Theandra

Removing vandalism from your userpage

Hi. I assume you mean the edit from March 25, 2007 by user:Katikati (diff)? If it's just run-of-the-mill vandalism, well you don't really need to do anything. It's in the history, but that's all. (If you look at my User page history, you will see that my page has been vandalised something like 60 times.) However, if you don't want it in your history, you can either ask for oversighting, or you can request that your userpage be deleted by an admin by putting {{db-user}} on it, after which you can recreate it. The deletion method is simpler, since it'll likely happen quickly. The difference is that the History is still visible to an Admin if they chose to look at it. With oversight, it'd be gone. Unless that is your real name and you want it purged from the page history, I'd just leave it be. Vandalism of that sort is usually found pretty quickly and reverted. Let me know if you have more questions. Cheers! Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 05:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Reply

Hello Theandra, welcome back. Unfortunately, unwritten history is not usable for Wikipedia. As an encyclopedia, it is against policy to add original research, and it's important that everything in the encyclopedia be verifiable, which basically means that it can be traced to reliable sources. Your first-hand knowledge of the Babar Islands will no doubt help you write the article, but claims should generally be cited in publications (journals, books, online resources, etc.). However, of course, if you publish your findings somewhere reliable, you could cite what appears there.

I don't know of a general template for writing the history of the region, but maybe the best way is to see how it is handled for other regions; for example the Banda Islands (though the history abruptly stops during the colonial period). You can use the {{Infobox Islands}} for an infobox of the basic geographical information. You may also want to write articles for each of the islands in the group. You might want to look at Japanese occupation of Indonesia to see how that topic is approached for the archipelago as a whole.

If I said that Indonesia was systemically neglected, I was referring to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. My sandbox happens to hold a list I was preparing of Palestrina's music. Sometimes it's easier to store things there if I'm not finished and need to save part of the way through something. You can contribute in Indonesian at the Indonesian Wikipedia, http://id.wikipedia.org. It's ok if your grammar isn't perfect as people will fix it (just as some Indonesians with imperfect grammar contribute here and get their contributions fixed). Knowing Indonesian is also useful because you can use Indonesian-language sources in your articles. Rigadoun (talk) 17:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)