Information icon Hello, Xhkvfq, welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. Your editing pattern indicates that you may be using multiple accounts or coordinating editing with people outside Wikipedia, such as Strippedsocks (talk · contribs). Our policy on multiple accounts usually does not allow this, and users who misuse multiple accounts may be blocked from editing. If you operate multiple accounts directly or with the help of another person, please disclose these connections. Thank you. Geogene (talk) 17:49, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I am new to editing on Wikipedia. I opened another account using a different username thinking that all my editing could be combined under the second username and I would then use only the new name. However, having registered for that second username I have not yet stumbled across how to combine the two usernames. Perhaps my thinking was mistaken. Suggestions? Xhkvfq (talk) 18:21, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Although I don't know of a technical way to combine usernames, there might be one. But since you've disclosed that you've used these two, you're in compliance with policy if you use this one exclusively going forward. Most of the time when people start a new account, they simply post a disclaimer on their user page somewhere with a link to other accounts they've used or control. Geogene (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Ta! Xhkvfq (talk) 15:25, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Your thread has been archived edit

 

Hi Xhkvfq! The thread you created at the Wikipedia:Teahouse, Second Username, has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days.

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Cat - human conflict (November 26) edit

 
Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reasons left by Turnagra were:  The comment the reviewer left was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved.
Turnagra (talk) 00:10, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
 
Hello, Xhkvfq! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Turnagra (talk) 00:10, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your submission at Articles for creation: Cat predation on islands (December 18) edit

 
Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Pbritti was:  The comment the reviewer left was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved.
Pbritti (talk) 20:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Talk:Feral cat#Invasive species edit

Xhkvfq, as already stated to you in several other places (including Talk:Cat predation on wildlife and the talk pages of both of your redundant drafts mentioned above), you must stop taking disparate facts from various sources and weaving them into a novel narrative of your own devising in a fringe-viewpoint attempt to discredit various claims and sources. It is not permissible to engage in analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of facts from separate sources and recombine them into a personal editorial statement that supports your pro-cat viewpoint.

As just one of many examples of this across all the affected pages, you wrote: "Cats were chosen [for the IUCN's 100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species] on the basis of a single report by Dickman in 1996", and cited the Dickman report as the source for this, but it is not possible for the original report to be a source for the claim that a later work was solely based on it – which is not actually true in the first place, and there is no source anywhere that supports that allegation; you just made it up out of nowhere to denigrate the IUCN material. While the "100" list does cite the Dickman report as a source for cat predation on Australian islands, that is only a small portion of ISSG's entire material on the subject, and it specifically states it is based on IUCN's own research "with support from the Overseas Territories Environmental Programme (OTEP) project XOT603, a joint project with the Cayman Islands Government - Department of Environment". IUCN is a globally recognized and highly reliable source on the conservation status of and nature of threats to various species; the idea that you all on your own have hit upon "what's really going on" and that this "fact" you've allegedly uncovered is true and encyclopedic is (aside from farcical hubris and a clear Dunning–Kruger effect problem) an "exceptional claim requiring exceptional sourcing", to say the least.

All of your writing in this subject area has severe problems like this, and it needs to stop immediately. This is not your personal blog, and Wikipedia does exist as a publisher of your own opinions and novel assumptions and theorizing.

