Hello, Billyshiverstick! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! DVdm (talk) 13:17, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply] Getting Started The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Welcome to my talk page.

I like to edit the style and sentence structure of articles to help them communicate better. Sometimes I get into adding content, where I feel an important perspective is missing.

I find the editing language and tools to be well conceived to produce a durable and consistent encyclopedia, but I find them difficult to use, and poorly instructed on the site.

My overall impression though, is that Wikipedia is a miracle, and the open-source nature is a step forward for human behaviour.

Please do not wholesale revert my work. Make the article even better by adjusting it.

Thanks for copyediting Maria Tallchief. Much appreciated! ThaddeusB (talk) 02:14, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ben, thanks for your edits to Black Sunday (storm). I've fixed the quotes; Wikipedia uses straight quotes but you seemingly accidentally introduced curly quotes. To avoid this in the future, turn off smart quotes in whichever word processor you use to edit Wikipedia. Graham87 03:20, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. I've moved your message from my user page to my talk page. Graham87 02:41, 14 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Saw you comment. Should have stayed on commons - in the gadgets section of preferences is a "Crop Tool". You can make cropped images in a few seconds. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 18:39, 12 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tx! I'm not very tech savvy about jumping from commons etc., although I just uploaded a picture of mine to commons. Next time I want to crop, I'll try that. Tx BB Billyshiverstick (talk) 13:48, 14 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Billy, regarding your edit [1] which I reverted, I'd like to let you know that it is counter-productive to remove the {{ill}} template from the link. Circular links such as this one are perfectly fine if the link target is likely to become an article in the future (and in particular if the {{R with possibilities}} Rcat has been used in the redirect). Also, the {{ill}} template provides readers a link to an article in another language entity of Wikipedia. The template will still show a red link if not even a redirect exists in the English WP. This will turn into a blue link if a redirect exists, and the [] iwl link will vanish once this redirect has been turned into an article. Soon later a bot will remove the {{ill}} template and replace it by a normal link. This happens automatically as part of the {{ill}} template's code. Therefore, there is no reason to remove these links manually, and in particular not if the target is still a redirect only. Hope it helps and greetings... --Matthiaspaul (talk) 20:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Matthiaspaul, I did the edit before I realized Luisa didn't have her own page, and I don't know how to revert to previous versions. Thanks for fixing my boo-boo, and I'll leave these sort of circular links in place in future as they seem to be a "step forward". I like adding stuff that is as yet "unpolished", as a place marker for future people to elaborate on. cheers, Ben

If you enable Preferences>Gadgets>Nav Popups, you can see how many edits anyone has made by hovering over their username. You've made 2330. Valereee (talk) 23:35, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Valereee. I wonder if it stopped counting when I retired, or I suppose I did a lot without being logged in, but I would have thought it was more like 40,000. Interesting. Thanks for dropping the tip. cheers Billyshiverstick (talk) 04:18, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:56, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Not sure what prompted this, but I much appreciate it. I make a lot of small, clarity edits, that go unsung, but make the whole experience better. Often outside of my username. Sometimes I get a lot of flak, so I'll take the love when it comes. Thank you. Small things can be big things. Have a lovely day. Billyshiverstick (talk) 02:05, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Billyshiverstick! I noticed that you recently marked an edit as minor that may not have been. "Minor edit" has a specific definition on Wikipedia—it refers only to superficial edits that could never be the subject of a dispute, such as typo corrections or reverting obvious vandalism. Any edit that changes the meaning of an article is not a minor edit, even if it only concerns a single word. Thank you. Patrick (talk) 01:59, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @User:Patrick Welsh, thanks for your respectful observation. Please read my User Page. I find the editing environment on Wikipedia to be hostile and difficult. I quit editing for years because proprietary editors who know how to work the system will ban you or tag you with vandalism for changing their "sacred" words. In lieu of Wikipedia providing a safe editing environment, (and I say this as an accomplished designer in many fields), that is supervised by impartial paid employees, I have learned to "keep my head below the parapet" by sometimes interpreting "Minor Edit" as a grey zone, broader than purely for typos.

It would have been helpful if you gave an example, but after editing Susan Sontag and Sarajevo, I was expecting trouble, especially Sarajevo. I have friends who are Serbs and Croats, and passions run deep.

But 95% of my editing is copy editing, moving sentences around, collecting themes in re-organised paragraphs. I'm seeking standard formatting, and clarity. These are minor edits to me. I'm not usually adding material, or anything I consider to be "disputable", I'm just trying to help the original writers express themslves. So much of Wikipedia is "cut and paste", so the writing lacks flow and coherence.

However, I sometimes can tell when previous editors have managed to work their POV into an article, sometimes by omitting balance, sometimes just by carefully disguising their work. I like to remove that kind of sneaky bias. "Weasel Words", we Wiki editors used to say, although that disses weasels. I agree with you that it would be best for me to go find a cited source, in these cases, but I don't have time and skills for that. I have permanent brain damage from concussions, and my resources are limited.

I wish you would think of me as similar to the Ukrainian sappers removing Russian land mines. I'm not planting my own, I'm just disarming others.

"Minor edits" helps me fly under the radar. Very few edits I make can be considered major changes, or disputable. Everything I do is of course reviewed in time by other editors, and if they really don't like what a changed paragraph says, they are free to change it further. On my user page, I encourage people not to revert my work, but improve on it. My use of minor edits keeps proprietary editors from religiously reverting anything they don't personally like. If they get pinged, rush in and read my edit, they'll react to it. However, if they just read the article later, they might accept what I have done, in its context. I remember when a lawyer told me "the invention of the fax machine increased litigation 100 fold", because lawyers stopped taking the time snail mail gave them to calm down. Minor edits gives an idea time to settle.

I agree with you that I am more committed to the spirit of the law than the letter, but I don't believe I'm abusing this, and certainly less than the editors I'm changing are abusing other more serious editing protocols. Sometimes I click minor edit out of habit, when I don't need to. I'll review that practice. It would be helpful to me if you gave a few examples, so we could discuss them.

At the end of the day, who are any of us to decide what could "never be the subject of a dispute"? Wikipedia has a structural flaw. It demands citations, but asks us editors to "re-write" copy so we aren't plagiarising. I've been literally banned arbitrarily for using "too lengthy quotes", for instance. Every single editor who writes a sentence could easily be subject to a dispute. If I'm to continue editing, I need to do so with my steel helmet on, to avoid the shrapnel.

I wish there was a better format for discussion of this, like picking up the phone. Peace and love. But if you ban me for "abusing minor edit", Wikipedia will be the loser. Billyshiverstick (talk) 18:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]