User talk:Denaar

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Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Please don't template me! Everybody makes mistakes, and this user finds user warning templates impersonal and disrespectful. If there's something you'd like to say, please take a moment to write a comment below in your own words.

Friendly Talk Welcome Here

Please click the "add topic" button on the top right for friendly conversation. Denaar (talk) 20:00, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Denaar reported by User:Raladic (Result: ). Thank you. Raladic (talk) 21:55, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Closed with a requirement to discuss and find a consensus instead of continuing to make similar changes to the article about Terminology of homosexuality. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:20, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have decided to restore this section to my user talk page, to leave it for other editors to view. I never was able to respond to this, it was immediately closed. I have since found out that the user above is involved in a Arbcon decision, and reported me there, without notifying me. [1] Therefore, I feel I need to defend myself and this is the only way I know how.

I originally came to Wikipedia to work on music articles. The truth is, I got into an edit war with another user, and in retaliation, every time I made an edit, they would immediately edit the article. The user also went through my history and made edits to every article I'd ever touched. Most of these articles I'd barely worked on, but it's the primary reason I stopped working on Wikipedia, I felt helpless. I had to avoid any edits to any music articles at all, or, they would be vandalized by this user. That user no longer participates in Wikipedia. I did consider making a new account to avoid them, but never did - this is my only account.

Back then, I was good at finding reliable sources. I wasn't so great at writing articles, because of the insistence of everything being "sourced", especially because my edits were being constantly "improved", we ended up with the most stiff, jilted writing. You couldn't fill in what you knew to be true (which was fluid) but had to follow the sources.

If you compare these diffs, [2] made across multiple small edits, with specific descriptions of what's happening - the resulting article still isn't great; but it's much improved. And, it may pop up into other users watch lists and inspire them to improve it even more.

This is probably my best achievement; the UK "Grooming Gangs" scandal led to the "Grooming" page to be turned into an utter mess, and after the story had died down, I spent hours researching and finding sources and working on this article to get it back on topic, and got it moved to "Sexual Grooming" to reduce the fighting over what the page was about. [3]

This is an article I just worked on. If you look at these differences [4], the resulting article is still not good and has a lot of work to go. There are some great sources here to lead to a potentially good article - perhaps just a stub of one - but doing too much of a cleanup in one go tends to loose good contributions, where there really was a source for something but it wasn't attached to the right place. So I try to work slowly when cleaning up articles to prevent good contributions from good editors from being lost, because later on, they were combined into edits from inexperienced editors.

Because my stalker used to go in and wipe articles, reducing them to stubs, which made them harder to use search engines to find sources to expand. That experience makes me work strongly not to make other, new editors, feel the same way.

So many articles on Wikipedia have a bunch of great sources used once, that could flesh out the article into something in more depth.

I post the above to show: I am a Wikipedian that wishes more uninvolved editors would come back to Wikipedia.

I was feeling nostalgic and came back to Wikipedia recently but didn't really want to get involved in editing again. I ended up on Wikipedia, I was still logged in, and I ended up on Terminology of homosexuality from something else in my watchpage.

Under it, there was a whole section of information that was wrong, and I knew it was wrong. My gut was it was written by someone young who didn't live through the 80's or 90's, so it wasn't malicious, it was just based on their personal experience with the term. However - I'm a longterm Veteran editor, and know that "I know it's wrong" isn't good enough: What do the sources tell us? Unfortunately, the sources don't match what is written! So, I began by posting on the talk page. You'll see in this edit summary, [5] - "Take it to talk". I'd already taken it to the talk page at 3:50, and made my first edit hours later, around 7:50. The other piece of this edit specifically mentioned: "it is the target of an incoming redirect".

But something else was in that edit - none of my contributions were kept. Keep in mind: I'd made 11 updates, explaining what I was doing on the talk page, as well as explaining what I was doing... and this was the edit, wiping out contributions I'd spent hours researching: [6].

It took me a long time to go from talk to editing because I was reading the articles and taking notes, and looking for more sources. I made updates that match the content of those articles, and it was wiped out without explanation or discussion.

My response was to HONOR Raladic's request. I restored the changes; but I also keep Raladic's edits: [7] and continued updating the page.

I fully recognize that each individual edit didn't leave an easy to read, fully fleshed out page, but it's important to make small changes to editors can give input on the specific items they disagree on. "Updating an article to match the sources on that article" is important work on Wikipedia, and "building consensus" to change a page - when the page has a bunch of statements not supported on the source - makes zero sense to me. The argument is "you must have consensus to correct an article when the sources don't support what is written in the article" is not in line with Wikipedia's guidelines.

One of the very pillars of Wikipedia, a Neutral Point of View, says we "we avoid advocacy". WP:PILLARS

And - part of the reason I'm showing my other work is that this is just how I update article and contribute to Wikipedia. I've stepped back from that article to allow tempers to cool and other editors to review it; but as it stands; it has a bunch of statements someone wrote and attached sources to, but the sources do not support the statements in the article.

When I first became aware of the ARBCON event, I couldn't make heads or tails of how to read it. After finally reading through it, I realized... a whole group of editors was discussing me without me being aware of it. I'm completely dumbfounded, and I'm simply going to leave this here as a testament to this event for future editors.

I hope this behavior is being considered by the arbitrators in their debate over the issue. The truth is - most neutral editors won't touch GENSEX because too many editors with passionate points of view are engaged in advocacy here on wikipedia over the topics, a clear violation of the Pillars of Wikipedia. So many articles have statements that aren't supported by their references in that space, hence my rather aborted attempts to be involved, that are overruled by people outvoting me - even though consensus "isn't a vote".

I strongly believe that long time editor's impatience with new editors keeps people from engaging in Wikipedia, which is exactly what my user page is all about: attracting and keeping editors on Wikipedia willing to learn the ropes; as the "rules" are hidden away, hard to find, and take time to learn.

But so many editors continue violating the very Pillars of Wikipedia, and that is exactly why I stepped back my contributions here. Denaar (talk) 19:42, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]