Also, please read at least WP:Simplified Manual of Style; you keep doing stylistically wrong things like curly quotes, mixing quoted and italic styles of titles of works or using neither, etc. And please do not use markup like <nowiki> if you do not understand what it is for (hint: making URLs not work is not what it is for).  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  23:38, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Regarding "100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species", I cited 'Dickman 1996' so that people could read the report for themselves. I did not cite it to support what I wrote, because it does not support that. I guess I may have cited it in the wrong place. As for the assertions in my edit, I cited all the references that actually state - unambiguously and in plain language - what I wrote. I did not make up anything, I had no need to do that. I simply wrote in my own words what the references say.
As for the entry Cat Predation on Wildlife, it is heavily one-sided, clearly prejudiced, with selective picking of references to support a particular view. There is lots of very relevant published information, acceptable to Wikipedia, that has been left out.
But we have differences of opinion in that you seem to be at ease with both entries. Unfortunately, they discredit Wikipedia and both should be deleted or radically re-written. Xhkvfq (talk) 14:08, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
There is no cited reference that says (in any wording) "Cats were chosen [for the IUCN's 100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species] on the basis of a single report by Dickman in 1996". You definitely did just make it up. This is just one example of you taking isolated facts and making personal assumptions about them (in this case the assumption that because IUCN did happen to cite Dickman for some material about cats on Australian islands, a small portion of their material, that their decision to list cats in "100" was necessarily based on no input but Dickman's, despite them clearly saying it was based on IUCN's own research "with support from the Overseas Territories Environmental Programme [...]".
If you think Cat predation on wildlife has sourcing problems, then you need to use the article's talk page to demonstrate a case that there is something wrong with the sources (or a source) used so far, and to present additional actual sources in detail, not just claim vaguely that "There is lots of very relevant published information, acceptable to Wikipedia, that has been left out." Some kind of "I believe other sources exist that contradict WP's article, but I'm not going to say what they are" posture just does not work here. The only "heavily one-sided, clearly prejudiced" issue in evidence is your own approach to this subject area, which is a "whitewash the cats" tactic that is directly contradictory to all the sourcing we have, and seems to be motivated by a viewpoint that anything critical of cats' predation on wildlife is "one-sided" and "clearly prejudiced", which simply is not reflective of reality. Your constant efforts to shoehorn in completely extraenous material about other species to distractingly hand-wave away from cats and basically make "But dogs and people aren't blameless!" excuses for cats is a clear example of this.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  21:48, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I made the reference "Cats were chosen…” in good faith. However, searching the Invasive Alien Species Database I cannot find such an unambiguous statement. Having made some attempts to write on Wikipedia I have come to realise that one has to make very specific and narrow statements. Also that the style of writing is very different from other forms of writing I am more used to. In this regard I know I have made some errors and think they should not be held against me. I would guess that many new writers on Wikipedia must learn to write the Wikipedia way and I have been on this learning process.
I still stand firmly by my statement that the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance. Indeed, there are lots of very relevant published information, acceptable to Wikipedia, that has been left out. I had not been asked to say what they are so did not list any; I was simply saying they exist. However, if you would like one, I suggest starting with Lynn et al. 2019. ‘A moral panic over cats.’ Just to select one sentence: “There are good conservation and public-health reasons and evidence to be skeptical that free-ranging cats constitute a disaster for biodiversity and human health in all circumstances.” https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13346/
(and just in case you cannot open it, the same as pdf: https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/cobi.13346)
So I find it strange for you to say that I am the one who is biased. Xhkvfq (talk) 15:08, 25 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
"one has to make very specific and narrow statements." Yep. And it's important that it be a statement (albeit not in the exact same words, per WP:PLAGIARISM, unless we're doing a short direct quotation) that is found in one or more of the secondary sources, not a statment of an editor's own personal conclusion based on what various different sources are saying and how those might relate to each other. That's the WP:SYNTH problem. It also can't be restatement of a primary-sourced claim as if it is a known fact in Wikipedia's own voice.

"the style of writing is very different from other forms of writing I am more used to": Yes, it's a learning curve. Encyclopedic writing is very dry and dispassionate, "just the facts", without any emotive wording, any "purple prose", any judgement implication, any lead-the-reader-to-a-conclusion constructions, any unnecessary adjectives of characterization. Some crash courses in this can be found at WP:BETTER, MOS:WTW, and WP:REDEX (the latter of which is preseted as something of a short course of writing exercises).

"the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance": This is a pointless argument to make as simply an argument/opinion. It has to be backed up. Take a specific statement in the article and show why a particular source for it is unreliable or has been misinterpreted, or is not the predominant view in reliable sources. If you think a statement is missing, then lay out what it is and what the sourcing for it is, including any contradictory material (don't WP:CHERRYPICK). Our "job" as encyclopedia writers is to refect what the reliable WP:SECONDARY sources (not just primary-research papers – those are very, very often contradicted by later research) are saying, with WP:Due weight given to the viewpoints in them; not to present a "position" or "stance" and try to defend it. If you find this difficult, then encyclopedia writing may not be for you, and you might be better off writing op-ed material for a blog or other venue without such stringent requirements. I would understand that urge; I was a professional political activist for much of my career, and there are some topics about which I cannot really maintain neutrality (so I don't edit in those subjects here, and leave them to others, but I certainly say my piece about them in other venues like social media).

Showing me personally one particular paper doesn't do anything; I'm not some personal gate-keeper of that article. Presenting a bunch of sources on the article's talk page is what to do. And they will take individual analysis. As for that one in particular, it is not science, it's an adovocacy op-ed. It can look like bias for you to present it as if it's a science source, though of course it may just be part of the learning curve of distinguishing primary, secondary, and tertiary sources (WP:PST). For more on distinguishing primary and tertiary from secondary ones, see WP:PRIMARYUSE, WP:TERTIARYUSE. Opinion pieces like the Lynn et al. 2019 essay are primary by definition. I'll address that source in detail at the article talk page.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  03:35, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply