SimetraartemiS

Welcome!

Hello, SimetraartemiS, 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:

• Introduction and Getting started
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

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! --Macrakis (talk) 15:49, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Marvin Minsky

Thanks for your edits to Marvin Minsky. I have opened up a Request for Comments to get more editors involved in the discussion. For now, I'm refraining from editing the article, even though the section heading, "Child sex trafficking and abuse" is completely inappropriate. I still like my last version best so far, but I'm not restoring it because I don't want to edit war. Best, --Macrakis (talk) 15:58, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree that your last version was the best so far. Besides not mentioning the whole thing at all.

I am not fully sure if here is the place to respond to your message. I'll soon find out. SimetraartemiS (talk) 01:08, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

My experience with Wikipedia is that once it's clear that a topic is associated with an article, it's best to cover it, whether it really makes sense or not. If this were a traditional encyclopedia, the way to deal with irrelevant distractions would be to not mention them at all, as you suggest. But on Wikipedia, readers who notice the "gap" will try to fill it. So, for example, there's apparently a folk etymology of baklava circulating that claims it comes from the Arabic word baqlah 'bean', which is ridiculous. But if you don't mention that theory in the article, someone will come by and add it, without saying that it is unsupported by any serious etymologist. So best to get ahead of that, include the claim, and debunk it. --Macrakis (talk) 12:13, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

There's a funny story from a friend of mine about baklava. Her grandmother had decided to send her some baklava from Cyprus to Switzerland. The postman rings her door bell with a sticky, dripping parcel. The embarrassed postman asks if he could go wash his hands somewhere. The only packaging was the carboard box from the pastry shop and some aluminium foil. The grandmother couldn't understand why my friend told her to never mail any baklava ever again!

As for ethymology, who ever made baklava with beans?!

PS I'm surprised that you're not participating in the RfC discussion... --Macrakis (talk) 12:27, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Appologies for the ignorance, what/where is the RfC discussion? SimetraartemiS (talk) 13:45, 10 September 2019 (UTC) Oh, you meant the talk page on Marvin's page?SimetraartemiS (talk) 14:04, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Request for Comments (RfC) on Minsky Talk page --Macrakis (talk) 15:05, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for setting the record straight with Snow. SimetraartemiS (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

The Biography of Living Persons (BLP) guidelines say smething about being careful about diffamation. Why are there no BDP guidelines? Especially when the person has a spouse and/or children still alive. SimetraartemiS (talk) 03:17, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, under US (and most other) law, a dead person cannot sue for defamation. There are WP:BDP guidelines basically saying "wait a couple of years". --Macrakis (talk) 19:52, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Seems like it's one step forward and two steps back with the editing war. SimetraartemiS (talk) 02:08, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Don't worry about the article itself for now. The discussion seems to be going pretty well on the Talk page. I expect an uninvolved editor will step in and close the RfC with a declaration of "rough consensus" supporting my draft -- this is not something that we can do. At that point, anyone who tries to go back to the "sex abuse" version will be "editing against consensus". --Macrakis (talk) 19:52, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

And what happens when "editing against consensus"? I woudl likr to believe in "gentleman behaviour" and that no one will do that, but let's be realistic. SimetraartemiS (talk) 04:04, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia tries to operate as much as possible on consensus. If one or a small number of editors are consistently editing against consensus and edit warring, they will first receive polite warnings, and if they persist, they are subject to escalating restrictions, starting with a short block on editing that particular article, then maybe a longer block on editing articles on a certain topic (e.g., for nationalists pushing their country's POV on related articles), then possibly a total ban on editing Wikipedia. Sometimes those editors are so aggressive that they'll create a new identity, and continue. But there are various ways of recognizing that and reacting to it as well. All this demands some persistence and patience. --Macrakis (talk) 17:39, 20 September 2019 (UTC)