Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:10, 22 June 2017

Welcome!

Hello, Jenhawk777, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! 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 Misplaced Pages
• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• 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 take the Misplaced Pages Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 21:52, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Note

Please have a look through the links in the welcome message above, to get better oriented to how Misplaced Pages works. If you like I created a narrative overview here User:Jytdog/How that you may find helpful in getting oriented. Jytdog (talk) 21:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

talk I am totally lost and overwhelmed right now. I understand what you have said about that single comment. This article contains several unsupported statements and most of it is one sided so I was attempting to add balance and blundering about. I think instead of editing this one I will write one instead. It will be good experience. My educational background is in this area, I spent the last six months researching this very topic, and I have information on every category you list that is not included in this article. I don't know what I am doing on Misplaced Pages yet, but I know this subject, and I know how to write! I hope! We'll see! Thank you for your help! Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:11, 15 May 2017 (UTC)Jenhawk777

Misplaced Pages and copyright

Hello Jenhawk777, and welcome to Misplaced Pages. All or some of your addition(s) to Draft:Violence and Christianity have been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Misplaced Pages, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Misplaced Pages:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Misplaced Pages:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Misplaced Pages:Copyrights. You may also want to review Misplaced Pages:Copy-paste.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Misplaced Pages:Donating copyrighted materials.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Misplaced Pages:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Misplaced Pages articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Misplaced Pages project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Misplaced Pages:Copying within Misplaced Pages.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 06:53, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your help, I am definitely still figuring this out. I rented an article for two days and put a bunch of it directly into the draft because I didn't feel like I had time to go through and decide what I would use and what I wouldn't, so I copied it with the intent of editing it afterwards. Is it okay if I restore what you took out with that end in mind? I will be careful. There is another article here already on this subject that has been marked for bias. I attempted to edit it first, but all my edits got reverted. He wrote me to explain why he reverted one paragraph--inadequate referencing--and I agreed on that one paragraph, but he reverted all of them without comment on the rest. I figure he has a point of view he is pushing and is not going to accept anything else so I am trying to write something more neutral and will then leave it to you guys to decide what to do with them both. I didn't know anyone was monitoring my draft! It is nowhere approaching done! Jenhawk777 (talk) 16:01, 24 May 2017 (UTC)Jenhawk777Jenhawk777 (talk) 16:01, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Violence and Christianity

Hi - I'm sorry to say but this is not at all likely to be accepted. We of course already have an article on the subject - read WP:REDUNDANTFORK. The larger problem is that it doesn't meet our policies and guidelines. It might do as an essay but not as an article. It fails WP:VERIFY and no original research for a start. You might want to read this essay also.Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, not truth Your introduction, which we call a WP:LEAD, does not summarise the article but makes an argument. And "This approach will be used throughout this article" is something we can't say because no one owns an article. You may want an article to follow a certain approach, but someone can come along and so long as they follow our policies and guidelines and stick to the topic they can abandon that approach.

You might want to get some feedback on this by asking at the WP:Teahouse or Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Christianity/Noticeboard, don't just take my word for it. Doug Weller talk 13:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Apologies, I forgot to respond. I still don't think it will be acceptable as it's a duplicate article, but I urge you again to ask at the Teahouse. Doug Weller talk 09:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Here's a proper invitation for you. Click on the big TH to go there

Hello! Jenhawk777, you are invited to the Teahouse, a forum on Misplaced Pages for new editors to ask questions about editing Misplaced Pages, and get support from peers and experienced editors. Please join us! Doug Weller talk 09:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Draft page

Hi Jenhawk777 - Draft:Violence and Christianity is something it looks like you have put a lot of work into. It appears to be a collection of thoughts about various things that you would like to incorporate into Christianity and violence; it is not actually a draft article. If this is true, it really should be in your userspace; drafts are for actually drafts. Do you know how to move a page? If not, I can move it for you.

There is some other stuff I would like to discuss with you about that document in the context of Misplaced Pages, but first things first... Jytdog (talk) 19:24, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Pasted comment below, that was left on my talk page in this edit Jytdog (talk) 21:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for responding! I appreciate any and all help! I don't understand the comment that this appears to be a collection of my thoughts though. None of this is original material. It is all referenced. I take it you are the original author of Christianity and Violence? You don't seem to like any of my edits, but if you could help me understand why or what it is you don't like, perhaps we could fix this together. The article does not seem balanced or neutral to me, and clearly to others who tagged it that way long before I came along, so my goal is not to erase anything you have said but to balance it a little bit more. You are welcome to make changes to what I have added, but please explain them if you would. Thank you again! I will keep trying to honor what you have written while accomplishing the goal--if you will not give up on me! Thank you! Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:01, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for replying! Quick notes on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. (See WP:TPG for the overall guideline)

First, it is good to keep discussions in one place, so I moved your response here, since you were replying to the above.

Next, in Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, and the Misplaced Pages software converts that into an indentation; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense.

