User talk:Richard Yin

Belbury/Arthur/Coals

I'd be grateful for your eyes on a message about conduct left here.User talk:Belbury

CoalsCollective (talk) 20:45, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

@CoalsCollective I don't think you have a leg to stand on here. Your report of ArthurTheGardener at least seemed like it technically had a policy argument in its favor, which is why I made an sincere effort to help you direct it to the proper channels (and, I might add, helped you make it legible). This latest post though, well, where do I begin?

• Your contention is that @Belbury, a user who (by my estimate) makes about 40 edits per day and has accumulated more than 77,000 edits in total, and probably gets into more editorial disputes in a week (just by being prolific - this is not a comment about Belbury's character) than you have ever, intervened in this situation because he suspects you to be a sock of someone who last interacted with him, as far as I can tell, over a year ago, and Belbury remembers NoorStores because...I don't know, why would he remember them?
• You are further claiming that Belbury's supposed suspicion of sockpuppetry which he did not accuse you of counts as a personal attack/aspersions (as well as "unfounded accusations of harassment" somehow) for no reason except that Belbury's actions couldn't possibly have any other explanation;
• Therefore, you've posted a wall of text on User talk:Belbury in which you brought up a sockpuppetry accusation which, I emphasize, no one has made against you.

Do you not realize what this looks like? Even if no one was suspicious of you being a sock before, they might ask questions now.

Please rethink the way you're approaching this situation. --Richard Yin (talk) 04:18, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

I can't comment on that.. I can only say what happened to me. I was editing in good faith, very carefully. Then most of my work was removed in a space of fifteen minutes. I could not understand why, so I looked at the user pages concerned. These involved someone's 'elderly father'.. I think most people would be perturbed by that. I do not think that trying to investigate that is an strange thing to do. Nor was it so very hard to investigate, because as you yourself observed, these issues are all over the pages concerned. Belbury's interactions with this user seemed prolonged and angry and were specifically over the user's harrassment of Arthur's father. I therefore think what I have written is reasonable is context.. CoalsCollective (talk) 09:58, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

When it comes to rethinking this situation, what do you advise? What is the best way of protesting this particular situation? CoalsCollective (talk) 10:42, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

If you wouldn't mind I'd like some time to gather my thoughts, but I think you will be disappointed by my answer. --Richard Yin (talk) 10:54, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Please take your time. I have tried very hard to also take my time here. I am aware that my concerns must seem petty to you. After all. I am unexperienced editor making very few edits. But I do make those edits with great care in areas where I have done reading and research. My work matters to me. What has happened here has caused me great distress. CoalsCollective (talk) 11:08, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

I think it is reasonable of me to suppose that Belbury did remember the interactions with Arthur's father strongly. If they had not remembered, they would surely have told Arthur to AGF and use the Talk pages, and perhaps reminded them that such concerns should stay off-Wiki. That isn't what happened. CoalsCollective (talk) 13:03, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

@CoalsCollective: Apologies for taking so long to get back to you, I've been busy off-wiki. Since you've asked me about how to go about "protesting" the situation, the short answer is that I would advise you not to, because I'm not convinced based on the evidence presented that protesting in any way would be effective. To illustrate why, allow me to present this completely unrelated story with completely made-up characters A (fairly new), B (highly-experienced), C (very new), and R (tends to read rather than edit). Note that this story has absolutely no sockpuppetry, no personal attacks, no harassment, and no accusations thereof.

• C spends a bunch of time making changes to a few articles.
• A, who is familiar with prior disputes in the topic area, is concerned about C's edits introducing bias. A contacts B, who was involved in one of those prior disputes.
• B, judging C's work to be subpar, removes the section C added in one of the articles, citing WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE (though UNDUE wasn't linked in the edit summary).
• B subsequently takes a hatchet to C's work on the other article mentioned in A's message, due to various concerns including WP:SYNTH, WP:UNDUE, and WP:RS.
• B moves on to whatever it is he's doing next.
• C, upset at the fact that their hard work has been undone, posts walls of text in various places including WP:COIN.
• R comes across the COIN post and asks himself: "what on earth is going on here?"

The basic problem here is that you have not convinced me, or anyone else, that Belbury's changes made the articles worse. You've made various comments about the motives of people involved, but to me it's looking like your changes were (rightly!) undone because they were solely focused on adding material about controversies around the Society of Authors at the expense of neutrality, verifiability, and in at least one case the article's focus on its subject. The fact that you also haven't convinced anyone that anyone was obviously acting against conduct policies is not helping the case you're trying to make.

To address your message to me more directly, it sounds like you're upset primarily because you made your edits with "great care in areas where [you] have done reading and research", and the main thing you want to protest is the fact that your hours of work have been unceremoniously undone. This is completely understandable (and I can see in the page history how hard you worked on them!), but on Wikipedia it's not in itself grounds for a content dispute or a complaint about conduct. You don't own what you've written, unfortunately, starting from the moment it is published. Rather than protesting, I would ask you to try to understand, strictly from a content rather than conduct perspective, why Belbury took the actions he took and how those actions apply Wikipedia's various content policies. Someone who does as much article-work as Belbury does is, I think, worth learning from regardless of whether he takes the time to try to teach you.

I have one more essay I'd like to link you, and I think it's one of the most important things for you to read, but the title of the essay can be read as a fairly candid comment about user behavior. Can I ask you in advance not to take it as a personal attack? It won't be meant as one, I promise. --Richard Yin (talk) 07:43, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the time you have taken to write. I appreciate it.

Your analogy is not very much like what happened to me because it removes the strange personal element. ArthurTheGardener approached Belbury implying I was WP:TE and reminding him of the help B had given his elderly father. Belbury appeared to very rapidly act on this. Elderly fathers aren't supposed to be on Wikipedia, so I looked up Arthur's pages. I didn't have to be Miss Marple to suspect that Arthur's father was an editor called FirstInaFieldofOne who had in all innocence acted for some years as a SPA for the writer Joanne Harris and also in all innocence created sockpuppets - the evidence, as you yourself agree, is very obvious and all over all the pages. Besides, though I have asked several times, Arthur has not denied it. It also seems undeniable to me, looking at Arthur's pages, that his account is much dedicated to Harris. This affects me because the edits to the Society of Authors pages removed content about Harris down to one mention.. That's not WP:BAL. I don't think it's right that personal agendas should be affecting Wikipedia in any way at all, and I think when Belbury read the request with the elderly father he should have reminded Arthur of that.

You've already told me that my complaint implies I'm a sock puppet myself and you have told me and I very insignificant and that no one believes me. You seem to be implying here that my content must be wrong and I'm WP:TE .But I'm not and I don't understand why I can't be believed when all the evidence is in black and white. The principle is WP:GF and I don't see that I has happened here. CoalsCollective (talk) 18:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC)