User:Dr vulpes/mistakes

I think it's important to keep a record of my mistakes and errors. It's important for others to see where I've made mistakes and how I corrected them. It's important to me to document my growth as an editor.

I'm always going to make mistakes, I'm human. But when I make mistakes I will always correct the issue, explain what lead me to that error, layout the steps I will take to address the problem, be receptive and open to feedback, and I will try my best to not repeat the behavior.

Below are a list of mistakes and a quick description of what happened. Clicking the links will give you more information about what happened and my responses. Often this is just copied from my talk page but in other cases there will be links to archived discussions.

2024

Wrong edit summary in a handful of articles

• Between 00:29, August 31, 2024 and 00:41, August 31, 2024 and again from between 13:56, August 31, 2024 and 13:57, August 31, 2024 I had the wrong edit summary in AWB. While scrolling though the articles content checking them for <br /> errors my mouses scroll wheel kept rolling and when I from the display section and into the default summary section it rolled to an old summary that just said "clean up". Those edits should have said "WP:CHECKWIKI article had a list, where one line had a break at the end of the line." This is a silly mistake and I didn't even know my new mouse would just keep rolling on like that.
• At the AFD for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IMOCA 60 Initiative Coeur 4 I misread a comment and thought they had withdrawn the nomination when they in fact had not.

2023

Short description for the lakes of Michigan entered as "Lakes in the state of Lakes of Michigan"

• While adding short descriptions to lakes in Michigan from the category Lakes of Michigan I copied and pasted what I thought was just the work Michigan into AWB and made a bunch of edits. Five months later I discovered I had updated the short description to read "Lakes in the state of Lakes of Michigan" and not "Lake in the state of Michigan". Going forward I'll be more mindful of my workflow and instead of taking shortcuts like this to avoid misspellings I'll check my edits with an external spell check instead.

Added wrong short description to articles.

• While doing some clean up for WP:CHECKWIKI using AWB I forgot to remove the setting where I added a short description to an article. I made this mistake after spending a lot of time working on the Clipperton Island article was I was too tired/fried to really put the focus in my edits that I should have. After I noticed the error I went back and fixed the edits and in articles that didn't have a short description I added one. I was really lucky that KylieTastic noticed my mistake and fixed a bunch of them for me. They showed me a lot of grace when I explained my screw up which is something I really appreciated.

Added a maintenance category to pages while editing articles for WP:WPSHORTDESC

• While I was adding short descriptions to some articles for whatever reason I added the category Articles with Short Descriptions. This is a maintenance category and doesn't need to be manually added. CX Zoom pinged me in a revert they did of one of my edits and somehow I missed that, I was lucky that they posted on my talk page about it so I could fix my mistakes. I chalk this mistake up to coming back from a wikibreak and getting over double COVID. Sometimes I still find myself sort of just going on autopilot but it's been getting better.

2022

Article for Deletion: Jessie Anderson

• I thought this person was noteworthy but was wrong.

Nominated an Article for Deletion: Shell Gas Station

• After doing some research I couldn't find anything that said a Shell Gas Station in Le Grange California was an historical landmark so I nominated it for deletion. Soon after I found evidence that it was in fact a historical landmark and corrected myself.

Article Edit: Too Many Citation Needed Tags

• In an article about West Ford, a slave fathered by George Washington I added a lot of citation needed tags. My intent was to make the article better because this topic is sensitive and important.

AutoWikiBrowser: Inconsequential Edits

• While browsing batches of articles using AWB I felt like I wasn't being productive so I made a bunch of inconsequential edits.

Pending Changes Review: Approved Change That Cited a Blog | Talk Page

• When I was reviewing articles with pending changes I accidentally approved a change that cited a blog.

Nominated an Article for Deletion: Microsoft and Unions

• I nominated an article for deletion and in my deletion request I said that the article could be renamed. I withdraw the nomination, and apologized for the error. Article was renamed and everything worked out.

Marked an Article as Reviewed: Lethal Weapons

• In my first 50 or so pages that I reviewed after being granted New Page Patrol permissions I incorrectly marked the Family Guy episode Lethal Weapons (Season 3 Episode 7) as reviewed. I came to this error by accidently using WP:NTVEP as notability guidelines. The first line in the article says "The following is not one of Wikipedia's notability guidelines.". I noted that going forward I need to be more careful when looking at articles that call themselves guidelines and are not really guidelines.

Dropped the ball due to COVID

• In July 2022 I contracted COVID-19 and I basically ghosted everyone and all the projects I was active in. I should have at least tried to log in and let people know what was going on. I spent the better part of a month just sleeping and feeling hungover.

Grammar mistake while adding short descriptions.

• While adding short descriptions to articles I made for unincorporated communities Magnolia677 pointed out that I had made a grammar mistake and used "Unincorporated community in the State of Oregon, United States" instead of the correct "Unincorporated community in the state of Oregon, United States". I had to go back and fix the mistake in thousands of articles.

Improper CSD Nomination

• Nominated a redirect article for speedy deletion because after searching Google and the Wikilibrary I couldn't find any material about it. This is incorrect I guess.

Nominated a sock for autopatroll

• While patrolling articles I came across Poli Hunt who had created a lot of articles about Indian politicians. I nominated them for autopatroll because their articles all passed and I felt at the time it would help reduce the backlog. They did not ask me to nominate them I did this on my own because I thought it would help. I later found out that they were a sock. This might be the dumbest thing I've done. Going forward I'm never going to nominate someone for a permission ever again. I might opine in the discussion but I'm not going to screw up like that again.

Dismissive and Unkind during an ANI

• During an ANI where an editor raised a complaint about having their article sent to draft I was not as kind and professional as I could have been. I dismissed the editors complaints because I felt their going to ANI was borderline bullying. I should have tried harder to take their point of view into consideration, this was a case where an editor was hurt by an action and my comments didn't help. Going forward I need to recognize that ANI can bring up a lot of passionate opinions and that I should be more caring and forgiving in that space.

Unprofessional over a denied AfC

• During a denied AfC I was pretty thorny with the reviewer. @FeralOink put in a lot of work into that article that I didn't bother to even review and instead of bringing my issue to them I was dismissive and unkind in my request to remove page protection. We talked about the incident and they were really cool about everything and accepted my apology. We both noted that personal events in our lives had made us both a little prickly, I hope we can work on some nerdy project in the future because I think we both like statistics a little too much.