Finally, at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages. That is how we know who said what. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 21:12, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

No, I am not "the author" of Christianity and violence. I am one of the people who works on it, yes. Each Misplaced Pages article of course was initially created by an individual, and any Misplaced Pages article is only as good (or bad) as the last editor who touched it, but all of WP and every article in it, is maintained by the community of editors. Because of that, it is important that specific discussion of article content be conducted at the Talk page of the relevant article, so that everybody can participate who wants to, and so it becomes part of the history of the page, easily findable by others.

You didn't reply to the main point of my comment above - namely your "draft" really belongs in Userspace. (There are different "spaces" in Misplaced Pages. Articles and their talk pages are in "mainspace"; policies and guidelines and other community governance documents are in "Misplaced Pages space" - things there start with "Misplaced Pages" or "WP" like this: WP:Consensus - that is a different page from Consensus which is an article in mainspace. There is also draft space, where actually draft articles go while they are being worked on, and there is "User space" which is each user's userpage, their talk page (like this one) and sandboxes and noodling - these all start with "User:"). Your notes should be at User:Jenhawk777/Violence and Christianity not Draft:Violence and Christianity. It is not a draft article - it cannot be, as there is an existing article on the topic. Jytdog (talk) 21:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your patience and the instruction! :-) It is genuinely helpful. I thought I read the stuff on talk--but I don't remember any of this! There is so much--when you are unfamiliar with software language in the first place--that all the information is a little overwhelming. I don't know if I'm doing this right yet! But I am grateful you are persevering with me! I started writing my draft as a draft of a new and different article since I wasn't having any luck editing the other article. When I started it I did not know there was rule against it. I will change my talk to that page too. Thank you.~~~~ Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)Jenhawk777

Argh. I fixed your signature at again. We sign at the END'. To sign just type 4 tildas. Do NOT type the "nowiki" markup. You do not need to write "Jenhawk777". The Misplaced Pages software will convert the 4 tildas into your username and the date. Jytdog (talk) 00:20, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

So here is the deal. The document at Draft:Violence and Christianity cannot stay in draft space. It will be deleted if you try to keep it there. If you do not want it to be deleted, it needs to be moved. Do you want to move it, or shall I move it? Jytdog (talk) 00:22, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

That's it? The decision is yours? I don't have any choice about this? I am not allowed to finish it and then see what Misplaced Pages decides? Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:14, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Please slow down. Please! One thing at a time. I am trying to preserve your work, and am trying to work with you. The document just needs to be moved from where it is, where it is in danger of deletion, to your user space, where it will be safe. It is just like moving a piece of paper from one spot to another. Where it is now, it is in the "production line" and it can never go into production (there is already an article in the place where it would go) and it needs to go in your personal space, where it is fine to keep notes. This is a really, really, simple thing. Jytdog (talk) 04:10, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay, you say you are trying to help. I will trust you are truthful and doing what you say. Go ahead and move it if that is the right thing to do. I can't say I have seen your responses as working with me on editing the article though. But as you say, one thing at time. Move the article. Then let's discuss your assertion my edits were personal opinion. That's wrong. If you can find one line that is just my opinion, I will grovel and apologize appropriately, because I don't believe there are any--or even if there's a paragraph you just don't like--let's change it. One thing at a time. Jenhawk777 (talk) 07:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks. The page is now moved to your userspace and is here: User:Jenhawk777/Violence and Christianity. Now, as I noted in the my first message above, it would be useful to discuss that document... I'll create a break so we don't have to scroll so much. Jytdog (talk) 19:39, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

break

OK, so now about that document. User:Jenhawk777/Violence and Christianity. One of the hardest things to get used to, when working in Misplaced Pages, is understanding what Misplaced Pages is, and what it is not. We have a policy, What Misplaced Pages is Not that attempts to lay this out for people. Don't know if you have read that yet, or grappled with it yet, but this is really fundamental. It tries to help people understand the mission here.

The mission is stated near the beginning of the body, at WP:NOTEVERYTHING, and it is this - to provide readers with articles that summarize accepted knowledge. And we do that in a community of editors.

The strategy by which we realize the mission, is that we find the most reliable sources (as described in WP:RS) that we can, and we summarize them here. We let the sources guide us, and we give space and emphasis in articles (what we call "weight") to various ideas, as they are found in reliable sources. (this is described in the WP:NPOV policy. No editor's ideas come into articles - doing that is what we call original research and it is not OK here. Also, carrying strong ideas or beliefs that you have in the real world, into Misplaced Pages, is also not OK. This is described in WP:SOAPBOX (which is part of NOT), WP:YESPOV (which is part of NPOV), as well as the very helpful essay, WP:ADVOCACY. Please do be sure to read those.

Misplaced Pages articles just describe - they just summarize - accepted knowledge. They don't make arguments. They are not essays.

One of the hardest things for people to adapt to when they come here, is generating content that follows the above. It is very tempting to try to turn articles into essays. This is not OK.

