User talk:Tol

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Contentious topic awareness

This user is aware of the designation of the following topics as contentious topics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, or related conflicts the Arab–Israeli conflict abortion post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people article titles and capitalisation articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles complementary and alternative medicine climate change discussions about infoboxes, and edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes COVID-19, broadly construed the Balkans or Eastern Europe gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them genetically modified organisms, commercially produced agricultural chemicals and the companies that produce them, broadly construed the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups post-1978 Iranian politics pseudoscience and fringe science the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour They should not be given alerts for those areas.

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Question from Scott-Led (20:42, 11 September 2025)

Hi Tol, Another question - When I open an article for editing, often there are what I interpret as instructions at the beginning, when one selects Edit, such as: "Use dmy dates," after the symbol for Template. I was making these date format changes, in articles written using European date format, and was roundly hammered by a veteran editor for doing so, and who then reverted all my work. What is the purpose of the header stating "Use dmy dates," if not for this tasker? And if not a tasker, what is the reason to take the effort to include this information? It is often present, so represents a significant amount of work by a lot of people. Thanks! --Scott-Led (talk) 20:42, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Scott-Led: Those aren't instructions; they're maintenance tags (templates that, in this case, don't have any visible output), added for tracking purposes and to inform editors as to which date format should be used. For instance, Template:Use dmy dates is added to articles that use date-month-year format, and Template:Use mdy dates to articles that use month-date-year format. You shouldn't change an article's overall date style (e.g. changing an article in dmy format to mdy format or vice versa), but you're welcome to standardise dates to the article's established overall date style. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:14, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, Tol, thanks for the response! Scott-Led (talk) 21:59, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from AmberBrain (16:16, 23 September 2025)

Hi, What do you think about my entry? My name is Robert Pawlak and or is an entry about myself. I am very open and would be grateful for any suggestions you may have. Best wishes, Robert --AmberBrain (talk) 16:16, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @AmberBrain; welcome to Wikipedia! It appears that you're referring to the draft you have at User:AmberBrain/sandbox. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and so aims to contain articles about notable topics written from a neutral point of view. This draft would not be an acceptable Wikipedia entry because it is not written in a neutral, encyclopedic tone; rather, it has a promotional tone, reading more as a professional biography. As you are writing about yourself, this constitutes a conflict of interest; editing with a conflict of interest is strongly discouraged. I am leaving a standard message on your talk page summarising relevant information; in particular, please read our conflict of interest guideline. Please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 23:50, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Kristopher9 (12:11, 24 September 2025)

Hello Tol, you are listed as a mentor and so I am asking advice. I am new to editing, though at this point done over 100 edits. I have one article. Blur (photographic effect) which was published but being considered for deletion. I think it will pass that test, but I could use help in cleaning it up. One person said the article could be put down to two paragraphs, which I strongly disagree with. I thought the sources, which are all genuine sources from reading, show that blur is important throughout the history of photography. I think there is a writing problem, which I could learn from going forward. Could you take a look? --Kristopher9 (talk) 12:11, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Kristopher9; thanks for reaching out. In my personal opinion, I don't see strong indications that the article's text was LLM-generated — while the tone is a bit more essay-like than Wikipedia standard, it's not so in a manner especially characteristic of LLMs. I don't think the article will be deleted, based on my assessment of the deletion discussion's current consensus, but it would likely be improved by some rewriting and cleanup (recent edits have done some of this). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:55, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much. It is entirely hand written except the inline citations and sources, which I did use Ai to format those, that said, it does show differently on Ai checkers and so I see the source of there complaints, though pretty rude at times. Is there a workshop or place i can go to in order to improve my wtiting. The essay quailty is natural, and so it needs to be surpressed, but I see good writers on Wikipedia can be much more concise. If there is such a source it would be helpful. thank you so much Peter Kristopher9 (talk) 10:53, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, @Kristopher9. I don't believe Wikipedia itself would have anything like a "workshop" for writing skills, but there is a lot of useful information in our neutral point of view policy and the writing better articles essay. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:22, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

thank you I will take a look at those two articles Kristopher9 (talk) 10:34, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Ganiu Adigun (16:53, 28 September 2025)

hello, how can i get started --Ganiu Adigun (talk) 16:53, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Ganiu Adigun; welcome to Wikipedia! There's an introductory tutorial that goes over the basics of how to get started editing. Feel free to let me know if you have any further questions. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 16:58, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mcgironman (21:22, 29 September 2025)

HI @tol. I tried to write an entire article on my first day on the job. Probably bit off too much?! Draft:Ockam In review I was told that my sources were not sufficient. However, I'm not sure which one, or several, of the 15 sources are problematic.

Can you help me pair back the entire article to remove the problems so we can get this published. Then from a solid starting place, I can slowly chip away to add bits and pieces to create a more complete piece. Does that seem like a good strategy? --Mcgironman (talk) 21:22, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Mcgironman; welcome to Wikipedia! I've taken a quick look at Draft:Ockam and your two submission attempts. None of the sources used on the first submission clearly appear to be what Wikipedia would consider reliable sources; I suggest you review the reliable sources guideline for more information. The only source that is facially marginally reliable would be the TechCrunch source (see consensus on its reliability). I encourage you to look for sources which are more clearly reliable; if such reliable sourcing does not exist, this would indicate that the topic does not meet relevant notability guidelines (see the general and organisational notability guidelines). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:11, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]