User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2017/October

Urgent query about the Radical centrism page

Dear Four Deuces, - I thanked you a couple of days ago for eliminating an unsourced paragraph about Emmanuel Macron on the Radical centrism page. I have worked on that page for five years now. I wonder if I could prevail upon you for advice and possibly assistance regarding another and very urgent matter on that page.

At 22:34 on October 17, an unregistered user entered at least 58 (yes, 58) stylistic changes on that page. He did not explain any of them; his entire revision-history comment consisted of, "Tag: Visual edit."

Many people have made valuable contributions to the Radical centrism page over the years. However, this person's edits do not appear to reflect familiarity with the Manual of Style and its ancillary pages. For example, he merges some clear and simple sentences to create complex ones, as he does with the first and second sentences of the introduction. And, for example, he removed periods at the end of captions even where those captions included complete sentences, in violation of WP:CAPFRAG. (I recently added several images and captions, so those do employ periods.)

Others of his changes simply reflect his personal stylistic preferences and are generally less deft that the sytle already employed. Some create confusion, as where he de-italicizes the opening fragment of each bulleted passage in the "Books on specific topics" sub-section. A couple of his changes are appropriate, as where he changed a hyphen to an en-dash. But the vast majority are not.

It would take hours (therefore, weeks … I have other responsibilities) for me to respond to each of his changes. In the meantime, the article will be stylistically degraded. And it's never been more popular.

Ideally, I would undo his 58+-item edit with an explanation such as, "This article has been styled to conform to WP:MOS and its ancillary pages. Please enter the changes you'd make individually and explain each with reference to MOS or an ancillary so editors can assess them."

My questions to you are,

1. Is this acceptable behavior on my part?, and,

2. If so, would you mind undoing the IP user in this way (or any way of your choosing)? Because you are a Senior Editor here with many awards, your word will carry far more weight with him and he will not be inclined to retaliate.

Thanks so much for helping me with this difficult issue! I will watch this space for your response. - Babel41 (talk) 04:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Dear Deuces, - My plans for Sunday fell through, so I was able to devote the day to examining each of the 58 unexplained edits that the IP user made via a single entry. Here is an exact breakdown of what he did:

a. Corrected punctuation properly – 5 times

b. Converted simple sentences to complex ones – 2

c. Removed periods from captions – 10

d. Eliminated sentence fragments from captions – 2

e. Meddled with internal links – 3

f. Removed italics from sentence fragments following bullet points … harder to follow – 8

g. Restructured sentences for no reason – 3

h. Made punctuation changes for no reason – 7

i. Changed "and" to "as well as" … awkward – 2

j. Not discernible (probably tiny changes in spacing) – 17

Grand total – 58 changes

Of these chamges, only #a represented improvements – and they were all tiny. #b-d degraded the article in terms of the Manual of Style, #e-i reflected the IP user's inserting his own preferred style into an already coherently styled article, and #j had no bearing on the appearance of the article.

This week, I will deal with this mess by reverting #b-d (the edits that violated the Manual of Stle) plus one deletion of an important comma from a sub-title. I will leave the rest of the IP user's changes alone, on the theory that Wikipedia editors such as myself should not attempt to "own" the articles they've worked on, and if someone makes changes that do not positively harm an article they should be allowed to leave their imprint upon it.

As a Wikipedia editor of seven years' standing (though not a major one – am averaging under 300 edits a year, mostly in bunches), I hope you as an administrator will take two lessons from this unhappy incident:

1. No Wikipedia editor, registered or not, should be allowed to enter a multitude of diverse style changes to an article via the same edit – let alone without an explanation!

2. Every Wikipedia editor should be instructed to explain each of their style edits in terms of widely accepted grammatical rules or the Manual of Style or a relevant ancillary document. That will make it so much easier for the watchers of each page (and the Radical centrism page now has nearly 100) to understand and assess what editors have done.

Thanks for listening! - Babel41 (talk) 06:10, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

You could have reversed the edit or can revert to an earlier version. It's possible the IP does not notice since they are not registered. You should explain why you reverted on the discussion page and mention that discussion in your edit summary where you remove the new edits. There is nothing wrong with reverting, but it is wrong to revert without providing reasons. TFD (talk) 23:26, 23 October 2017 (UTC)