The thing that struck me, when I read the document you generated, is that it is set up like an essay, in which you make various arguments. That is not what we do here, per all of the above.

I know this must sound odd, but it is really how this place works. Would you please reflect on the above a bit, and re-read your document, and your edit to the article? If you can get better oriented to the mission and the strategies by which we try to realize it, I think the work at the article will go better.

I am writing about this here, instead of at the article talk page, as this is not focused on the article content per se, but rather about getting you oriented to how this place works. I hope all this makes sense. Jytdog (talk) 19:54, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

It does make sense--but I actually thought that is what I was doing. I summarized the material I read and wrote a synopsis of it in the same manner in which it was written and presented. One of the pieces of advice on summarizing articles is to be sure and represent the work accurately. That is what I attempted to do. I did NOT--repeat NOT--include my personal views or interpretations. Every sentence I wrote is a summary of ideas from the work I reference. I presented them as they are presented--but perhaps that is the problem. By definition, they make arguments. What is the proper way to describe an argument without sounding like you are making the argument? Most of this is newer material still under copyright. I can't just quote. Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:02, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

OK. So when I read the document you created, what was really clear, is that it 1) discredits claims that Christianity contributes to violence and 2) argues that Christianity promotes peace. The whole document does this, as does each section. The document is an essay that makes an argument, and very systematically. You really cannot see this? Jytdog (talk) 20:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Of course I can see it! As I said before, (it's somewhere--I'm losing track), my article was written with the intent of asking for it to be merged with the existing article--it was not written to stand alone. Combined with the information in the existing article--that combination would create balance. The existing article uses loaded language and is heavily weighted to one point of view--can you not see that? Surely you have been given multiple examples of straight out inaccuracies that exist in the article as it is because the information is so one-sided. The only way I can see to correct that--without removing information--is to add other information that is weighted in the other direction. Together they create one single balanced article. For example, the existing article discusses just war theory as though that is the only view of war within Christianity, yet there are four views of war within the Christian tradition--one of them is Crusade, and the problems with that are added--not defended. Much of this entire discussion of Christianity and violence presumes that Christianity is required to be pacifist in order to avoid the condemnation so prevalent in nearly every quote in this article--but pacifism is only one view--and it is never specifically addressed. It's only assumed. That is a legitimate flaw in the existing article. There are several of these. Yes, what I wrote is imbalanced--standing alone and by itself--of course it is! Because that is the view not presented in the existing article. How else is it possible to create balance and neutrality but to include the latest and best scholarship on the subject that does counter some of the older information in the current article? Jytdog I am adding a request here that we do move this back to the article talk page. I don't want to keep this private. I do want other people to be able to weigh in. What you have just acknowledged is that it is not my documentation or my style that is the real issue for you--it is the fact that the material differs with the POV already presented in the article. But that was the point. The existing article has a particular POV. IT is not neutral. Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work!

@Jenhawk777: I just wanted to let you know that I noticed all of the hard work you put into drafting revisions of Violence and Christianity. You picked a controversial topic to start off with, but an important one. Controversial topics tend to attract low quality contributions, so other editors tend to be quicker to revert on these articles than typical ones. Don't be discouraged! There's still a long way to go to improve this article, though, so your efforts to improve it are more than welcome. Feel free to use {{ping}} or edit my talk page if you get frustrated or need help. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 20:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)Jenhawk777 I sent you a thank you on your talk page--but thank you again. I tried editing the original article, again, and it was completely reverted, again--nothing kept at all. Is it possible to get a second opinion? Jytdog says it is all personal opinion but that is untrue. Every statement is a paraphrase of previously published material and is completely verifiable. There is no original work, there is no opinion, there is only compilation of the latest information. There is a reference at the end of nearly every sentence. If there are places where two or three sentences are strung together with only one reference at the end, it's because they all came from that same reference. The reason he gave for reverting is just not true. He reverts anything positive if the other comments in talk are anything to go by. I have gone to the talk page for that article and responded--but I don't think he's going to change his mind. When I put in the edit, I asked him to go ahead and make changes if needed or tell me what he thought should be changed--but he just took it all out. At least this time it was just the introduction. Please help if you can. Tell me what I should do.

Jytdog has sent me a talk saying I am not allowed to have my draft in draft because there is already an article on this subject and if I don't move it it will be deleted. Does he get to decide that? Can I not finish it and see what Misplaced Pages will do with it? I tried to edit the original again and it was reverted again and this time he is wrong. I followed sticktothesource exactly. I can't use direct quotes because it is new material still under copyright. I have to summarize. Does Jytdog get to decide what happens to my article before I even finish it? Is there someone I can appeal to? Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:30, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Again, you really need to ask at the Tearoom where a lot of editors will see your post, not just a few. It's set up to help new editors. Jytdog is trying to explain to you that you can keep your tespxt safely in your user space even though it duplicates an existing article, but not in draft space. That's just the way it's set up. Doug Weller talk 07:06, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay thanx Jenhawk777 (talk) 07:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)