an article to a category? For newer editors, it's understandably a counter-intuitive system.

Category pages are not intended to be exhaustive lists. They are navigation aids; merely groupings of related, existing English Wikipedia pages.

To categorize an article, first make sure it actually belongs to the category. Then, go to the article and add the category at the bottom of the page. To remove an article from a category, edit the article and remove the category. For instructions on how to do all this using VisualEditor, see Help:VisualEditor § Editing categories.

For further detailed information, see Help:Category and Wikipedia:Categorization. Let me know if you need any assistance or have any questions. Cheers! --DB1729^talk 15:21, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

July 2023

Hello, I'm Donald Albury. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Wrecking (shipwreck), but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at referencing for beginners. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Donald Albury 15:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

On the contrary, I removed romanticised hearsay. I have read two biographies of Daphne du Maurier, and I'm sure that in at least one of them she is quoted as apologising for starting the wreckers myth.

I've spoken to hundreds of fishermen around the South-West peninsula. None of them believe the myth. They and their families are offended that supposed adults believe these fairy tales.

How many legal prosecutions can you cite for luring ships onto rocks? Pjheadford (talk) 16:32, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Everything in Wikipedia has to be verifiable from reliable sources. Anything that does not have a citation to a reliable source can be challenged and removed. Anything we know personally, or have heard or read somewhere, should not be added, and may be summarily removed, unless we can point to a reliable source supporting it. In practice, editors add content to Wikipedia all the time without citing a reliable source, but once someone has challenged the content, it can be removed if a citation to a reliable source is not provided.

As for the sections in the Wrecking article on luring ships into wrecks, they can stand to be improved. I tried to provide sourced statements in the 'Luring ships with false lights' section debunking such claims, but other editors have added content with sources that supposedly support those claims, and I have not taken the time to investigate them. In general, if we do not have access to a source someone else has used, we assume on good faith that the content accurately represents the source, unless we have good reason to believe otherwise.

I looked a little today for the UK act prohibiting false lights that is alluded to in the article, but "false light" has a quite different meaning in law. I did add to the article (long ago) that there was never a claim of being lured by false lights in hundreds of wreck cases in the Admiralty court in Key West. Unfortunately, it is often hard to find a reliable source for something that didn't happen. Donald Albury 19:33, 17 July 2023 (UTC)