Men's rights movement probation notice edit

  Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, A Voice for Men, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Talk:Men's rights movement/Article probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is necessarily any problem with your edits. Thank you. -- Bbb23 (talk) 22:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for taking the time to notify me, if you have the chance, can you please explain why you undid 5 hours worth of work? Also an explanation of what white listing / black listing means, and what should be done about it would be appreciated. I am not affiliated with the organization in question, and tried to leave factual and properly referenced information in my rewrite. Brian95620 (talk) 22:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't believe that you are not affiliated with the organization. I also don't believe that you are not familiar with the WP:BLACKLIST. Otherwise, you would not have attempted to get around it with the unlinkable URLs pointing to the organization's website, which is blacklisted. Almost all of your edits were self-serving, touting the organization and using self-published "sources" to back up what you put in. I rarely get involved in content issues in the men's rights movement, but your edits were blatantly inappropriate.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:47, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
You are mistaken, I am not affiliated with AVFM. I do read some of their articles, but I am not employed by them in any capacity. My request for information about the blacklist/whitelist was genuine. I am rather new at wikipedia editing, and I don't understand what purpose it serves, and more importantly, what the appropriate way to deal with it is. I attempted to put full references for the material I added including the "http://www.", and was prevented from adding links to the source of my edits because it was blacklisted. As the organization in question is the subject of the page, some references to it are necessary if that material is to have references at all. As mentioned above, I am not affiliated with AVFM, thus the edits are not self serving. Yes the edits all involved the organization in question, because its the subject of the article. Again, I am new to wikipedia editing, I spent almost two hours reading wiki pages just to try to get the format for the page correct, if you believe my edits were blatantly inappropriate, then please explain how it should be done, so I don't waste that much time again. Brian95620 (talk) 18:52, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I didn't say "self-serving"; I said self-published. Generally, Wikipedia wants secondary sources in support of material, not sources created by the subject itself. Adding a list of the organization's staff was a complete waste of your time and doesn't belong in the article. Wikipedia is not a proxy for the organization's website.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:20, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Not to nitpick but you did say "Almost all of your edits were self-serving", and thank you for clarifying that listing the staff of the organization was not needed. Was there anything else wrong with my edits? Brian95620 (talk) 19:44, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
You're right about the self-serving - sorry about that. The section "Judicial Accountability Committee" and its subsections did not belong in the article. If those lawsuits are noteworthy, there would be secondary sources to them that include AVfM's role in the suits. The first suit listed had no secondary sources. The second had one secondary source and one unreliable source (advocacy organization). Neither of them mentioned AVfM.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:19, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
No worries. If I am understanding you correctly, and please correct me if I am not, what your saying is that news sites are good secondary sources, but advocacy sites are not? This is a problem for that page because it is an advocacy and activism organization, most mentions of its work are going to be on other advocacy pages, or its own articles. As its own articles are both self published sources and blacklisted, and other advocacy groups are unreliable sources, the page itself is going to suffer a severe lack of information(To be blunt, its a stub). As the topic is controversial most mainstream sources are going to shy away from mentioning anything involving it. I was attempting to setup a better more in dept article covering most of what they do, do you have any suggestions on how to do that properly? Brian95620 (talk) 22:03, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Advocacy articles like AVfM are generally notable only to the extent they are covered in mainstream sources. If there's not enough coverage of that kind, the article may be deleted for failing to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:32, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me, I don't think I am going to bother trying to fix or edit a page again. It seems like there is a policy against doing anything(with overlapping and contradicting policies), and it's really not worth my time to spend the next month learning them all so that I can muck threw arguments on what is, or should be, and according to what. Have a good holiday season. Brian95620 (talk) 23:16, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Usually, the best thing to do if you're brand new to Wikipedia is to make small changes to articles and learn things slowly. You kinda jumped in with a significant change in a controversial area, which is tough to do. Thanks for being so polite during our discussion. Happy holidays to you as well.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:25, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Small changes hu? I can work with that. Hopefully someone will explain whats wrong with them with edits instead of reverting them, so I can learn how it should be done. What would a flame war accomplish? Civility has allowed me to learn a great deal. I knew the article was controversial, and was hoping people would build upon what I started. I will try again with smaller changes. Brian95620 (talk) 20:02, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Small changes to "ordinary" articles. Even so, don't be surprised if an edit of yours is reverted. Don't look at as a slam. Best thing is take the problem to the article talk page and discuss it.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:22, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Welcome edit

Hello Brian95620, and Welcome to Wikipedia!

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Brian95620, good luck, and have fun.Bbb23 (talk) 20:23, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply